Flock's AI Cameras Track Millions of Cars — Now Congress Is Watching

The company at the center of this is Flock, which sells AI-powered cameras that read license plates — mounted on poles and patrol cars — and let police search where a particular car has been. Thousands of departments across the US use them. On Wednesday, a Senate Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing about Flock's "AI Surveillance Network." Flock's CEO, along with the CEOs of three rival companies, declined to show up. The room still filled anyway, with a standby line stretching down the hallway.

Instead of executives, senators heard from a Florida woman who said she spent 13 days in jail after Flock cameras wrongly flagged her car as tied to a crime scene. A sheriff described ending his department's Flock contract after what he called slippery answers about how the AI gets used. A security researcher said he had once accessed Flock's data with minimal technical effort; he now says security has improved, but industry-wide problems remain. Flock says the woman's case came from "human errors in judgment" unrelated to its cameras.

So why are lawmakers on both sides so upset? Because these cameras log the movements of people who have never been accused of anything, and often keep that data for a month. Senators asked whether immigration agents could sidestep rules by having a friendly local officer run a search, whether police in states with abortion bans could follow people seeking care across state lines, and whether gun owners could be tracked. Unlike older license plate readers, Flock's cameras build a fuller picture of a person over time.

No law has changed yet, and Flock says its data is only accessible to each police department separately. But the rare bipartisan agreement — just two months before the midterms — suggests new rules for this kind of surveillance may be coming.