Hawley launches investigation into Flock over privacy, data security concerns
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
U.S Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has launched an investigation into Flock’s AI-powered web cameras.
On Wednesday, Hawley sent a letter to Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley, demanding answers to what safeguards the company has in place to protect Americans’ data.
According to Flock, Missouri is one of 49 states using the license plate reader cameras, with more than 3,000 Flock cameras deployed across the Show-Me State. Nationwide, Flock says its network includes roughly 120,000 cameras that scan more than 20 billion vehicles each month.
A release from Hawley says his concerns centered on the vast majority of Americans captured by the cameras being uninvolved in any wrongdoing and the use of artificial intelligence to compile that data into a searchable national database rather than limiting it to specific local investigations.
More than 140 cities across the country have since canceled their Flock contracts or deactivated the cameras amid growing concerns over privacy and potential misuse.
In the letter, Hawley cited several examples, including the St. Charles County Police Department terminating its contract in August after an audit revealed an employee had run Flock searches for personal reasons unrelated to a law enforcement investigation.
“Sadly, my home state is not an outlier. In Milwaukee, prosecutors charged a police officer who allegedly searched his girlfriend’s license plate 124 times and her former boyfriend’s plate 55 times, entering “investigation” as his justification each time. Worse still, the officer was not caught by the company’s audit systems—he was caught because a private citizen looked up his own plate on a public website,” Halwey wrote in his letter to Langley.
Several local Mid-Missouri law enforcement agencies, including the Columbia and Jefferson City police departments, have touted Flock’s effectiveness, with Jefferson City Police Chief Eric Wilde previously telling the City Council that Flock cameras helped the department solve three homicides.
However, Hawley also raised concerns about potential false positives from the technology. He cited examples of a Florida woman spending 13 days in jail and faced eight felony charges after a Flock camera alert led investigators to the wrong vehicle. Prosecutors ultimately dismissed the charges seven months later after it was determined that investigators had arrested the wrong person based on a search of Flock’s network using a vehicle description.
He also pointed to a report from the Roseville Police Department in California that found that 71% of its Flock alerts were wrong. The Los Angeles Police Department also canceled its Flock contract after an audit found officers had stopped 161 vehicles incorrectly flagged as stolen
“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,” Hawley said in his letter. “The Supreme Court has recognized that a comprehensive, retrospective record of a person’s movements is different in kind from ordinary observation in public. Congress never authorized the network your industry has built. Your company’s internal policies are, in practice, the only safeguards for hundreds of millions of Americans. People across the country are now discovering that fact and demanding answers from their elected officials.”
Hawley’s letter comes as a growing number of residents have begun to express concerns about Columbia’s Flock cameras. On Monday, Dominic O'Connor was arrested by police after protesting Flock on a median.
Dan Viets, an attorney with the Mid-Missouri Civil Liberties Association, has been one of the more outspoken community members regarding Flock cameras since they were first introduced in Columbia in 2024. He told ABC 17 News on Wednesday that many of the concerns he raised have since come to fruition, and argued that public safety should not come at the expense of constitutional protections.
“If there were no Fourth Amendment, the police could solve a lot more crimes. If they never needed to get a search warrant, if they could invade all of our homes whenever they felt like it. Indeed, they would solve more crimes. It is not worth the tradeoff. It is not worth the sacrifice,” Viets said. “People have a reasonable expectation that when they travel on the streets lawfully for lawful purposes, they're not going to be placed under surveillance.”
