Sen. Josh Hawley is unveiling legislation to establish guardrails for Flock cameras and other artificial intelligence-powered surveillance technology, CBS News has learned.
Page A2From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 30 September 2026
Congress files its second bill against Flock's 120,000 cameras in 27 days; the first still hasn't moved
As it ran on the front
I read filings for a living, and this month the filings are singing in harmony.
Start in Nevada. In the week of 27 August, an interim judiciary committee unanimously accepted a recommendation to request that a bill be drafted next session — oversight of automatic license plate readers, with what the Washington Examiner described as tentative bipartisan support. Follow it through: accept a recommendation, to request a draft, for a session that has not convened. Three steps, and no law at the end of any of them.…
…(cont) On 3 September, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky unveiled the Flock-Off Act. All together now — the verbs: the bill would block federal funds to purchase, install, maintain, operate or upgrade automated license plate readers and biometric surveillance cameras for municipalities and local law enforcement. Five verbs. Somebody sat down and thought through how a camera travels from a loading dock to a utility pole and shut a door at every stop. That is careful drafting. The Hill ran the story twice that day under two headlines, "Massie unveils Flock-Off Act" and "Massie unveils 'Flock off' bill," which is two more appearances than the bill has had on a floor.
Twenty days later, on 23 September, The Hill posted a live feed: a Senate Judiciary panel, the Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, would put Flock Safety's network under the microscope that Wednesday. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who chairs the subcommittee, had recently opened an investigation into the company and into what becomes of the data collected by its more than 120,000 cameras.
Which brings us to this morning, twenty-seven days after the Flock-Off Act. CBS News reports Hawley is unveiling legislation to establish guardrails for Flock cameras and other AI-powered surveillance technology. Same company. Same cameras. Opposite ends of the Capitol, same party, four weeks apart, and neither bill has moved.
I want to be generous, because everyone here is doing something. A committee requested a draft. A congressman wrote five verbs. A senator opened an investigation, booked a hearing, and filed a bill. Four documents about the same 120,000 cameras in about five weeks, and nothing in any of them required a single camera to stop for a single afternoon.
Here is the part I keep going back to. The federal money named in the Flock-Off Act is our money. It bought the cameras and paid to put them on the poles above the school-run and the second-shift lot. The bill that would switch that money off has been sitting for twenty-seven days, and the newest thing to happen to it is a second bill saying roughly the same thing.
All together now — line one of the title. Flock-Off. The camera cannot read.
“Two Republicans at opposite ends of the Capitol write bills against the same 120,000 cameras and neither one gets a vote — that tells you the cameras aren't a partisan problem, they're a paid-for one. Federal money bought them and bolted them to poles in your town, and the bill to shut that money off has been sitting there since the third of September while a company holds the data. Nobody votes, the lens doesn't blink, and where your car goes all year lives in somebody's search box.”
“Nobody has been tougher on this company than our side — we opened an investigation, we scheduled a subcommittee hearing, we've got two bills on it. Two. Did I say two? That doesn't sound like me; filing is the substantive part, the vote is scheduling, scheduling isn't a policy question. Why is that a problem? You'd rather we'd filed nothing?”
The receipts
· Massie unveils Flock-Off Act aimed at restricting surveillance cameras from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
· Massie unveils 'Flock off' bill aimed at restricting surveillance cameras from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
· Watch live: Hawley turns spotlight on Flock, AI-powered cameras from the morgue, 23 Sep 2026
· Nevada legislators target Flock cameras with license plate reader bill request from the morgue, 27 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.