Hawley probes Flock's 120,000-camera AI surveillance network

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) led a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Wednesday scrutinizing Flock Safety's nationwide network of about 120,000 AI-powered license-plate cameras and the pooled database they feed. The session, titled "Always Watching: Flock's Nationwide AI Surveillance Network," extends an investigation Hawley opened in August into how the company collects, retains and shares driver data, as carried live on YouTube.

Hawley has been blunt about his framing. "The overwhelming majority of the Americans captured in those records did nothing wrong," he said when announcing the probe, adding that "instead of serving discrete local investigations, as contemplated by our constitutional processes and safeguards, these camera networks harness artificial intelligence to pool what they capture into a national database that customers can search."

The subcommittee invited four CEOs: Garrett Langley of Flock Safety, Rick Smith of Axon Enterprise, Greg Brown of Motorola Solutions, and Filip Kaliszan of Verkada. A Verkada spokesperson said Kaliszan could not attend but that the company is providing information to the subcommittee. Ahead of the hearing, Roll Call reported that Hawley posted on social media that "Americans deserve answers."

The witness stand did feature Lindsey Isaacs, a Florida woman who was jailed for nearly two weeks after authorities wrongly accused her of involvement in a fatal hit-and-run, in a case that involved data from Flock's license plate-reading system. Her account landed against a hardening public backdrop: a Data for Progress poll in August found 41% of Americans view Flock cameras unfavorably, with 40% of Democrats and 39% of Republicans in that column, and at least four bipartisan House bills addressing automated license plate readers are already in circulation.