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Florida Orders Flock's License-Plate Cameras Off Its State Highways and Two Days Later Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna Put Their Names on the Same Bill — the Surveillance Backlash Has Become the Rare Thing Both Parties Are Running On Nine Weeks Before the Midterms
September 5, 2026
In the first week of September 2026 the political backlash against Flock Safety's automated license plate readers — AI-powered cameras that photograph passing cars and let police reconstruct where a vehicle has been over time — turned into concrete government action in both parties at once. On Monday, September 1, the Florida Department of Transportation ordered local agencies to pull automated license plate readers off state roads within 30 days. Gov. Ron DeSantis, announcing the move, said the technology had gotten "out of control" and asked the legislature to keep Florida from becoming "some type of digital prison." More than 8,000 Flock cameras are documented in Florida, though the state-road order reaches only about 2 percent of them; the rest sit on local roads and private property. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had already frozen state spending on the cameras. On Wednesday, September 2, Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) introduced the Flock-Off Act, H.R. 10221, which would bar federal funds from paying for license-plate-reader and facial-recognition camera systems except at the border or for toll collection. It does not ban the cameras. Its five cosponsors are Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Chip Roy (R-Texas), Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) — and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). The bill joins a crowded field: Tim Burchett's Protection Against Mass Surveillance Act, the Massie-Boebert Surveillance Accountability Act, and the PRIVACY Act from Keith Self, Eli Crane and Andrew Clyde. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) have pressed the FTC to investigate Flock's cybersecurity after credentials for at least 35 customer accounts were traded on Russian cybercrime forums. As of early September, no bill in Congress would outlaw the cameras outright. By Saturday, September 5, NPR reported that candidates in races from Florida to Ohio to Wisconsin were campaigning against the cameras, and that Pennsylvania's Democratic governor and Florida's Republican governor had landed in the same place on them. The driving grievances differ by party — Democrats point to ICE's use of Flock's national lookup tool to run searches in states that bar cooperation with the agency, Republicans to the prospect of a de facto federal registry and to documented abuse by individual officers, including a Haines City, Florida officer arrested for using the system hundreds of times to track his estranged wife's car — but the conclusion has converged. Stances below record each official's position on the license-plate-reader networks themselves.
12
Statements Recorded
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12 Statements
“We have got to find a way to balance in America, privacy and security. There is a balance. Congress needs to lead the way.
“[Joint letter from Sens. Warnock and Britt to Attorney General Todd Blanche:] While law enforcement agencies around the country appropriately use ALPR for legitimate public safety purposes including the investigation of violent crime and the location and recovery of missing and abducted persons, misuse of these systems undermines the public's confidence in the technology. [The senators asked for] information about the DOJ funding and oversight of such systems to prevent such misuse and ensure compliance with applicable federal statutes and regulations.
“There's nothing more important than feeling safe and secure in your own neighborhood. That's why I'm deeply concerned about reports of law enforcement officers misusing [ALPR] systems and using them against Georgians who have done nothing wrong. … Georgians are seeing ALPR systems pop up across their neighborhoods and communities, having little to no knowledge of how the data is being collected or used by law enforcement.
“I'm all about having law enforcement have tools. But I don't want to have this become a surveillance state.
“I would welcome bipartisan legislation to ban these across the state. This is not something in the public interest.
“It doesn't ban Flock cameras, but it says that the federal government is not going to pay for your Flock cameras if you want them.
“The Fourth Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable searches, and advances in surveillance technology should not come at the expense of our privacy and liberty. Technology may change, but our constitutional rights do not.
“The federal government shouldn't provide 'security' grants to cities and police departments that have gone beyond the pale and turned their communities into a version of 1984. Federal taxpayers should not be forced to fund the surveillance state.
“I want law enforcement to have tools to catch offenders and keep the public safe. But Americans do not surrender their privacy rights when they drive to work, drop their kids off at school, or go to church.
“So I've called for legislation that will protect Floridians from allowing the state to turn it into some type of digital prison, digital surveillance state where somebody knows everything about what you're doing every day of the week.
“If you want to get in your car and you want to go down to Buc-ee's in St. Augustine, it's really none of the government's damn business if you're doing that, right?