Burchett Bill Aims to Stop Flock Cameras From Tracking Americans — Including Gun Owners
Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN) has introduced legislation that would ban federal agencies from purchasing, deploying, operating, accessing, or contracting for Flock Safety’s automated license plate reader cameras and similar mass-surveillance technologies, systems he has described as unconstitutional.
The Protection Against Mass Surveillance Act (H.R. 9800) was introduced on July 21, 2026, and referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The bill prohibits federal agencies from acquiring or using automated surveillance systems that identify, track, or record individuals through automated license plate recognition (explicitly including Flock Safety cameras), facial recognition technology, biometric identification (fingerprint, iris, retina, voice, gait, or other biological characteristics), or any technology that captures, analyzes, or retains a person’s image, likeness, or other personally identifiable information for the purpose of persistent or mass surveillance. It further bars state, local, and tribal governments from using federal funds for the same systems. Any data collected in violation of the prohibition must be deleted within 30 days and is inadmissible in any court or administrative proceeding.
Burchett has framed the measure as a straightforward Fourth Amendment issue. Law enforcement needs tools, he has said, but “taking our constitutional rights is not on the table.”
Rapid Rise of Flock Safety
Flock Safety, founded in 2017 by Garrett Langley and Matt Feury, has grown into one of the most ubiquitous private surveillance networks in the United States. The company sells solar-powered and pole-mounted cameras primarily to police departments, homeowner associations, businesses, and municipalities. As of mid-2026, the network has surpassed 100,000 cameras operating in more than 5,000 communities across all 50 states. Independent mapping projects such as DeFlock have counted roughly 96,000 units, while earlier 2026 reports placed the figure closer to 75,000–80,000. Company and media estimates indicate the cameras scan more than 150 million vehicles daily, or roughly 20 billion plate reads per month.
Flock is currently valued at approximately $8.4 billion after raising nearly $1 billion in venture capital, with Andreessen Horowitz among its lead investors. The business model relies on recurring subscription revenue rather than one-time hardware sales. Typical small-to-mid-size deployments run $25,000–$90,000 annually; larger municipal contracts can exceed $200,000.
The system records license plate numbers, vehicle characteristics, time, and location of every pass. That data feeds into a centralized cloud platform searchable by connected agencies, often across jurisdictional lines. Privacy advocates argue this creates a de facto national location-tracking database without warrants, individualized suspicion, or meaningful oversight, precisely the kind of “Big Brother” infrastructure warned about in George Orwell’s 1984.
Documented Abuses and Lack of Safeguards
The technology’s rapid expansion has been accompanied by repeated misuse. Officers have used Flock searches to stalk romantic partners and ex-partners. Documented cases include a Kansas police chief who queried his ex-girlfriend’s vehicle 164 times over four months; a Florida officer who ran his girlfriend’s plate 70 times in seven months and then staked out her workplace; Orange City, Florida, officer Jarmarus Brown, who searched an ex-girlfriend’s plate at least 69 times in the summer of 2024; and Milwaukee officer Josue Ayala, charged with misconduct after conducting 179 searches over two months targeting a woman he was dating and her former partner.
In every publicly reported instance, the victims themselves discovered the surveillance. AmmoLand News has found no cases in which internal audits flagged the abuse first. This pattern is unsurprising: Flock’s platform has long lacked robust role-based access controls or automated alerts for anomalous search patterns. Once an officer has credentials, the system provides near-unfettered ability to query the nationwide network.
Security Failures
Independent researchers have exposed serious vulnerabilities. Security researcher Jon Gaines documented 51 findings across Flock’s Falcon and Sparrow license-plate cameras and Raven gunshot-detection microphones; 22 received official CVE designations. One notable issue: pressing a specific button sequence on the rear of certain cameras activates a diagnostic Wi-Fi hotspot, which is often still protected by the default password “security.” From there, root access can be obtained in under 30 seconds, enabling an attacker to extract footage, install malware, steal credentials, or manipulate data.
YouTuber and researcher Benn Jordan discovered that some of Flock’s Condor cameras were exposing live video feeds and roughly a month of archived footage to the open internet with no login required. Viewers could watch playgrounds, parking lots, and streets in real time and even delete recordings. Flock confirmed the misconfiguration and said it had been remediated.
Lawmakers have also noted that credentials for at least 35 Flock customer accounts appeared on Russian cybercrime forums, prompting questions about why the company has not enforced multi-factor authentication more aggressively.
