Sanders proposes a bill against Flock cameras: the federal government would be banned from scanning licence plates

Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont introduced a bill on Friday called the “Ban Flock Act”, which bans federal agencies from using automatic licence plate readers (ALPR) or accessing data collected by such readers from local police and private companies, as TechCrunch reports. The text of the bill does not mention Flock by name, but it covers all ALPR systems — while Flock, according to Sanders, is the largest company of its kind in the U.S., with over 120,000 cameras in its network.

The bill provides for only two exceptions: toll collection, and uses that Congress will approve later, with laws limiting data retention to a maximum of 48 hours. States and cities that do not comply with the law risk losing federal grants from five departments, including the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), starting from the first fiscal year after its adoption. Citizens would be able to sue the federal government for violations, while state attorneys general can enforce the law themselves.

Co-sponsors of the bill are Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon. But like most bills of this kind in Congress, this draft also has little chance of approval. Sanders frames the initiative as a strike against mass surveillance: in a February blog post, Flock stated that its network processes over 20 billion vehicle reads a month.

Pressure on Flock is growing: communities are protesting, while more and more agencies are suspending use or cancelling contracts with the company. In August, CEO Garrett Langley cut the standard data retention period from 30 to 7 days, while the company introduced an audit tool that blocks officers when their searches look suspicious. The case of a former Milwaukee officer, who pleaded guilty after 179 searches for his partner and her ex under the justification “investigation”, has fuelled the debate about abuse. Investor Jason Calacanis suggested a “double-key” system, where two people must approve a search — an idea Langley said is “on the whiteboard”.