Missouri Senator Josh Hawley is opening a Senate investigation into Flock Safety, the company behind the automated license plate readers now mounted on street corners in 49 states.
Hawley sent Flock a letter demanding documentation on how it captures, stores, and shares vehicle data from its more than 120,000 cameras, which together scan over 20 billion vehicles a month. The letter cites specific misuse, including police officers running searches to stalk people rather than investigate crimes, and cases where bad camera reads led to wrongful arrests. One Florida woman spent 13 days in jail on vehicular homicide charges after a Flock search misidentified her car; prosecutors dropped the case seven months later when a different person was arrested. Hawley also cited a California police department where 71% of its Flock alerts were wrong, and the LAPD's decision to drop its Flock contract after officers stopped 161 vehicles incorrectly flagged as stolen in two months.
Flock's pitch to police departments has always been about crime-solving reach, not privacy limits, and Hawley's letter is the first serious federal attempt to get answers on retention periods, search authorization, and whether the company links its data to outside brokers. It also lands as ordinary people have started vandalizing the cameras themselves, a sign that public patience for a surveillance network installed without much public debate is running out.
Flock has until September 8 to answer a list of questions, including whether it can biometrically track individuals - the kind of question a company valued at $8.3 billion would probably rather not answer in writing.