Flock’s public response has emphasized that many of the hardware flaws require physical access to a device plus specialized knowledge, that none of the disclosed issues compromise customers’ core public-safety functions, and that the company owns and maintains the cameras, so end users need to take no action. The company points to its commitment to CISA’s “Secure by Design” principles and its registration of vulnerabilities in the MITRE CVE database. Critics, including analysts at Footnote4a and independent security experts, counter that the company systematically downplays risk and that physical access to widely deployed outdoor cameras is far from theoretical. Most independent assessments disagree with Flock’s characterization of the threat level.
Particular Threat to Gun Owners
For Second Amendment supporters, the implications extend beyond general privacy. License-plate readers can systematically log vehicles arriving at and departing from gun stores, gun shows, and shooting ranges. Anti-gun jurisdictions could treat frequent visits as indicators of “high-risk” behavior. Flock does not control how agencies interpret or act on the data it provides; it simply enables continuous, warrantless monitoring of lawful activity.
This is not hypothetical. In one documented case, Flock cameras were used to track vehicles near a residence where Amazon packages had been stolen. Police confronted an innocent woman whose vehicle had merely passed the location, initially refusing to accept her explanation. Similar false positives and overreach have occurred elsewhere.
The addition of complementary technologies multiplies the risk. SignalTrace, marketed by Leonardo US Cyber and Security Solutions (the American arm of Italian aerospace and defense giant Leonardo S.p.A., which is majority-owned by the Italian government), is designed to clip onto existing ALPR poles and hardware—including infrastructure already used by Flock customers. SignalTrace passively captures Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, RFID, and other wireless signals emitted by phones, smartwatches, earbuds, vehicle systems, and even pet microchips. It builds what the company calls an “electronic fingerprint” of devices that travel together, allowing law enforcement to track individuals even when a plate is obscured, swapped, or unreadable.
Flock has stated it has no contractual relationship with SignalTrace. That claim is narrowly true but incomplete: once the sensors are attached to the same poles and the data streams are available to the same agencies, the practical distinction collapses. Data retention policies for SignalTrace appear less restrictive than some of Flock’s stated limits, raising the possibility of longer-term archival for future queries. The National Rifle Association (NRA) has publicly flagged the combination of Flock-style ALPRs and SignalTrace as a direct threat to gun-owner privacy, noting that RFID tags common on firearms packaging or inventory systems could further link purchases to movement patterns.
Flock has also expanded into aerial surveillance. In 2024, it acquired drone startup Aerodome in a deal reported to be more than $300 million, and now offers its own NDAA-compliant “Alpha” drone capable of reading license plates from as far as 2,000 feet. The drones integrate directly into Flock OS, the company’s real-time crime center platform, creating a single interface that fuses fixed cameras, LPR data, gunshot detection, and live aerial video. Skydio drones can also feed into the same platform, producing a competitive yet interoperable ecosystem of ground and air sensors.
Competitive Landscape and Lobbying Muscle
Flock is not alone. Motorola Solutions (via its Vigilant Solutions acquisition) remains the largest traditional ALPR player and pairs plate readers with in-car systems and body cameras. Rekor Systems focuses on software analytics for third-party cameras. Axon has won large citywide contracts. Verkada offers broader security platforms that include dual plate-and-video cameras. Other competitors include Genetec, PlateSmart, Innova Systems, ELSAG (also under Leonardo), Perceptics, and Jenoptik. Flock’s advantage has been aggressive pricing and direct sales to HOAs and smaller municipalities that legacy vendors historically ignored.
That commercial success is backed by significant political spending. Flock Safety spent $920,000 on federal lobbying in 2025 and another $230,000 in the first quarter of 2026 alone. Motorola Solutions spent more than $2 million in the same period. The combined influence of these companies and their trade associations creates a formidable barrier to legislation that would restrict their products.
Constitutional Stakes
H.R. 9800 is a direct response to the reality that private companies, with the cooperation of thousands of local agencies and the passive acceptance of federal grant programs, have constructed a persistent location-tracking network covering the majority of the American public. The Fourth Amendment was written to prevent precisely this kind of general, suspicionless surveillance. When the same infrastructure can be paired with device-signal collection and aerial platforms, the risk to both privacy and Second Amendment rights becomes acute.
The bill is narrowly drawn: it does not ban state or local agencies from using their own funds to buy these systems, nor does it prohibit traditional investigative tools used with warrants. It simply stops the federal government from buying, funding, or accessing the technology and requires that any data obtained in violation be destroyed and kept out of court. That is a modest but necessary first step.
The bill has been referred to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and currently has no cosponsors. Whether Congress will advance the measure against determined industry opposition remains to be seen. For gun owners and anyone who values the right to move freely without continuous electronic tracking, the stakes could not be clearer.
About John Crump
Mr. Crump is an NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people from all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons, follow him on X at @right2bear, or at www.crumpy.com.