Americans are divided more than ever. We have been for quite some time. Do we have the right to bear arms? Do women have the right to an abortion? Is illegal immigration a deportable crime? Should masks still be required in lesbian bars in 2026? Americans can’t agree on anything. Some aren’t even sure if they should have friends who vote differently. More than a few maintain political litmus tests for Thanksgiving.
Yet, as bleak as all this may sound, there’s one company doing its darnedest to bring Americans together — and that company’s name is Flock.
Yes, in these turbulent times, surveillance tech vendor Flock Safety has emerged as the hero America needs, uniting a divided people in their distrust of, well, Flock Safety.
On Sept. 23, this unity was on full display at a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee meeting at which Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) led a bipartisan hearing, setting the tone during his opening remarks: “Flock can tell you if a car has a Trump sticker or a Harris sticker or a Pro-Life America sticker or an [National Rifle Association] sticker.”
Later, during an exchange with Hawley, Alasdair Whitney of the Institute for Justice detailed how automatic license plate readers have been “placed in front of attorney’s offices, medical facilities, churches, mosques, other places of worship,” and described how allowing the government to have access to such information was something about which Americans should be concerned.
Upon receiving a question from Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) regarding whether ALPRs coupled with artificial intelligence could be used to find women who traveled across state lines for an abortion, Chad Marlow of the American Civil Liberties Union replied, “You can literally prompt AI to say, I want to find people who are leaving my state and seeking abortion care somewhere else where it remains legal and the AI … will look for patterns [of] who went to a doctor and then to a drug store in the state [where abortion is legal] and then returned to the state where it was illegal.”
Understanding the implications of this, Hawley, rather than turning the hearing into a debate about abortion, followed up with Marlow, “I’m just thinking for those of us who are supporters of the Second Amendment, we’ve long feared national databases of any kind. You could easily put these cameras up in front of a gun show or near a gun store or a range … and you can do all the same things … You can query all the same?”
“The only thing incorrect about what you said, senator, was you said ‘could,’” Marlow replied. “You should say ‘are.’ They’re doing all those things right now.”
For those who’ve been following the threat of mass surveillance, such assertions about the capabilities of ALPRs to identify a person’s political leanings or categorize them based on their participation in activities that may be stigmatized or legal in some states but not others come as no surprise.
It’s well-documented that ALPRs have been used to monitor attendees of political rallies, gun shows, and protests.
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But the common ground politicians and everyday Americans have found on the topic of Flock cameras is more recent, as most only became aware of them over the summer, while politicians didn’t really take notice till late August, with the likes of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) coming out against them.
However, now that a group diverse enough to include Hawley and Booker, DeSantis and Sanders, gun owners and abortion activists has been brought together, I think we have no choice but to acknowledge this as a beautiful thing and collectively say thank you Flock for uniting us in our shared outrage against you.
Daniel Nuccio is an independent journalist and a spring 2026 College Fix fellow. He is a regular contributor to the College Fix and the Brownstone Institute. He earned his doctorate in biology in 2025.