WASHINGTON, DC. (Atlanta News First & InvestigateTV) - Chief executives from four major surveillance and law enforcement technology companies—including Atlanta-based Flock Safety—have been invited to testify before a congressional panel on the expansion of artificial intelligence-powered monitoring networks across the United States.

The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism scheduled the hearing, titled “Always Watching: Flock’s Nationwide AI Surveillance Network,” for Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026.

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4:05 pm. “We need the Bill of Rights now more than ever,” Hawley said, before adjourning the hearing.

3:59 pm. “Why create this much data when we can’t secure it?” asked Jordan.

3:52 pm. Teeple said he became concerned over the use of Flock cameras in his county when he asked the company about the use of AI in its cameras. Teeple said he was told no AI was used in its equipment, but later saw a quote from the company that indicated otherwise. When Teeple said he asked Flock about that discrepancy, he said “the response I received was chilling. I was told, ‘That wasn’t the AI you were asking about.’”

3:42 pm. Flock never acknowledges that no security procedures put in place do anything to protect against the misuse of its cameras, Marlow said.

3:35 pm. Teeple outlined a case in which ALPRs were used in his county to apprehend “an aggressive driver that ran into a young lady’s vehicle and pushed her into oncoming traffic.”

3:34 pm. U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, R-Alabama, entered into the record a letter she and U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Georgia, in which they expressed their concerns over potential civil liberties violations from the use of these cameras.

3:21 pm. Cameras that are linked to a network uploaded into a “cloud” makes this issue different from ALPRs from yesteryear, Whitney said. “We are a long way from a simple automated license plate reader,” Hawley said.

3:15 pm. Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, says “the explosion of ALPR use and its tracking of innocente people” is because of the entry of venture capitalists “into the mass surveillance industry. It reflects a view that if ALPR use is scaled up, it could produce the massive profits venture capitalists seek. Welcome to the surveillance industrial complex, America.”

3:08 pm. Benn Jordan, a security researcher who found dozens of Flock cameras streaming openly online, is testifying. He urges Congress to impose any regulations on Flock to also impose them on other surveillance camera networks, including Axon.

3:04 pm. Sheriff Ross Teeple, sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona, said the latest automated license plate cameras, powered by AI, pose a threat to constitutional rights.

3:01 pm. Alasdair Whitney, legislative counsel for the Institute of Justice, urges Congress to establish guardrails regarding the use of automated license plate readers. “The Fourth Amendment is a floor, not a ceiling.” He urges Congress to require law enforcement to get a search warrant before searching historical license plate databases.

2:56 pm. “A Flock camera captured my vehicle a few miles from a terrible crash I had nothing to do with that led to 13 days in jail,” Issacs said.

2:50 pm. Lindsay Issacs recounted her arrest in Florida on charges of causing a vehicle accident that claimed the lives of three people. Florida troopers built their case on a license plate reader hit. Issacs was jailed for nearly two weeks after a Flock camera mistakenly identified her vehicle as being involved in a fatal car crash. A second investigation determined law enforcement had targeted the wrong vehicle.

2:46 pm. “We have got to find a way to balance in America, privacy and security,” said U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D- Illinois. “There is a balance. Congress needs to lead the way.”

2:45 pm. None of the CEOs of surveillance camera networks are attending, Hawley said. Invited were Garrett Langley, CEO of Flock Safety; Rick Smith, CEO of Axon Enterprise; Greg Brown, CEO of Motorola Solutions; and Filip Kaliszan, CEO of Verkada.

2:43 pm. “The Constitution of the United States is still just as valid and applicable today as it was almost 250 years ago,” Hawley said. “We have to find a way to protect and enforce the Bill of Rights for every law abiding citizen of the United States.

“You know, this is still the United States of America, and it shouldn’t be that when you walk out your door in the morning, you just have to agree in a sense, accept the fact that you’re gonna be on camera, morning, noon, and night,” Hawley said. “You’ll be tracked by anybody and everybody in the world. You’ll have no privacy whatsoever.”

2:40 pm. “The reporting on what these cameras can do is really pretty wild,” Hawley said.

2:38 pm. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, calls the hearing to order, saying the purpose of the hearing is to “figure out what is going on” with these surveillance cameras. “If you haven’t heard of Flock, Flock has probably heard of you.”

The federal scrutiny comes after extensive reporting by InvestigateTV and Atlanta News First Chief Investigator Brendan Keefe exposed widespread vulnerabilities and misconduct surrounding Flock Safety’s surveillance network.

Also set to appear before the committee are two people interviewed by Keefe during the course of his reporting: Benn Jordan, a security researcher who found dozens of Flock cameras streaming openly online, and Lindsay Issacs, a Florida woman who was jailed for nearly two weeks after a Flock camera mistakenly identified her vehicle as being involved in a fatal car crash.

Keefe, who is attending the Senate hearing, uncovered at least 19 instances over a single year in Georgia where police officers were arrested or relieved of duty for using the company’s vast automated license plate reader (ALPR) system for personal reasons, including tracking estranged romantic partners and conducting unauthorized stalking operations against fellow officers and civilians.

Another witness set to appear before Wednesday’s subcommittee is Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

“The time has come for Congress to ban any law enforcement entity who receives federal funding from using ALPRs,” Marlow said before the hearing. “This prohibition should be without exceptions. As I suspect this Subcommittee already knows that, when it comes to protecting core American civil rights and civil liberties, if you make one exception, you invite others, and that is a slippery slope we must avoid at all costs.

“It’s time for Congress to use its power of the purse to prohibit the government use of ALPRs in America.”

Keefe’s investigation detailed how more than 120,000 Flock cameras nationwide capture vehicle movements that are stored and searchable by law enforcement agencies for 30 days.

• Watching the Watchers: Flock ANF Investigation | An Atlanta News First investigative series exposing safety failures, legal blind spots, and personal misuse behind Flock’s massive surveillance network.

While Flock rolled out an AI-driven “audit assistance” tool in 2026 to flag suspicious queries for municipal supervisors, Keefe revealed victims often only discovered they were being tracked through independent public records requests and specialized lookups, such as the citizen-created website haveibeenflocked.com.

The reporting also highlighted growing transparency concerns raised by privacy and open-records advocates after Flock made sweeping changes to its system logs.

Keefe reported the company removed officer names from external network searches — replacing them with anonymized ID numbers — and eliminated license plate numbers from network audit trails entirely, effectively shutting down the public’s ability to verify whether their own vehicles had been improperly searched by law enforcement agencies outside their local communities.

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