Sanders and AOC Take Aim at 120,000 License Plate Cameras

Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Jeff Merkley unveiled legislation on Friday that would pull the federal government out of the license plate reader business entirely and cut federal grant money to the cities and states that stay in it. They call it the Ban Flock Act, after Flock Safety, the company the sponsors describe as the largest vendor of automatic license plate readers in the country.

According to the announcement from Sanders' office, the bill does three things. It prohibits federal agencies from using plate readers or accessing the data those cameras collect. It cuts off federal grant funding to state and local governments that use the readers or contract with the companies that sell them. And it creates a right for Americans to sue the federal government over rights violations involving the technology.

The politics here are not as simple as the sponsor list looks. Plenty of conservatives have spent years warning about a surveillance apparatus that logs the movements of people who have done nothing wrong, while police agencies across the country have signed contracts for the cameras and defended them as investigative tools. This bill forces that argument into the open.

What the Sponsors Say the Cameras Can Do

The release lays out a long list of capabilities and alleged abuses. It says more than 120,000 Flock cameras are deployed nationwide and that they scan roughly 20 billion vehicles every month. It says newer cameras record people, not just cars, and that the company's artificial intelligence can combine images of a vehicle or a person with phone numbers, lists of relatives and court records.

It also describes a national lookup tool that allows an agency with a contract to search data captured by cameras in other cities and other states, returning physical descriptions, online-account records and family connections. The sponsors claim Flock has shared state information with federal immigration officials, that law enforcement personnel have pulled data on activists with logged searches tied to anti-ICE-raid protests, Palestinian-rights demonstrations and "No Kings" events, and that officers have used plate readers to track wives, girlfriends, ex-partners and women they wanted to meet.

Those are serious allegations, and readers should know where they come from. Every one of them appears in the sponsors' own press release. None of it has been independently confirmed here. The release also states that at least 56 municipalities have deactivated, canceled or rejected Flock contracts this year without saying where that count originates. Flock Safety is not quoted in the materials reviewed, and the company has not yet been asked for comment on the bill.

The Quotes, and the Pitch

Sanders framed it in kitchen-table terms. "Going to the doctor? Flock knows. Dropping your kid off at school? Flock is tracking you. Flock is always watching," he said in the release, adding that "we cannot allow America to become a surveillance state where a handful of AI oligarchs profit by giving the government the power to track our every movement."

Ocasio-Cortez called the spread of the technology "unconscionable." Merkley put it this way: "Your right to privacy includes the freedom to move around your community without every move being monitored."

The Washington Examiner reported the rollout the same day, describing the measure as introduced. The Sanders release says released. Whether the bill has been formally filed with numbers in both chambers, who has signed on as a cosponsor and which committees get it are all still unsettled.

Messaging Bill or Movable Bill

That last question matters more than the rollout does. The cosponsor list is not yet known, and whether any Republicans join will be the clearest early signal of whether the measure is a statement or a piece of legislation with a path. The case would turn on whether members who emphasize privacy concerns conclude those outweigh the law enforcement argument for the cameras.

There is also a point the sponsors raise themselves: the claim that plate reader data has flowed to federal immigration enforcement. For conservatives who want interior enforcement to work, that claim cuts the other way, and it is likely to be a central dispute if the bill gets a hearing.

The bill text has been posted on Sanders' Senate website. The next markers to watch are a bill number on Congress.gov, a cosponsor list, and whether Flock Safety answers the specific allegations made against it.