Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley is not sympathetic to the surveillance state.
With evidence that would frighten any American, Hawley made an announcement on Wednesday that will affect thousands of U.S. neighborhoods.
‘The American people want to know who has access to their personal data and how.’
As license plate reading cameras spy from seemingly every corner of the United States, with some even hiding in traffic cones and barrels, Senator Hawley stated on Wednesday that Americans’ privacy rights do not stop when they get in their cars.
“Americans do not surrender their privacy rights when they drive to work, drop their kids off at school, or go to church,” Hawley wrote on X.
With that, Hawley said he is opening an investigation into Flock, the manufacturer behind over an alleged 120,000 cameras across 49 states, a number consistent with license plate camera tracker DeFlock.
“Americans deserve answers,” Hawley added.
In letter to Flock CEO Garrett Langley, Hawley demanded answers surrounding Flock’s safeguards for Americans’ data.
Noting that the company conducts “more than 20 billion vehicle scans every month,” Hawley said that “the overwhelming majority of the Americans captured in those records did nothing wrong.”
Then, Hawley listed some recent horrifying examples of abuse using Flock systems.
RELATED: This state’s citizens now oppose Flock cameras — despite agreeing they help police
Just days before Hawley sent the letter, a Missouri man was found to have engaged in “egregious misuse” of Flock’s “data system” by using it for personal reasons.
Two weeks prior, prosecutors charged a police officer in Milwaukee for allegedly searching the Flock system for his girlfriend’s license plate 124 times, along with her former boyfriend’s plate 55 times. He reportedly entered “investigation” as his justification each time.
Other examples cited by Hawley included a Florida woman spending 13 days in jail over eight possible felony counts after she was arrested through a Flock network search.
The charges were eventually dismissed when it was concluded that she was the wrong person.
Moreover, a California police department found that Flock misread license plates in 71% of its issued alerts, leading to the LAPD dropping its contract with the company.
RELATED: What the Flock? Knoxville mayor explains the dark truth about Flock cameras: ‘Not your grandma’s license plate readers’
Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Senator Hawley also said there was “uncertainty” around whether or not Flock can sell or use customer data.
“Flock’s $8.3 billion valuation comes with enormous pressure to find new commercial applications. Americans demand a full accounting for how their driver data is stored or sold.”
Hawley also said, “These camera networks harness artificial intelligence to pool what they capture into a national database that customers can search.”
“The American people want to know who has access to their personal data and how. This investigation will seek those answers,” the letter concluded.
As Blaze Media previously reported, there are also growing concerns about how the license plate readers can be enhanced to to capture any “unique signals” emitted from devices in cars.
The SignalTrace upgrade captures unique identifiers from cell phones, smart watches, Bluetooth devices, earbuds, and Wi-Fi signals and ultimately gives the ability to create a dossier on the driver and all his smart devices.
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