Sanders bill would bar federal agencies from using Flock license-plate cameras

What the bill would do

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has introduced legislation that would take federal agencies out of license-plate surveillance entirely. According to TechCrunch, the Ban Flock Act, introduced on Friday, would prohibit federal agencies from operating automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) or querying data collected by cameras run by local police departments and private companies.

Although the bill borrows a single vendor's name, its text never mentions Flock. It instead applies to ALPR systems of any kind. The only exceptions, TechCrunch reports, are toll collection and future uses that Congress approves through separate legislation — and any such use would have to cap data retention at 48 hours.

Enforcement and consequences

The bill's reach extends well beyond federal agencies. Starting with the first fiscal year after enactment, state and local governments would lose grant funding from five federal departments — among them the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security — unless they ban the technology themselves. The proposal would also let Americans sue the federal government over violations, and it would give state attorneys general authority to enforce the law.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon have signed on as co-sponsors. TechCrunch cautions that the bill, like most legislation, is unlikely to become law.

The company in the spotlight

Flock is the largest ALPR vendor in the United States, operating more than 120,000 cameras, according to figures Sanders cited. In a February blog post, the company said its network processes more than 20 billion vehicle reads every month.

That footprint has generated a growing backlash. TechCrunch reports that communities have protested the product, paused deployments and, at an accelerating pace, canceled their contracts. Flock has since strengthened its own policies: in August, CEO Garrett Langley — who had previously said that how police use the cameras is a decision for local agencies — cut the default data retention period from 30 days to seven.

Customers are now also required to use an audit tool that locks officers out of the platform pending review whenever it flags unusual search behavior. That safeguard follows one of the most prominent abuse cases involving the product: a former Milwaukee officer pleaded guilty to misconduct after searching for his then-partner and her ex 179 times, recording "investigation" as the reason for each query. During a recent podcast appearance, investor Jason Calacanis proposed a two-person approval system for searches, and Langley said the idea is "on the whiteboard," according to TechCrunch.

Why it matters

The bill is one of the most assertive federal challenges to date against a surveillance tool that has quietly become routine infrastructure for police departments across the United States. Its grant conditions would use federal money as leverage, pressuring states and cities that depend on Justice Department or Homeland Security funding to reconsider their own camera contracts rather than merely restricting what federal agencies can do.

It also lands at a sensitive moment for Flock, which has been rolling out voluntary reforms — shorter retention, mandatory audits and possible two-person search approval. The Sanders bill is effectively a wager that voluntary measures are not enough, and that location tracking on the scale of billions of vehicle reads per month should not be available to government at all. Even if it stalls in Congress, the proposal signals that ALPR proliferation has moved from a niche privacy debate into mainstream federal politics, and it gives municipalities weighing cancellations a high-profile talking point on their side.