Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Ban Flock Act on Friday, a bill that would prohibit federal agencies from operating automatic license plate readers or accessing data gathered by readers operated by local police and private companies. Although the bill is named for Flock Safety, its text does not single out the nine-year-old company and instead applies to all ALPR systems. The legislation would also penalize state and local governments that decline to ban the technology, and it would let Americans sue the federal government over violations while giving state attorneys general enforcement power.
The bill permits only two exceptions: toll collection and any future uses Congress approves through legislation, which would have to cap data retention at 48 hours. To pressure state and local governments, the measure would cut off grants from five federal departments, including the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, beginning the first fiscal year after enactment unless those governments ban the technology. Like most bills, it faces long odds. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Jeff Merkley are co-sponsors.
Flock Safety is the largest ALPR vendor in the United States, according to Sanders, operating more than 120,000 cameras. In a blog post in February, the company, valued by its venture backers at more than $8 billion, said its network processes over 20 billion vehicle reads every month. The bill arrives as Flock faces mounting public anger, with communities protesting the product, suspending its use and canceling contracts at an accelerating rate.
Flock has responded by tightening its rules. In August, CEO Garrett Langley, who had previously said police use of the cameras is up to local agencies, announced a new default data retention period of seven days, reduced from 30. Customers must now also use an audit tool that locks officers out pending review when it flags unusual searches. In one of the most prominent cases of an officer misusing the platform, a former Milwaukee officer pleaded guilty to misconduct after running 179 searches for his then-partner and her ex, listing the reason as investigation. During a recent podcast interview, investor Jason Calacanis proposed a double-key system requiring two people to approve a search, and Langley said the idea is on the whiteboard.
TechCrunch will sit down with Langley at its upcoming Disrupt event, scheduled for October 13 to 15 in downtown San Francisco.
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