Congress writes a fourth Flock camera bill, still hasn't voted on either of the first two.

…(cont) The planner spreads the folders and counts. In Nevada, on August 27, state lawmakers voted to request that a bill be drafted next session to boost oversight of the cameras — a request, not yet a bill, so there is nothing there to call a vote on. In Washington, on September 3, Representative Thomas Massie filed the Flock-Off Act, blocking federal money for any municipality or local department that wants to purchase, install, maintain, operate or upgrade the cameras. Four weeks later, on September 30, Senator Josh Hawley filed his own bill to put guardrails on the same technology.

The tinkerer picks up the two drafted bills and lays the parts side by side: a funding cutoff here, an operating guardrail there. Neither needs inventing.

The muscle looks at the fourth folder — the one filed October 6 — and does what the muscle does: swings at the structure, not the paper. A third bill on a subject where two already sit in committee is not a plan. It is a press release with a bill number attached.

The pilot checks the gauges. Three names on the stack: one Republican from Kentucky, one Republican from Missouri, and one Nevada request with tentative bipartisan backing that is still, as of this week, a request and not a bill. On top of that stack now sits a fourth, introduced the same week a wire story called it a response to "rising fears about AI mass surveillance." The fear is documented. So is the paperwork sitting unmoved.

The job this week was never finding a tool. Two sit finished in committee, waiting on a hearing date. What Congress built instead, five weeks into the stack, was a fourth folder for the same drawer.