There’s Not A Single Bill In Congress To Outlaw Flock-Type Spying

Lawmakers hadn’t introduced a single bill as of Wednesday that would ban Flock safety cameras outright.

Several House members, primarily Republicans, introduced or said they would introduce bills regarding automated surveillance, including Flock cameras, which raised concerns that the government could exploit the system by violating Americans’ constitutional rights and establish a surveillance state. However, not a single one of those proposed bills would ban automated license plate readers (ALPRs) completely.

Republican Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said on July 22 that she was working on legislation to ban Flock cameras. The bill has yet to be introduced. ld

Luna’s office did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation about when the bill would be introduced or why it had not been released.

Republican Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett introduced the “Protection Against Mass Surveillance Act” in July to ban federal agencies from purchasing or operating Flock cameras or any form of automated surveillance that “identify, track, or record individuals.”

Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Lauren Boebert of Colorado introduced the Surveillance Accountability Act in April that would require federal and local agencies to obtain a warrant before conducting surveillance on American citizens. The bill would prohibit warrantless facial recognition scanning by federal and local law enforcement agencies in public areas and restrict the use of ALPRs, including Flock cameras.

Massie said he planned to introduce legislation to withhold federal funds from local municipalities and police departments using Flock and ALPRs.

“I’ll soon be introducing a bill to withhold all federal funding for cameras used to track American citizens,” Massie said.

Republican Indiana Rep. Marlin Stutzman vowed to pursue legislation to crack down on Flock cameras after an officer pulled him over after a Flock camera flagged his license plate. The bill is in the preliminary stages.

“The repeated misidentification of innocent Americans and warrantless surveillance of millions are my two largest concerns with Flock cameras,” Stutzman told the DCNF. “No matter who you are or what you do, areas with Flock cameras are tracking you. While many localities are taking the right step in reevaluating their use of these cameras, more serious steps must be taken on the federal level to restrict any unregulated AI surveillance from taking place.”

The offices of Luna, Burchett, Massie and Boebert did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

Flock told the DCNF that Congress should consider “strong, clear safeguards” rather than outright banning automated surveillance.

“We believe public safety, privacy, and Fourth Amendment rights can and must coexist,” a Flock spokesperson told the DCNF. “More than 40 courts across the country have considered LPRs in the context of the Fourth Amendment and ruled overwhelmingly that the use of these tools in public spaces does not require a warrant. Rather than banning a critical public safety tool, Congress should consider strong, clear safeguards that ensure accountability, oversight, and responsible use are enshrined in law.”

“We do not have to choose between protecting privacy and giving law enforcement the tools it needs to keep communities safe. We can — and should — do both,” the spokesperson continued.

Mike Fox, a legal fellow with the CATO Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice, told the DCNF Friday that Flock cameras have had “abysmally high false positive rates” that put ordinary Americans at risk of being falsely accused of committing crimes.

“In many circumstances, they have abysmally high false positive rates … How many people is this going to happen to? What is someone gets killed? What if an officer gets a false positive from someone who’s armed and one of them dies? Because that’s a real possibility. It’s only a matter of time before either a citizen, a cop or both get killed because of this,” Fox said.

Federal officials have a history of violating laws that were intended to protect Americans’ constitutional rights.

Former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty in 2020 to sending an altered email to an FBI agent that was used to seek a warrant from a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) judge to spy on President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The FBI abused Section 702 of FISA, which allowed for the warrantless spying of Americans under FISA, nearly 300,000 times between 2020 and early 2021, running 23,132 inquiries alone after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, according to an unsealed court document from May 2023. The Section 702 database was used on Jan. 6 suspects, congressional campaign donors and protesters arrested during the Black Lives Matter riots.

An FBI official conducted a search in June 2020 for individuals arrested “in connection with civil unrest and protests between approximately May 30 and June 18, 2020,” the court document stated. An analyst also “conducted a batch query for over 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign.”

Despite its many errors, congressional Republicans largely supported extending Section 702. Nineteen House Republicans, including Burchett, Massie and Boebert, voted against reauthorizing it in June because it did not require the government to obtain a warrant. Seven Republicans in the Senate voted against a procedural vote to reauthorize it.

Democrats supported Section 702 in the past, though many Senate Democrats indicated to the DCNF that they would not support it after Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Jay Clayton took office.

In November, Democratic Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and Democratic Illinois Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi called for an investigation into Flock Safety for “failing to implement cybersecurity protections, allowing Americans’ personal data to be exposed for hackers, criminals, and spies to steal,” according to a press release. Neither of them introduced legislation to address the issue.

Surveillance concerns mounted as officers used these systems to stalk ex-girlfriends or romantic interests. The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm, found 30 instances where officers used these cameras to “stalk romantic interests.”

A former officer in Milwaukee secretly used the Flock system to search the location of his romantic partner 124 times. An innocent driver in Wisconsin was held at gunpoint in early August after a camera made a mistake.

Due to these concerns, some cities cancelled their Flock contracts.

Flock spent $920,000 on lobbying in 2025 and $430,000 in the first half of 2026, according to OpenSecrets. It has employed seven lobbyists thus far.

Individual employees of Flock made personal contributions to various candidates and political action committees (PACs). Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley donated $1,000 to Health Jobs Justice, a Democratic leadership PAC affiliated with Democratic Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff in April 2024, according to OpenSecrets.

Ossoff has not made widely public statements on Flock cameras or ALPRs. Flock Safety is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and many communities in his state have used the systems for investigations.

The senator joined other colleagues to launch a congressional inquiry into the FBI’s facial recognition policies and practices in December 2022, citing concerns about the Fourth Amendment.

Ossoff’s office did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

Overall, Flock Safety donors gave $17,260, with more than $15,000 of that going to Democratic candidates, campaigns and PACS, including Fair Fight, a Georgia voting rights organization and former Vice President Kamala Harris, according to OpenSecrets.

Some Flock Safety employees also donated small sums to the Make America Great Against PAC, Donald J. Trump for President and Patrick Witt for Congress, according to OpenSecrets.

Trump said Monday that Flock cameras have “pros and cons.”