Stop Flocking Us

Unbeknown to most Iowa residents, our public roads are rapidly being turned into an unprecedented, for-profit surveillance network. In fact, this is happening all around the country, and Iowa is somewhat late to the party—but we're catching up quickly.



Flock Safety—the surveillance company that is literally blanketing the country, and our state, with its unregulated "vehicle-fingerprinting" cameras—is doing so under the promise of increased public safety, based on claims and statistics that have repeatedly been found to be exaggerated or outright fabricated.^{1 }

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^It's an age-old story of exploiting public fear for profit, but with a truly dystopian twist: the company's CEO, Garrett Langley, apparently envisions a future America "where crime no longer exists"—and believes the way to achieve that future is through a 24/7, total-surveillance society:

Not really.



Flock’s cameras don’t just capture license plates. They identify vehicles using a “vehicle fingerprint”—recording location, time, travel patterns, and more. This data is stored and shared without a warrant, often across jurisdictions, and with virtually no oversight. And despite company claims to the contrary, it is regularly used in ways that violate both public trust and Flock’s own stated policies.



Here are just a few examples:



— The feds' hidden immigration weapon: Virginia's surveillance network 



— ICE Taps into Nationwide AI-Enabled Camera Network, Data Shows



— Dozens of Police Agencies in California Are Still Sharing Driver Locations with Anti-Abortion States.

The short answer: it likely isn’t. But when has a lack of clear constitutional grounding ever stopped law enforcement from adopting new technology—especially when it expands their power?



Flock’s system collects and stores location data on millions of law-abiding people, without a warrant, probable cause, or individual suspicion. Legal scholars have raised serious Fourth Amendment concerns about this kind of mass surveillance.



On February 5, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that vehicle fingerprinting through pervasive camera surveillance likely violates the Fourth Amendment. The court found that this potential violation constituted a sufficient injury to give plaintiffs standing to sue the City of Norfolk, and it denied the City’s motion to dismiss—both on standing grounds and for failure to state a claim.