{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-expands-investigation-into-surveillance-cameras-warns-flock-competitors/", "Hawley Expands Investigation into Surveillance Cameras, Warns Flock Competitors", "2026-09-03", "2026", "2026-09", "Republican", "Senate", "MO", "Josh Hawley", "H001089", "www.hawley.senate.gov", "hawley", "https://www.hawley.senate.gov/press-releases/page/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) expanded his investigation into artificial intelligence surveillance cameras. He sent letters to the chief executive officers of Motorola Solutions, Verkada, and Axon Enterprise, informing them of his investigation into the companies\u2019 collection and use of citizens\u2019 personal data. Senator Hawley previously sent a letter to Flock regarding its use of AI surveillance cameras.\n\nSenator Hawley wrote, \u201cAs Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, I am investigating your company\u2019s collection, retention, and dissemination of the data generated by its artificial intelligence surveillance cameras. On August 26th, I wrote to your competitor Flock Safety to express my concerns regarding the size and pervasiveness of its network and demanding answers as to reports of abuse and costly errors from its technology. However, Flock does not stand alone in this industry; you and others are building large camera networks, assisted by artificial intelligence, that intrude on the privacy of all Americans.\u201d\n\nHe continued, \u201cRecent examples of abuse and misuse of personal data reveal the woeful lack of safeguards in these systems. Last month in Missouri, the St. Charles County Police Department terminated its contract with Flock after an audit revealed that a civilian employee had run Flock searches for personal reasons, completely unrelated to his or her law enforcement duties. Sadly, my home state is not an outlier. In Milwaukee, prosecutors charged a police officer who allegedly used Flock to search his girlfriend\u2019s license plate 124 times and her former boyfriend\u2019s plate 55 times, entering \u2018investigation\u2019 as his justification each time. Worse still, the officer was not caught by Flock\u2019s audit systems\u2014he was caught because a private citizen looked up his own plate on a public website.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo be sure, I want law enforcement to have tools to catch offenders and keep the public safe. But the surveillance network your company has constructed raises legitimate concerns about how little-known corporations possess intimate knowledge of Americans\u2019 lives, fueled by invasive artificial intelligence algorithms. The Supreme Court recognizes that a comprehensive, retrospective record of a person\u2019s movements is different in kind from ordinary observation in public, and Congress never authorized the network your industry has built. Your company\u2019s internal policies are, in practice, the only safeguards for hundreds of millions of Americans. People across the country are now discovering that fact and demanding answers from their elected officials,\u201d Hawley concluded.\n\nRead Senator Hawley\u2019s full letter to the Motorola Solutions CEO here or below.\n\nRead Senator Hawley\u2019s letter to the CEO of Verkada here.\n\nRead Senator Hawley\u2019s letter to the CEO of Axon Enterprise here.\n\nGreg Brown\n\nChief Executive Officer\n\nMotorola Solutions\n\n500 W. Monroe St, Suite 4400\n\nChicago, IL 60661\n\nDear Mr. Brown:\n\nAs Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, I am investigating your company\u2019s collection, retention, and dissemination of the data generated by its artificial intelligence surveillance cameras.\n\nOn August 26th, I wrote to your competitor Flock Safety to express my concerns regarding the size and pervasiveness of its network and demanding answers as to reports of abuse and costly errors from its technology. However, Flock does not stand alone in this industry; you and others are building large camera networks, assisted by artificial intelligence, that intrude on the privacy of all Americans.\n\nTaking Flock alone, in a few short years, Flock has assembled an unprecedented national surveillance network. Flock boasts more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states and more than 20 billion vehicle scans every month. The overwhelming majority of the Americans captured in those records did nothing wrong. Instead of serving discrete local investigations, as contemplated by our constitutional processes and safeguards, these camera networks harness artificial intelligence to pool what they capture into a national database that customers can search.\n\nRecent examples of abuse and misuse of personal data reveal the woeful lack of safeguards in these systems. Last month in Missouri, the St. Charles County Police Department terminated its contract with Flock after an audit revealed that a civilian employee had run Flock searches for personal reasons, completely unrelated to his or her law enforcement duties. Sadly, my home state is not an outlier. In Milwaukee, prosecutors charged a police officer who allegedly used Flock to search his girlfriend\u2019s license plate 124 times and her former boyfriend\u2019s plate 55 times, entering \u201cinvestigation\u201d as his justification each time. Worse still, the officer was not caught by Flock\u2019s audit systems\u2014he was caught because a private citizen looked up his own plate on a public website.\n\nErrors and false positives add insult to injury. A Florida woman spent 13 days in jail and faced eight felony counts, including three counts of vehicular homicide, after investigators arrested an owner based on their search of Flock\u2019s network for a vehicle description. Prosecutors dismissed the charges seven months later when law enforcement discovered the error and arrested a different person. One California police department found that a staggering 71% of Flock alerts were wrong, and the Los Angeles Police Department dropped its Flock contract after an audit showed officers had stopped 161 vehicles incorrectly flagged as stolen in the space of two months.\n\nFurthermore, once cameras collect driver data, uncertainty abounds in how your company and its customers can sell or use data. The multi-billion-dollar valuations that are common among your peer companies come with enormous pressure to find new commercial applications. Americans demand a full accounting of how their driver data is stored or sold.\n\nTo be sure, I want law enforcement to have tools to catch offenders and keep the public safe. But the surveillance network your company has constructed raises legitimate concerns about how little-known corporations possess intimate knowledge of Americans\u2019 lives, fueled by invasive artificial intelligence algorithms. The Supreme Court recognizes that a comprehensive, retrospective record of a person\u2019s movements is different in kind from ordinary observation in public, and Congress never authorized the network your industry has built. Your company\u2019s internal policies are, in practice, the only safeguards for hundreds of millions of Americans. People across the country are now discovering that fact and demanding answers from their elected officials.\n\nThe American people want to know who has access to their personal data and how. This investigation will seek those answers. To facilitate that, please produce all documents and information specified in the attached annex no later than September 16, 2026. If you have questions about the scope of these requests, please contact my office to discuss.\n\nSincerely,", 1, "2026-09-04T09:19:37Z", "2026-09-04T09:20:58Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-expands-investigation-into-surveillance-cameras-warns-flock-competitors/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.5407476350665092, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}