{"id":641781,"date":"2026-07-26T23:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T23:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=641781"},"modified":"2026-07-26T23:15:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T23:15:00","slug":"dont-flock-me-massie-readies-bill-to-yank-federal-cash-from-cities-and-police-departments-running-flock-cameras-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=641781","title":{"rendered":"“Don’t Flock Me”: Massie Readies Bill To Yank Federal Cash From Cities And Police Departments Running Flock Cameras"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Don’t Flock Me”: Massie Readies Bill To Yank Federal Cash From Cities And Police Departments Running Flock Cameras<\/span><\/p>\n

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On Saturday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) announced<\/a> he’ll soon sponsor “a bill to withhold federal money from municipalities and police departments”<\/strong> that deploy Flock-style cameras to surveil law-abiding citizens. He attached a Gadsden flag parody: a coiled rattlesnake wrapped around an automated license plate reader on a pole, over the words “don’t flock me.”<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ll soon be sponsoring a bill to withhold federal money from municipalities and police departments that deploy Flock (and other style) cameras to surveil law abiding citizens. pic.twitter.com\/FGzE69psxS<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) July 25, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rather than regulating or litigating the cameras<\/strong>, Massie’s bill would cut off federal funding to every city and police department that installs them. Flock’s business model runs on local government contracts across roughly 6,000 communities, so a funding-withholding bill aims directly at its customer base.<\/p>\n

Third Strike In A Week<\/h2>\n

Massie’s bill is the third Republican move against Flock in a matter of days.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On July 21, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) filed H.R. 9800<\/a>, the Protection Against Mass Surveillance Act,<\/strong> which would bar federal agencies from purchasing, funding, or accessing automated license plate readers – Flock is named explicitly – along with biometric tracking tech covering fingerprints, iris, voice, and gait. Any data a federal agency obtained would have to be deleted within 30 days and would be inadmissible in court. Burchett’s pitch<\/a>: “We gotta ban these dadgum things.”<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) tried to attach an amendment restricting the readers in committee.<\/strong> It failed, and Perry responded<\/a> that the fight wasn’t over: “STOP THE FLOCK.”<\/p>\n

In April, Massie teamed with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) on the Surveillance Accountability Act<\/a>,<\/strong> which would require a probable-cause warrant before federal or local agencies surveil Americans, ban warrantless facial recognition in public spaces, block the government from buying its way around the Fourth Amendment via third-party data brokers, and make individual federal employees personally suable for violations. Boebert’s framing<\/a>: the government is building a “digital footprint of your entire life” without a warrant or probable cause.<\/p>\n

The Company That Swears It Isn’t Tracking You<\/h2>\n

Flock Safety is the Atlanta company, founded in 2017, whose cameras photograph every passing vehicle<\/strong> and log not just the plate but the “vehicle fingerprint” – make, model, color, dents, roof racks, bumper stickers – into a searchable national network queried by thousands of law enforcement agencies. The install base has now crossed 100,000 cameras<\/a>, a rollout ZeroHedge has chronicled as the economics of the surveillance state<\/a>: one quiet law enforcement contract at a time until the country was blanketed.<\/p>\n

Last September<\/a>\u00a0we noted the coming collision between the license-plate-reader gold rush and the public. Fast forward to\u00a0June of this year<\/a>,\u00a0security researcher Benn Jordan found dozens of Flock cameras streaming publicly, documented AI features that zoom in on and follow individual people,<\/strong> and showed that plotting the stored data amounts to putting a month-long GPS tracker on a car. Flock’s response has been that the system captures discrete points in time rather than “tracking” anyone, though those points can be plotted on a map to reconstruct movements.<\/p>\n

Audit logs reviewed by journalists and officials showed<\/strong> local police running searches on behalf of federal agencies<\/strong>, with reasons entered as “ICE” or “immigration” – roughly 4,000 immigration-related lookups through a system whose vendor publishes a blog titled “Does Flock Share Data With ICE? No.” The ACLU’s assessment<\/a> of that post: the company knew ICE had indirect access the whole time. A Texas police department used the network to search across state lines – including Washington state<\/a> – for a woman who had an abortion. A San Francisco class action alleges<\/a> out-of-state and federal agencies – ICE, CBP, FBI, ATF – queried that one city’s cameras more than 1.6 million times in seven months. A Dayton audit turned up 7,000 immigration searches by outside agencies; an Illinois audit stripped access from 47 agencies; small towns discovered the ATF, the Air Force, and the GSA Inspector General rummaging through their feeds.<\/p>\n

The system also misfires.<\/strong> As we noted\u00a0last week<\/a>, automotive journalist Joel Feder and his wife were boxed in by Minnesota officers with hands on their weapons and patted down in a parking lot after Flock’s system flagged a press vehicle’s manufacturer plate off a flawed partial match. Flock’s response was that the cameras performed as designed.<\/p>\n

The Exodus – And The Counterattack<\/h2>\n

Cities are canceling.<\/strong> Estimates run from 30<\/a> to more than 50<\/a> depending on the count: Santa Cruz, Mountain View, South Pasadena, Evanston, Oak Park.<\/strong> Denver removed all 110 of its cameras<\/a><\/strong> when its contract expired in March. Oshkosh rescinded its contract one day after approving it, after the police chief found Flock had misrepresented its heat-map tracking capabilities to the city council. This month the LAPD let its contract lapse<\/a>. Meanwhile the crowdsourced DeFlock<\/a> project has mapped more than 76,000 camera locations, and a parallel campaign of unsanctioned camera removals that ZeroHedge has covered<\/a> extensively<\/a> keeps making local news.<\/p>\n

Flock has defended itself –\u00a0<\/strong>insisting that its network helps solve roughly 700,000 crimes a year, and points to genuine wins – including helping track the Brown University shooting suspect in December. Flock also says new contracts outpace cancellations<\/a>, with nearly 800 fresh city deals in 2026 and a network bigger than ever. In January it added a “Federal Sharing” kill switch to its admin settings, which critics call an admission that the default had been leaking all along.<\/p>\n

Why This One Might Bite<\/h2>\n

Every federal attempt against Flock so far has failed<\/strong> – Perry’s amendment died in committee, and neither the Burchett nor the Massie-Boebert bill has advanced. The opposing coalition is unusual: the left objects to ICE access to local cameras, the right objects to warrantless dragnet tracking of every driver, and the AP notes<\/a> it is one of the few issues on which a divided country has found common ground. As the Rutherford Institute’s John and Natasha Whitehead wrote earlier\u00a0this month<\/a>, the danger isn’t the camera but the AI layer that turns a photograph of a car into the building blocks of a suspect society – an “electronic concentration camp” assembled one pole at a time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Regarding Massie’s bill – we want to know:<\/strong> which federal grant streams get cut, how “surveilling law-abiding citizens” is defined – any Flock deployment, or only warrantless dragnet use – and whether House leadership gives it floor time. Text is expected in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSun, 07\/26\/2026 – 19:15<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Don’t Flock Me”: Massie Readies Bill To Yank Federal Cash From Cities And Police Departments Running Flock Cameras On Saturday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) announced he’ll soon sponsor “a bill to withhold federal money from municipalities and police departments” that deploy Flock-style cameras to surveil law-abiding citizens. He attached a Gadsden flag parody: a coiled… Continue reading “Don’t Flock Me”: Massie Readies Bill To Yank Federal Cash From Cities And Police Departments Running Flock Cameras<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":641776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,10,21,12,11,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-641781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cancel-culture","category-censorship","category-civil-liberties","category-election-integrity","category-equal-justice","category-free-speech","category-religious-freedom","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=641781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/641776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=641781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=641781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=641781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}