Both Parties Turn on Flock Surveillance Cameras

"We've seen candidates running on banning them, cutting off funding, or requiring warrants," said Michael Soyfer, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, which is litigating over the technology.

In Texas, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico said "Flock cameras have no place in Texas." In Pennsylvania, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and Republican challenger Stacy Garrity have both backed a statewide ban. Michigan Democratic congressional candidate William Lawrence called the technology "the most un-American thing I can imagine"; his Republican opponent, Rep. Tom Barrett, is co-sponsoring a bill restricting federal use and barring state and local governments from buying the cameras with federal money.

Police groups are pushing back. Mitchell Davis III, president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, called the technology "invaluable" and said communities dropping license plate readers are making a "huge mistake." His advice: "Instead of focusing on eliminating the cameras, make sure that there's proper guidelines and proper accountability for misuse."

Flock says its cameras helped police in more than 1 million investigations in 2025 and helped locate nearly 10,000 missing people. "We ask anyone weighing in on this issue to engage with the facts and the record," spokeswoman MoMo Zhou said. CEO Garrett Langley told Fox News' "Saturday in America" that the country has to "prioritize compromise" between safety and privacy, and told Newsweek the company's "end goal isn't a dystopian future of surveillance; it's one where we all feel safe."

Kade Crockford, director of technology and justice programs at the ACLU of Massachusetts, said the lack of regulation makes it "the Wild West" and that ordinary drivers "simply cannot trust that police are not misusing their access to these systems."

The Culture-War Fight Over Who Is Behind It

Fox News Digital reported that the "No Kings" protest network has expanded from anti-Trump and anti-ICE organizing into campaigns against AI data centers and Flock cameras, a finding echoed by The Daily Wire. From the other direction, The New Republic reported on a leaked video of a Flock webinar showing police how to use the plate readers in connection with No Kings protesters. The Electronic Frontier Foundation says its review of millions of agency searches found hundreds tied to demonstrations including the No Kings protests. The Intercept reported that Flock's donations to associations of mayors and other local officials are climbing as the protests grow.