In a country increasingly divided over political ideologies, partisan political actors are unifying a response to the age-old dynamic between privacy and security.
On Wednesday, blue-leaning Tempe, Arizona. has turned off its automatic flock license plate readers and said the city will not seek another company to replace the system. Three hours later, the nearby town of Cave Creek did the same. On the same day in Washington, D.C., Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, launched a formal investigation into the company, while independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont released a lengthy statement promising to introduce legislation against it.
Tempe police had used Flock’s cameras to solve crimes, and the city said its own monthly audits found no misuse. But that wasn’t enough to keep the system running. “These cameras have helped our officers do their jobs, and we will not discount that,” Tempe Mayor Corey Woods said in a statement shared with Assets. “But the risk of abuse is too great. We must be able to ensure public safety in a way that maintains the trust of our community. For Tempe, that means turning off these cameras.”
Tempe Councilman Bobby Nichols said The decision is a question of legal principle. “Any law enforcement tool used by the city must not pose a risk of impinging on residents’ civil liberties,” he said. “We have a responsibility to ensure that these technologies are only used when they provide a narrowly tailored solution to a compelling government interest.”
The city’s contract with Flock was worth $80,000; His cameras remain in place until Flock removes them, although they no longer collect data. Previously collected data will be temporarily stored and then automatically deleted unless it is linked to an open case. Tempe already stopped automatic data sharing with other law enforcement agencies in early August and launched a public transparency portal, which is now being discontinued.
“Every day, police departments across the country solve countless serious crimes and make a measurable impact on public safety with Flock technology, including in Tempe, the city said,” a Flock spokesperson said Assets.
“Removing a tool that actively helps solve violent crimes, locate suspects and find missing people puts public safety at risk. There are real consequences: Cases will take longer to solve, organized retail theft squads will operate with fewer obstacles, an Amber Alert may not be returned home, and victims may have to wait longer or indefinitely for justice.”
The spokesperson added that misuse of Flock technology is unacceptable and that any searches are logged and reviewed through the company’s Audit Assistance tool, which flags unusual activity for review by administrators.
Cave Creeks Decisionthree hours to Tempes, citing privacy concerns, cases of abuse elsewhere in Arizona and across the country, and the theft of one of his own flock cameras from an intersection. After the theft, construction workers removed the city’s remaining cameras for safekeeping.
But the city’s main objection was structural: Flock’s networked design allows outside law enforcement agencies to search the data it collects on site, and city officials concluded there was no way to ensure residents’ privacy once they were there Information left Cave Creek’s jurisdiction.
The city manager and city attorney will formally discuss the decision at a Sept. 1 council meeting. Cave Creek officials have not yet responded Fortune’s Please comment.
Reading between the [partisan] lines
Tempe leans Democratic: About 63% of its voters support Democrats, making Tempe one of the most reliably blue cities in a state that has been a purple battleground of late. Cave Creek, a small, wealthy town north of Phoenix, leans Republican in comparison. The two cities ended up in the same spot, becoming at least the ninth and 10th Arizona municipalities to drop or limit Flock in the past year, following Chandler, Surprise, Pinal County, Sedona, Flagstaff, Sierra Vista, South Tucson and Apache Junction.
In the nation’s capital, Hawley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, sent a letter to Flock CEO Garrett Langley announcing an investigation into the company’s “collection, storage and distribution” of data collected by its cameras.
The letter argued that Flock has built an “unprecedented national surveillance network” with more than 120,000 cameras in 49 states that scans more than 20 billion vehicles per month, and that “Congress never authorized the network your industry built.” He gave the company until September 8th to hand over the documents. A Flock spokesman told reporters that the company intends to cooperate.
Hours later, Sanders posted his own statement on X, in which he describes Flock as part of a system that risks plunging the country into what he called totalitarianism. He also noted Flock’s number of cameras, adding that newer versions of the technology can match images of people and vehicles with databases of phone numbers, relatives and court records.
“We must come together to stop mass surveillance by Flock and AI,” Sanders wrote. “That’s why I will soon introduce relevant laws.”
Hawley and Sanders are on opposite ends of the Senate’s ideological spectrum. Their statements came within hours of each other and reflected the same split-screen convergence that was unfolding in Arizona.
Flock’s rapid expansion and the subsequent audit progressed quickly. The company says its cameras helped complete around a million police investigations and locate around 10,000 missing people last year.
But an August Washington Post The investigation found that more than 50 police officers were accused, charged or convicted of misusing automatic license plate readers, including cases in which officers used the systems to track former partners. Since Wednesday, more than 90 cities have moved to terminate or reject Flock contracts, according to the anti-surveillance group DeFlock.
Flock has since shortened its standard data retention window from 30 days to seven days and now requires officers to enter a case code before accessing stored data. Langley told fox News The country needs a “compromise” between privacy and security concerns. It remains to be seen whether this compromise will be reached before more cities and more members of Congress act on their own.