Texas has stopped funding new Flock surveillance cameras.
Governor Greg Abbott froze state spending on Flock's AI-powered license plate readers. The freeze came just ahead of a Texas Tribune investigation showing the state had already spent more than $30 million on the cameras. Most of that money came from a $1 fee tacked onto insurance policies, ostensibly to fund the fight against catalytic converter theft. Flock's cameras have drawn criticism from across the political spectrum over privacy concerns and misuse by law enforcement.
This isn't just a budget line item. It's a $30 million example of how surveillance funding sneaks in through fees nobody scrutinizes until someone finally looks. Multiple officers have already been placed on leave or criminally charged for misusing Flock systems, so the privacy concerns here aren't hypothetical.
Flock cameras now sit in a rare bipartisan crosshairs, criticized by civil libertarians and law-and-order conservatives alike for the same reason: nobody likes a camera network they don't control.