Durbin: Flock CEO "nervous about being on camera"

Our Take

C-SPAN caught a moment worth sitting with: a sitting U.S. Senator publicly noting that the man who built a nationwide network of license plate cameras didn't want to sit in front of one himself. Credit to the committee staff and to C-SPAN for putting it on the record. When the business model is "we watch everyone, everywhere, all the time," declining an invitation to explain that model to elected officials isn't a scheduling conflict — it's a message.

Flock has spent years selling local governments on the idea that constant vehicle surveillance is just good policing, with little independent oversight of how that data is stored, shared, or cross-referenced across thousands of jurisdictions. A company that confident in its product shouldn't flinch at a Senate hearing room. The reluctance says more about how Flock views accountability than any press release ever could.

If you want to see how far this network already reaches, check our camera map — there's likely a Flock reader closer to your house than you think. And if this clip makes you want to do something about it, our take-action page has concrete steps for pushing back at the local level, where most of these deployments actually get approved.