The panel urged the change in a 66-page report drafted by Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), focused on implementing 9/11 Commission recommendations ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks.
Page A12From§Eachthe early bird edition — 31 August 2026
Alabama utility partners with Flock to sell cities more surveillance as Congress pushes biometric screening for travelers.
As it ran on the front
An electric utility in Alabama has entered into a partnership with Flock Safety to expand license-plate surveillance sales to cities. That is not this reporter's phrasing — that is the arrangement, reported plainly: a company that sells power now also sells cameras that watch who's driving on it. Two different products, one invoice, and only one of them shows up on your electric bill.
Same week, up in Washington, the House Intelligence Committee is calling for biometric screening — face, iris, the works — for international travelers, framed as prevention of another 9/11. Nobody at that hearing is wrong that airports have real threats to manage. What nobody at that hearing mentioned is that the last two decades of preventing another 9/11 have built an entire industry, and industries need customers, and you are the customer, whether you're crossing a border or just driving to the grocery store on a road owned by a utility with a camera contract.…
…(cont) Follow the two stories side by side and the picture isn't a conspiracy, it's a supply chain. A private company sells surveillance hardware to a public utility, which sells it to your city council, which puts it on your street, and calls it safety. A congressional committee proposes biometric collection at the border and calls it safety. Different agencies, different scale, same word doing the same work: safety is what they call the thing right before they ask you to hand over data you can't ever get back.
Nobody voted on the utility deal. Nobody's driving habits changed because of it — the cameras did the changing, quietly, on a bill you already pay every month for electricity you already need. That's the trick with infrastructure surveillance: you can't opt out of the power grid, so you can't opt out of what's bolted to the power grid either.
The receipts here are boring on purpose — a partnership announcement, a committee press release. Boring is how surveillance expands. Nobody ever announces a police state. They announce a partnership. They announce a screening enhancement. You just wake up one day and the road you drive to work on works for somebody else too.
“A power company selling license-plate cameras to city hall isn't a utility upgrade, it's a new revenue stream built on watching you drive to work — and now the House wants your face and your iris at the airport too. Different agencies, same file cabinet, and you're the one being filed.”
“Flock's technology assists law enforcement with legitimate public safety objectives, full stop, and the biometric screening proposal is squarely about preventing another 9/11, not about — did I say fingerprints? Facial and iris data, technically, not fingerprints, my mistake — either way, this is about safety, not surveillance, and if that sounds like the same sentence twice that's because it is.”
The receipts
Alabama Power has acted as a middleman to sell surveillance services to more than 80 municipalities.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.