{"id":3381,"date":"2026-07-03T17:40:31","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T17:40:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/propertyrelocationusa.com\/?p=3381"},"modified":"2026-07-03T17:40:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T17:40:31","slug":"growing-surveillance-state-under-trump-admin-sparks-nationwide-backlash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/propertyrelocationusa.com\/?p=3381","title":{"rendered":"Growing surveillance state under Trump admin sparks nationwide backlash"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Resistance is mounting across the United States against the increasing use of surveillance tech company Flock Safety\u2019s cameras, with a growing number of cities canceling contracts as the artificial intelligence-powered license plate readers are quietly being installed in thousands of locations nationwide.<\/p>\n

Read more Pay-to-play cycle behind GOP\u2019s corporate tax cuts exposed in new report<\/a><\/p>\n

State and local police departments first used the Atlanta-based company\u2019s automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems for standard law enforcement purposes, but they are now being employed for a much broader range of uses, including immigration-related searches and other actions supporting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the Trump administration\u2019s deadly anti-immigrant crackdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have cameras that are used for everything from illegal dumping to drug houses to hotels that are just big problems,\u201d Flock Safety engineer Kevin Cox told prospective customers during a demonstration of the company\u2019s Condor Camera, according to a Thursday report in The Washington Times.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are endless, endless uses for what we can do with these things,\u201d Cox added.<\/p>\n

Those uses include spying on constitutionally protected protest activity and enforcing abortion bans by tracking pregnant people\u2019s travel across states\u2014even ones in which the medical procedure is legal.<\/p>\n

The ACLU\u2014which recently launched a \u201cGet the Flock Out\u201d campaign to \u201cfight creepy ALPR cameras\u201d\u2014says there are currently between 80,000 and 100,000 Flock devices installed nationwide that conduct more than 20 billion scans per month. More than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use the cameras, and some of them keep their locations a secret.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlock\u2019s ALPR cameras aren\u2019t like your normal traffic cameras,\u201d the ACLU explained. \u201cThis surveillance technology records and tracks every car that comes into view, and then an AI algorithm catalogs the make, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and even scratches. This personal information is then uploaded into a nationwide database that can search\u2014with few regulations or oversight on how they use what they find.\u201d<\/p>\n

The backlash against creeping state surveillance has even transcended the partisan divide.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think our country is in a kind of uniquely anti-surveillance environment right now, which is to say that, in a time where it seems there is nothing that is not partisan, opposition to government surveillance is nonpartisan,\u201d ACLU privacy and surveillance attorney Chad Marlow told The Washington Times on Thursday.<\/p>\n

There is growing action\u2014both legal and otherwise\u2014to end the use of ALPRs across the country.<\/p>\n

According to the public information project Ban Flock Cameras, 82 Flock contracts were terminated across 28 states between August 2021 and May 2026, with 39 of those cancellations occurring in the first five months of 2026 alone.<\/p>\n

Even Amazon-owned Ring announced earlier this year that it would stop doing business with Flock Safety.<\/p>\n

Susie O\u2019Hara, a member of Santa Cruz, California\u2019s nominally nonpartisan City Council, told WBUR earlier this year that she grew increasingly concerned about local use of eight Flock cameras last year after learning that police were sharing data gleaned from the cameras with the company\u2019s national network without city officials\u2019 knowledge, a violation of state laws banning the practice.<\/p>\n

Read more America facing existential \u2018fight or flee\u2019 moment under Trump: Ex-Trump official<\/a><\/p>\n

O\u2019Hara became increasingly convinced that Santa Cruz should cancel its Flock contract after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, a US citizen, in Minneapolis in January.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have goose bumps on my arms thinking about the absolute chaos that was happening in Minneapolis,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd just the absolute insanity of what we were seeing… It was totally clear to me that we should in no way consciously be in this system at all\u2014just no way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Less than a week after Good\u2019s killing, the Santa Cruz City Council voted to terminate the city\u2019s Flock contract, becoming the first municipality in California to do so.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, the threat to our civil liberties was greater than any benefit we could get from the flawed product,\u201d Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley told KQED at the time.<\/p>\n

Chad Kemp, who represents District 32 on the nonpartisan Dane County Board of Supervisors in Wisconsin\u2014which in April voted to stop funding two dozen cameras leased from Flock\u2014told The Washington Times that \u201cthere\u2019s a public safety issue here, but there is also a privacy issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are serious concerns about individuals who can be monitored without their knowledge, or if it is even constitutional or ethical to track people without a warrant,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

At the national level, US Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) last year launched an investigation into the use of Flock cameras to track pregnant people across state lines for abortion care and to conduct unauthorized immigration enforcement operations.<\/p>\n

Krishnamoorthi and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have also urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Flock Safety \u201cfor failing to implement cybersecurity protections, allowing Americans\u2019 personal data to be exposed to hackers, criminals, and spies to steal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their demand came after the cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock revealed that hackers stole passwords and data from at least 35 Flock customer accounts.<\/p>\n

In May, US Reps. Jes\u00fas \u201cChuy\u201d Garcia (D-Ill.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) introduced a bipartisan amendment to a bill that would prohibit state and local governments receiving federal highway funds from using ALPRs for purposes other than electronic toll collection.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just Flock. Axon, Vigilant Solutions\u2014a subsidiary of Motorola Solutions\u2014Genetec, PlateSmart, Innova Systems, Rekor, ELSAG, Perceptics, Jenoptik, and other firms market ALPRs to law enforcement agencies, private companies, and others.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter which company has its creepy cameras in your neighborhood,\u201d the ACLU said, \u201cthey all have the same problems: a lack of transparency, oversight, and regulation into how they collect, store, and use our data, and how to hold public and private actors accountable if they abuse it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Pulitzer-prize winner issues \u2018would-be American Nero\u2019 Trump blistering takedown<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Resistance is mounting across the United States against the increasing use of surveillance tech company Flock Safety\u2019s cameras, with a growing number of cities canceling contracts as the artificial intelligence-powered license plate readers are quietly being installed in thousands of locations natio…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nGrowing surveillance state under Trump admin sparks nationwide backlash - Property Relocation USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/propertyrelocationusa.com\/?p=3381\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Growing surveillance state under Trump admin sparks nationwide backlash - 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