Hawley Expands Investigation into Surveillance Cameras, Warns Flock Competitors

Hawley Expands Investigation into Surveillance Cameras, Warns Flock Competitors

Thursday, September 03, 2026

WASHINGTON - 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' collection and use of citizens' personal data. Senator Hawley previously sent a letter to Flock regarding its use of AI surveillance cameras.

Senator Hawley wrote, "As Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, I am investigating your company's 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."

He continued, "Recent 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's license plate 124 times and her former boyfriend's plate 55 times, entering 'investigation' as his justification each time. Worse still, the officer was not caught by Flock's audit systems-he was caught because a private citizen looked up his own plate on a public website."

"To 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' lives, fueled by invasive artificial intelligence algorithms. The Supreme Court recognizes that a comprehensive, retrospective record of a person's movements is different in kind from ordinary observation in public, and Congress never authorized the network your industry has built. Your company's 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," Hawley concluded.

Read Senator Hawley's full letter to the Motorola Solutions CEO here or below.

Read Senator Hawley's letter to the CEO of Verkada here.

Read Senator Hawley's letter to the CEO of Axon Enterprise here.

Greg Brown
Chief Executive Officer
Motorola Solutions
500 W. Monroe St, Suite 4400
Chicago, IL 60661

Dear Mr. Brown:

As Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, I am investigating your company's 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.

Taking 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.

Recent 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's license plate 124 times and her former boyfriend's plate 55 times, entering "investigation" as his justification each time. Worse still, the officer was not caught by Flock's audit systems-he was caught because a private citizen looked up his own plate on a public website.

Errors 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's 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.

Furthermore, 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.

To 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' lives, fueled by invasive artificial intelligence algorithms. The Supreme Court recognizes that a comprehensive, retrospective record of a person's movements is different in kind from ordinary observation in public, and Congress never authorized the network your industry has built. Your company's 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.

The 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.

Sincerely,

Josh Hawley
Chairman
Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism
Committee on the Judiciary

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