Sen. Josh Hawley is demanding answers from the company behind a nationwide license plate camera network, opening a Senate investigation as cities begin pulling the equipment off their streets.

The Missouri Republican gave Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley until September 8 to produce documents about the company’s operations, safeguards and handling of Americans’ data.

A camera can help police locate a stolen car. A searchable record of ordinary drivers’ movements raises a much bigger question: who gets to look, and what stops them from abusing that access?

Hawley’s office released the August 26 letter announcing the inquiry by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, which he chairs.

Citing Flock’s own figures, Hawley described a network of roughly 120,000 cameras across 49 states and more than 20 billion vehicle scans a month. His demands cover access controls, accuracy, contracts, investors and records of alleged misuse dating to 2021.

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The letter also points to St. Charles County, Missouri, which canceled its contract after an audit uncovered personal searches by a civilian employee. Hawley is seeking records; his letter is not a court finding against the company.

The request puts the company on notice to explain its safeguards in writing. It does not itself order any city to remove cameras or terminate a contract.

The political pressure extends beyond the Senate.

Rep. Keith Self, a Texas Republican, framed his objection around the Fourth Amendment in a separate post about Flock’s surveillance network. That gets at the issue behind the hardware: a camera’s crime-fighting value does not settle how much information government should collect about everybody else.

Flock has announced changes to its rules, but the details matter.

In an August 13 announcement, Flock Safety said it was changing its default and recommended retention period from 30 days to seven days. Existing customers, however, would keep their approved retention periods unless they chose to change them.

That means the announcement does not establish a universal seven-day deletion rule for every department already using the network.

The company also outlined an Evidence Mode for preserving records tied to an active investigation, more control over which offenses other agencies can search for, and mandatory participation in its audit assistance program. It described additional safeguards including account lockouts and case codes intended to make questionable searches easier to detect.

Those proposals address how information is stored and searched. Whether customers implement them effectively is a separate question, and one that records and audits can help answer.

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One Arizona city has already decided the risk is too high.

The City of Tempe announced August 26 that it had shut down its Flock system, would end its contract and would not hire another company to replace it. Flock is to remove the cameras.

Tempe acknowledged that the technology had helped officers solve crimes. The city also said its own monthly audits had found no improper searches, making clear that its decision was based on the risk of misuse rather than a newly disclosed local violation.

Previously collected data remains subject to a 30-day retention period, with an exception for material connected to an ongoing case or investigation. The cameras are no longer collecting new plate data, even if residents still see the equipment waiting to be removed.

For Flock, the immediate test is now a request for records from a Senate investigator. For communities using the cameras, the practical questions are already here: who can search the database, how long does it remember a driver’s movements, and who checks the people doing the searching?

 

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