The National Debate On The Widespread Use of Flock Cameras Reaches U.S. Senate
Opinion by Mike Hobson
Flock cameras, or Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPR), were front and center at a Wednesday (September 26, 2026) Committee on the Judiciary hearing of the U.S. Senate. The committee heard testimony and questioned multiple witnesses on the use and abuse of this tool used by city, state and federal municipalities, purportedly to help combat crime.
Floridian Lindsey Isaacs’ gut-wrenching testimony went viral, relaying how she spent 13 days wrongfully incarcerated because law enforcement used Flock information to incorrectly identify her car as part of a hit-and-run crash which killed several people. Yet Isaacs’ car did not match the color given by eyewitnesses and exhibited no damage when impounded.
This epic failure was only one of a number of examples presented during the hearing. The overwhelming takeaway: Flock technology has been used indiscriminately and wrongfully, and Congress must regulate its use.
Cities large and small in Alabama have quickly adopted and spread the use of Flock and other surveillance type cameras across the State. OpenMap reports 2,758 active Flock cameras in Alabama. The municipalities in Bibb County, Alabama are no exception.
Some Alabama communities are pushing back on Flock like they are on AI data centers. Red Bay’s city council voted to disable its Flock cameras, 1819 News reports, and other organizations are combining forces to “DeFlock” Alabama. Red Bay is not alone.
Institute for Justice (IJ) has done extensive tracking and documentation on Flock’s uses and abuses. IJ Legislative Counsel Alasdair Whitney was another witness, and he pointed out some dangerous failures, cataloging “more than 240 incidents nationwide, and the categories are disturbingly consistent.”
One thing that the public now knows for sure….these are not just license plate readers….they are much more sophisticated than we have been led to believe and their integration into the exploding artificial intelligence networks that are being built could have ominous implications for our liberty, freedom and your pocketbook.
Local law enforcement agencies in Alabama are not independent in their methods of operation. The installation of flock cameras in Bibb County were all approved by local city councils before they were deployed. These surveillance cameras are not free to the taxpayer, we foot the bill. We can also suffer when things go wrong with the technology and the policies of use that control them.
It is time for the leadership of the municipalities in Bibb County to examine this issue in the public forum. Who is using the data gleaned from these cameras ? What is the local policy for their use ? And what will happen when they are misused or abused ?
You are paying for it.
Do you think you should know ?
Can you wait for the United States Congress to solve this problem ? If we are lucky they may hold public hearings for the next 10 years, sort of like Russian interference in our elections.
I can’t wait long enough for that; can you ?
