Senate Leadership In Both Parties Dragging Feet On Using Force
‘Turn the lens around and zoom in on Flock’
Senator Schumer’s office issued a statement about the Flock case last Tuesday that read like it was written by a committee of lawyers paid to say nothing at all. And Mitch McConnell’s team, well, they’ve gone quiet in that way that suggests they’re hoping the whole thing just blows over. The President has been clear about what needs to happen.
Commentary is separate from the original publisher's reporting.
Senate leaders in both parties have yet to propose using the force of law to address surveillance concerns related to Flock Safety and related companies.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded Sunday that Flock Safety delete any non-crime information the technologies collected, provide information on how much data from its cameras sits on its servers and answer whether any federal agency accessed the data in a letter to Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley — but he stopped shy of threatening to issue a subpoena to extract the information. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Majority Whip John Barrasso have yet to take a strong stance against the technology or proposed taking action using the force of law to hold the technology companies accountable for the risk posed to Americans’ due process rights.
“A company can’t just come in and collect personal information about our entire lives and not answer any questions about it. We have no insight into what contracts this company has here, or how much of this information law enforcement is using,” Schumer said in the letter. “Let me be clear. Any federal agency using this network to track Americans exercising their rights in our own state is unacceptable.”
“This company said the data on its cameras was encrypted and secure. Then hackers took one down and found the key sitting right there,” Schumer continued. “Most Americans just want to get to work and get home to their families without a private company keeping a file on where they go. The next step here is simple: turn the lens around and zoom in on Flock.”
Schumer’s letter ended without a subpoena threat to the company to obtain the information.
Thune and Barrasso had not spoken out against Flock or pushed for legislation to either add guardrails or ban the cameras. Thune said he supported adding light guardrails to artificial intelligence (AI) models, but did not specify if he wanted those guardrails to be placed on automated license plate readers (ALPRs).
Thune, Barrasso and Schumer did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
For years, Flock has pointed its lens at New Yorkers. Now it’s time to turn the lens around and zoom in on Flock. Flock must delete personal data of American citizens without criminal connections and answer questions about the mountains of personal data they’ve already stockpiled. We cannot allow this company to continue to operate in the shadows. No one in New York or anywhere in America should give up their privacy just by stepping outside.
Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley opened an investigation into Flock cameras and held a hearing on the mass surveillance technologies. None of the technology CEOs, including Langley, appeared for the hearing.
Hawley did not respond to the DCNF’s question about whether he was frustrated with leadership’s lack of response to Flock cameras.
Lindsey Isaacs, a Florida resident, spent 13 days in jail on vehicular homicide charges after a Flock Safety camera incorrectly linked her vehicle to a fatal crash, accordion to Hawley’s letter to Langley in September. Prosecutors in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, charged an officer for allegedly searching his girlfriend’s license plate 124 times and her former boyfriend’s plate 55 times.
An innocent driver in Wisconsin was held at gunpoint in August after a camera made a mistake.
Not a single bill in Congress has yet been introduced to ban Flock cameras or other automated license plate readers (ALPRs) outright. Republican Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said on July 22 that she was working on a bill to ban them completely, though that bill has yet to be introduced.
Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democratic Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced the Ban Flock Act Friday, which would prohibit the federal government from purchasing, using or possessing an ALPR, accessing its data or using federal funds to purchase ALPRs. The legislation would not outright ban the cameras.
Republican Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett introduced the Protection Against Mass Surveillance Act in July to prohibit federal agencies from purchasing or using ALPRs, although the legislation would allow state and local municipalities to use these technologies if they are not paid for with federal funds.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced The Flock-Off Act to prohibit federal funds from being used to purchase, install or operate the technologies. The legislation would leave locally funded networks in place.
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
Senator Schumer’s office issued a statement about the Flock case last Tuesday that read like it was written by a committee of lawyers paid to say nothing at all. And Mitch McConnell’s team, well, they’ve gone quiet in that way that suggests they’re hoping the whole thing just blows over. The President has been clear about what needs to happen. The American people are clear. But the folks who actually hold the gavels in the Senate are suddenly pretending they can’t find their reading glasses.
The story here isn’t really about the details of the incident itself, though those are troubling enough. It’s about the fact that both leadership teams are perfectly happy to let this die in committee. They’ll schedule hearings, fire off a few sternly-worded letters, and then quietly adjourn for recess. That’s not governance, that’s a performance. When you have a clear mandate to act on national security and border enforcement, the only thing worse than acting rashly is failing to act at all. The voters didn’t send these people to Washington to run out the clock on their own responsibilities.
The “bipartisan” hesitation is really just shared cowardice. Neither side wants to own the vote, because both sides know it would expose just how much of the opposition to a strong posture is pure political theater. The left is terrified of being seen as soft. The establishment right is terrified of being seen as too aggressive. So they hide behind “process” and “deliberation” as if we have the luxury of time. A functioning government is supposed to respond, not just react to its own polling data. We’d like to see the Senate actually do its job for once, and force a vote that puts everyone on the record.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.