Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced legislation on Friday that would crack down on artificial intelligence-powered Flock cameras increasingly used—and abused —by law enforcement agencies across the United States to track and log vehicle data.
Page A2From§Eachthe noon edition — 2 October 2026
A second bill to ban Flock cameras arrives four weeks after Congress already filed one just like it
As it ran on the front
On Friday, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Ban Flock Act, their answer to what Sanders told the Washington Post is a country "moving toward a surveillance state." Follow along, all together now — the summary from Sanders' office says the bill would bar federal agencies from using automatic license plate readers, cut off federal grant money to any state or local government that keeps using them, and give Americans some way to push back. That is the press release. Here is the calendar underneath it.
Twenty-nine days earlier, on September 3, Representative Thomas Massie filed a bill aimed at the same cameras. The Flock-Off Act would block federal funds for buying, installing, maintaining, operating or upgrading automatic license plate readers and biometric surveillance cameras for municipalities and local police. The Hill reported it the day it was unveiled, with bipartisan backing. Whether it has moved since is not in today's wire. Four weeks and a day is the gap between Massie's bill and Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez's — not five weeks, not a coincidence of timing either way, just a month in which one bill sat and the country kept asking for another.…
…(cont) In between the two filings, on September 24, the company whose product both bills target went looking for an off switch of its own. A security researcher had built the most detailed public map yet of where Flock's cameras actually sit. Flock asked to have the map taken down. It objected to the public knowing where.
So, in order: a Republican congressman files a bill to defund the cameras. Three weeks later, the company that makes them tries to make its own camera locations harder to find. A week after that, two lawmakers from the other party file a second bill to do roughly what the first one already proposed.
Nothing here proves anyone copied anyone's homework, and nothing in today's wire says either office read the other's bill. What the wire does show is a camera company that spent the same month under bipartisan fire trying to erase the record of where its hardware sits, and a Congress that has now produced two separate bills against the same product without, as far as this paper can tell, producing a vote on either one.
The cameras do not wait for committee assignments. They are already reading plates. The map of where was the part Flock wanted gone.
“Two bills, one company, zero votes — that's not gridlock, that's the business model. Flock didn't deny the cameras exist, it asked to hide the map of where they are. The money's already made before anybody in Congress signs a thing.”
“These are crime-fighting tools, no different than a traffic camera at an intersection — the public safety case writes itself. Sure, Flock asked to pull that one map, but that's just basic security protocol, you don't advertise where your hardware sits. Wait — did I just say they're hiding where the cameras are? That's not — that's not usually my talking point.”
The receipts
A security researcher’s map revealed more locations of Flock devices than any other. Flock is trying to take it down. The post Flock Wants the Most Detailed Map of Its Surveillance Cameras Taken Offline appeared first on The Intercept .
· Former Pentagon AI chief warns Flock cameras could create 'China-like surveillance state' in the US from the morgue, 5 Sep 2026
· Sanders Sets Briefing on 'Extraordinary Dangers' Posed by Breakneck AI Development from the morgue, 10 Sep 2026
· Massie unveils Flock-Off Act aimed at restricting surveillance cameras from the morgue, 3 Sep 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.