Hawley opens surveillance probe into Flock Safety as Texas cities cut cameras

The national debate over AI-powered license plate tracking reached Capitol Hill this week as a senior Senate Republican opened a formal investigation into the country's largest privately operated vehicle surveillance network. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, sent a letter to Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley demanding answers about who can access data gathered from what Hawley described as more than 120,000 cameras operating across 49 states and capturing more than 20 billion vehicle scans each month.

Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based company that markets its automated license plate reader cameras to law enforcement agencies, businesses, and homeowners associations, said it received Hawley's letter and will respond to the subcommittee directly. Spokesperson Paris Lewbel said the company looks forward to providing context about how its technology works and the safeguards built into its platform.

Cities pull the plug

The investigation arrives against the backdrop of a sector-wide pullback on Flock contracts. Pflugerville, Texas, voted unanimously this week to end its agreement with the company, directing city staff to turn off all 28 automated license plate reader cameras covered by the contract and disable system access. The city had used the technology since 2020 but said it lost confidence in Flock's ability to meet its data and privacy standards. Pflugerville Police Chief Willie Richards said the cameras had helped protect the community; the city, however, needed assurance that the safeguards it put in place function exactly as intended. Mayor Doug Weiss said public safety and public trust have to go hand in hand.

Hood County, Texas, voted to end its relationship with Flock and directed its three cameras be disconnected and covered pending removal. Tempe, Arizona, shut off its system and said it will not replace it; previously collected data will be deleted after 30 days unless tied to an active case.

The warrant question

Robert Frommer, director of the Institute for Justice's Project on the Fourth Amendment, said the core concern is police being able to search a person's past movements without prior judicial approval. He argued that most law enforcement searches occur within a few days of a crime, which removes the emergency rationale for maintaining a large standing database on all vehicle movements. His proposed fix is a warrant requirement, with retroactive justification permitted when genuine urgency left no time to obtain one in advance.

Hawley, writing to Langley, cited Supreme Court recognition that a comprehensive retrospective record of a person's movements differs in kind from ordinary public observation. Rep. Keith Self of Texas added his own objection, posting to social media that the Fourth Amendment is not open to compromise.

Flock acknowledged that two out-of-state agencies were mistakenly included in Texas's statewide sharing network and said the error was corrected months ago. That admission sits at the center of the legislative pressure now building: a company that says agencies fully control their own sharing settings, and a growing list of Texas cities that voted to disconnect the cameras anyway.