Entrepreneur defends Flock's 'philosophy' the same day its headline claim fails outside review.

…(cont) Four days after that, on 18 September, Texas stopped adding to the pile. Gov. Greg Abbott directed the state transportation department to freeze permits for new Flock cameras on state roads. No new installs. The roughly 900 already up stayed up. A freeze is not a removal.

Then, on 30 September, the number itself gave out. CBS News reviewed Flock's claim that its cameras have helped solve one million crimes and reported that the data does not support it; criminal justice experts described the company's statistical claims as unsupported or inconsistent. The figure that had carried the company through a Congressional filing, a presidential endorsement and a governor's partial freeze did not hold up under outside review.

The same day, The Hill ran an op-ed from an entrepreneur arguing that Flock's critics have it backwards: the cameras themselves are not the problem, the "philosophy" of whoever operates them is, and the technology should be judged by intent rather than banned. It ran the same day a news organization reported that the company's own headline number does not check out. One piece defended the premise. The other took the premise's central proof apart. They ran together.

The two bills meant to rein in the 120,000-camera network are still sitting untouched in Congress, in the same committees they landed in weeks ago. Nothing in the record shows either one scheduled for a vote. The claim that built the case for the network did not survive review. The network did.