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
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.
“If you haven't heard of Flock, Flock has probably heard of you. … We need the Bill of Rights now more than ever.”