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A growing political conversation - and some bipartisan consensus - is forming around the surveillance systems known as automated license-plate readers, especially those produced by Flock.
As my colleagues' reporting has shown, the systems - generally meant to record traffic violations but used for a variety of law enforcement tasks - aren't popular. Now, a growing number of candidates and lawmakers are doing all they can to let people know they don't like the readers either.
The reason is a call back to earlier political moments when concerns about a surveillance state ran high. Also, we're in a moment when people don't trust institutions and think new technology - such as data centers and AI-enabled cameras - is being implemented without much public buy-in.
"Do you ever feel like you are in a cage, kind of stuck, being watched?" asks Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in a video he posted this week. "Well, that is because you are," he added, before lambasting what he calls the "mass proliferation of" Flock cameras "any and everywhere."
Rep. Keith Self, a Republican running for reelection in Texas, recently mentioned Flock cameras in a post that included, "Big Brother has NO place in the Lone Star State."
"In Congress, I am fighting to stop warrantless government surveillance, defend your constitutional rights, and ensure Americans never have to choose between their liberty and their privacy," Self wrote.
And Clyde Jones, a Democrat running in a deep red district in southern Alabama, recently took to Instagram to ask, "How much power are you willing to give the government to feel safe?" "This is another step towards authoritarianism," he wrote. "This is the beginning of mass surveillance."
I want to be clear: This conversation is still politically small, and many candidates aren't talking about Flock cameras at all.
But it is a potentially salient issue that comes as The Washington Post's stellar investigations team, including Drew Harwell, Douglas MacMillan, Aaron Schaffer and others, has published several compelling stories about Flock:
— How rogue officers turned a nationwide camera network into a tool for stalking
— Police departments weren't looking for officers abusing Flock. We did it for them.
— Flock unveils changes after Post report on police misuse of vast camera network
And we recently highlighted in this newsletter an article by Annie Gowen about how vandals are destroying Flock license plate cameras as anger at them grows.
The idea of resisting a surveillance state has long been something Americans - and Republican voters in particular - have been animated by, with the argument generally being that mass surveillance runs counter to the individual freedoms the country was founded on.
And those concerns have only grown as confidence in American institutions, including government, has reached historic lows. A Gallup survey from earlier this year found "27% of Americans express ‘a great deal' or ‘quite a lot' of confidence in these core institutions, one percentage point above the record-low average in 2023."
That ambient fear of government surveillance, coupled with distrust in the government, could turn the cameras into a potent political issue, mirroring the rise of concerns over data centers.
"Americans are reacting to the fact that a small group of unelected people have been given extraordinary power to shape their lives and the country's future," said Alyssa Cass, a partner at Democratic political strategy firm Slingshot Strategies. "A data center permit or a Flock camera are tangible reminders to the electorate to ask themselves, ‘Do I have to just accept this?'"
Cass added: "Very few issues aren't ideological or factional these days - but wanting to control your own future is about as universal as it gets."
That is why some lawmakers are now questioning the need for cameras like those produced by Flock - especially who has access to the data collected, and how those users can use the data.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee) introduced a bill earlier this year that would ban the federal government from purchasing automated license-plate readers, like those produced by Flock, and from using federal funding for states to buy the cameras. The legislation, Burchett said, would "ban these dadgum" cameras.
"Post covid, I think people are seeing these things all of a sudden everywhere, and they think, like I do, that it needs some guardrails," Burchett told me.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D), who is fending off a challenge from the left in her bid for reelection, recently came out against a possible contract between Flock Safety and the Los Angeles Police Department.
"Flock Safety has lost the trust of Angelenos and residents of other cities across the country, especially in immigrant communities targeted by the federal administration," Bass said recently. "The LAPD needs to identify another company that doesn't share data."
And Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California) recently posted a six-minute video on YouTube explaining the cameras to his constituents and observed that they are "bringing people together across the political spectrum who are raising deep concerns."
"Are we in a surveillance state?" the senator's video posits.
Whether this becomes an issue most political candidates run on depends on whether the technology continues to proliferate and how companies like Flock respond to the blowback.
When I reached out to Flock spokespeople, they did not respond to my questions.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Previously:
• Are data centers enough to flip a key House race?
• Voters want fighters. But where is the limit?
• Is the midterm cake baked?
• Is the midterm cake baked?
• For the DNC, no money, more problems