Senator Bernie Sanders, joined by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Jeff Merkley, introduced legislation Friday that would bar federal agencies from using automatic license-plate readers and cut off federal grant money to state and local governments that deploy them, the lawmakers' offices said.
The Ban Flock Act takes direct aim at Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based company that has become the dominant vendor of camera networks that read and log license plates on public roads. According to figures cited in the lawmakers' announcement, Flock now operates more than 120,000 cameras that scan roughly 20 billion vehicles a month across thousands of communities nationwide. Beyond barring federal use of the technology, the bill would let Americans sue the federal government over violations and would require agencies to forgo Justice Department and Homeland Security grants if they keep using the systems, according to a joint press release from the three offices.
"At a time of growing concern about the unchecked power of artificial intelligence, Flock is eviscerating the very notion of privacy by installing tens of thousands of cameras in communities across America without their consent," Sanders said in a statement.
Your right to privacy includes the freedom to move around your community without every move being monitored.
Sen. Jeff Merkley
A company already under pressure
The bill arrives as Flock faces mounting local resistance. Sanders' office counted at least 56 municipalities that have deactivated, cancelled or voted down Flock contracts so far this year, part of a wave of scrutiny that intensified after a Milwaukee police officer was found to have run 179 improper personal searches through the system, as TechCrunch reported. Flock has responded to that backlash on its own terms in recent months, shortening its default data-retention window from thirty days to seven and rolling out an internal audit tool meant to flag unusual searches before they are approved.
Ocasio-Cortez framed the bill as part of a broader fight over corporate data collection. "Across the country, Big Tech companies like Flock Safety have built a mass surveillance system to harvest Americans' private and personal data without their consent," she said.
Flock did not immediately respond to the legislation. The bill faces long odds in a closely divided Congress, but it joins a bipartisan cluster of state and federal efforts — including a separate funding-cutoff proposal from Representative Thomas Massie — that suggest license-plate surveillance has become one of the rare tech-policy issues drawing fire from both ends of the political spectrum.
