Three federal lawmakers introduced a bill Friday aimed at Flock Safety’s camera network, arguing the fast expansion of automated license plate readers has outpaced privacy protections for Americans. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon said their Ban Flock Act would bar federal agencies from using automatic license plate readers and cut off federal grant money to state and local governments that use the technology.
The proposal arrives as scrutiny of Flock grows in Washington and in statehouses around the country. At a Sept. 23 Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing, Democrats and Republicans alike said searchable networks of camera data raise new questions about privacy, civil liberties and how much location tracking the government should be allowed to do.
Bill would block federal use and some federal funding
The Ban Flock Act was released Oct. 2, according to Merkley’s office. His office said the bill would prohibit the federal government from using automatic license plate readers or accessing the information they collect, stop federal grant funding from going to state or local governments that use the technology, and allow Americans to sue the federal government over violations tied to automatic license plate readers.
Merkley’s office said Flock is the largest vendor of automatic license plate readers in the United States, with more than 120,000 cameras nationwide that scan and record 20 billion vehicles every month. The office also said at least 56 municipalities this year have deactivated, canceled or rejected contracts with Flock.
In statements released with the bill, Sanders said Flock is “installing tens of thousands of cameras in communities across America without their consent,” while Ocasio-Cortez said the company and similar firms have built “a mass surveillance system.” Merkley said people should be able to move through their communities “without every move being monitored.”
Those concerns are no longer coming only from the political left. At the Sept. 23 hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, Chairman Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, said Flock’s network spans almost every state and creates a system in which billions of images are searchable, including with artificial intelligence, according to Roll Call.
“We’ve got to find a way to protect and enforce the Bill of Rights and the basic personal liberties of every law-abiding citizen in this country no matter what the technology is,” Hawley said at the hearing. Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the panel’s top Democrat, said Congress “needs to lead the way” in finding a balance between privacy and security.
The hearing also featured testimony from Alasdair Whitney of the Institute for Justice, who urged Congress to require warrants in most cases before government officials can access historical location data. Whitney said such rules would not stop police from finding a missing child or stolen car, but called a warrant requirement “the bare minimum.”
The bill is federal, but its reach would extend into local policing if it advances. Because the measure would block some federal grant funding from going to state and local governments that use automatic license plate readers, departments that rely on federal money could face pressure to change course or give up access.
Flock has defended its system publicly and says customers control whether to share license plate reader data with other customers, according to the company’s license plate reader policy. The policy says data gathered on behalf of customers is owned by the customer, stored in AWS Government Cloud and hard deleted on a rolling seven-day basis by default, unless a different schedule is required by a customer’s law or policy.
Public opinion has also shifted. A YouGov survey cited by The Washington Post found 46 percent of U.S. adults oppose the technology being used in their communities, compared with 38 percent who support it. The same report said officers generally do not need a warrant to search most license plate reader systems, a gap that has become central to the new fight in Congress.