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Flock Safety Faces Scrutiny Over Surveillance Practices

6 sources · updated 2026-09-25
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What happened

On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, chaired by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) with ranking member Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), held a hearing on AI-powered automated license plate readers after inviting the CEOs of Flock Safety, Axon Enterprise, Motorola Solutions, and Verkada; none of the four executives appeared. Flock operates about 120,000 cameras whose images customers can search nationwide after buying a camera and a roughly $3,000 annual subscription. Witnesses included cybersecurity engineer Benn Jordan, who said he had accessed Flock images with minimal technical effort—an incident Flock said it has since addressed—a sheriff whose department ended its Flock contract, and Lindsey Isaacs, a Florida woman who said she spent 13 days in jail after cameras incorrectly linked her car to a crime. The same day, five Indiana police officers were charged with crimes related to misuse of the surveillance technology. Flock’s chief legal officer wrote Hawley on Sept. 8 that the company would support “clear, sensible legislation”; Verkada said its CEO could not attend and that no national Verkada network exists; Hawley said the firms had not been subpoenaed and that compelling testimony would require a full Judiciary Committee vote.
Sourcing check · Fully on the record · 6 articles

6 of 6 articles cite a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report.

What these terms mean and how they're counted
On the record · names a source 6 of 6
On the record means the article cites a source by name for the story's main claim: a person, or an institution speaking officially, such as a company statement or a named agency's spokesperson. The opposite is an unnamed source. The count is how many of the counted articles cite at least one such source; the names are everyone named across them, each once however the articles spell it. Here: Josh Hawley, Sen. Josh Hawley, Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, Benn Jordan, Virginia Ramsey and Dan Haley
Primary evidence · cites a document or data 1 of 6
Primary evidence means the article cites a record you could check yourself: a court filing or ruling, a dataset or report, a recording or transcript, an official statement or press release, market data. A quote is not a document. The count is how many articles cite one. Here: on-record letter
Credits another outlet 0 of 6
The article says the story comes from another outlet's reporting (“first reported by Reuters”). Those articles relay the story; they are not independent confirmation. Here: Each article presents its own reporting.
Unnamed sources 0 of 6
The main claim is attributed to people who are not identified: “people familiar with the matter”, “officials said”. The count is how many articles do this.
How it developed
When the first report landed and whether it named anyone; when the first named source and the first document appeared. Here: First report Sep 23, 17:09 UTC by The Hill, naming its source. First document 24 hours later, from The Hill (on-record letter).
Not counted 0
Opinion, analysis and video pieces, and articles too short to assess. Every count above is out of the counted articles. An article republished under a new headline is one article.
This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out

Unpacked

Right-leaning coverage never explains the sharing model that was the hearing's core claim. Left-leaning coverage at CNBC reports Hawley's account of a roughly three-thousand-dollar subscription that opens a nationwide camera database. That is the fact that turns ordinary license-plate readers into a shared network; the Washington Examiner mentions a large image database but not that one customer can search cameras it does not own. Left-leaning coverage is simply more complete on how the product works. Left-leaning coverage at The Verge records Hawley warning that the same cameras could sit outside a gun store. Right-leaning coverage never mentions guns, abortion, or immigration as issues raised in the hearing. The privacy critique stays general, without those examples. None of the coverage answers whether an officer needs a warrant, probable cause, or any suspicion at all to search that nationwide database.
Bottom line

The Washington Examiner covers the Flock hearing as a CEO no-show over privacy. Only CNBC reports Hawley's claim that about $3,000 a year buys access to a national camera database.

The receipts — 2 facts one side's coverage lacks
  • Flock operates about 120,000 cameras numberin CNBC, The Hill · absent from right-leaning coverage
  • Five Indiana police officers were charged with crimes on the day of the hearing over misuse of the surveillance technology numberin CNBC · absent from right-leaning coverage
The Left View
Left-leaning outlets framed the no-shows as evasion: CNBC said the companies “dodge[d]” the hearing, and Durbin remarked that Flock’s leaders were “nervous about being on camera.” The Verge said “the vibes are bad for Flock in Washington” and that “cracking down on Flock” had become “the new topic uniting lawmakers,” describing ALPRs that “hoover up location data for Americans who haven’t been accused of crimes.” Coverage emphasized Democratic lines of questioning—Sens. Alex Padilla and Durbin on how federal immigration authorities could be barred from the data, a witness’s claim that a loophole could be “as simple as getting a sympathetic local officer to perform a search,” and Sen. Cory Booker on whether officers in states that restrict abortion could track people seeking care across state lines—plus security gaps and how the systems, unlike traditional plate readers, let officers assemble a “dossier of connected information on individual vehicles.”
The Right View
The Washington Examiner said senators of both parties “unloaded” on cameras “capable of tracking people’s every movement,” criticizing “the likely infringement on privacy rights” as the “surveillance network” faces backlash from communities. Hawley, quoted across reports, singled Flock out—“If you haven’t heard of Flock, all I have to say is, Flock’s probably heard of you”—and mapped Democratic abortion-tracking concerns onto Second Amendment fears of “national databases of any kind,” saying cameras could be placed “in front of a gun show or near a gun store or a range.” He told reporters that older plate readers used “forever” in Missouri are “really different than the technology we’re talking about today,” that citizens “don’t want to be tracked and treated like criminals,” and that he had not asked President Trump—who recently said “I like them” of the cameras—whether he would support legislation that restrains them.
Our Take (balanced)
The left’s strongest case is that a cheap subscription unlocking a nationwide, month-long image trove has already produced documented harm—the wrongful jailing described at the hearing, same-day officer charges, and a researcher’s easy access to stored images—while executives’ absence leaves those facts unanswered. The right’s strongest case, voiced by Hawley and echoed in the Examiner’s bipartisan-privacy framing, is that searchable location dossiers on people not accused of crimes treat “law-abiding citizens” like suspects and can be pointed at protected activity, including gun purchases, just as Democrats fear they can be pointed at abortion travel. The unresolved tension is whether this architecture is a crime-fighting network whose abuses are policing failures, or a novel tracking infrastructure whose scale and shareability are themselves the threat—especially when the companies will not testify and the president has said he likes the cameras.

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