On September 2, 2026, Senator Josh Hawley expanded his federal investigation of Flock Safety to three competitors: Verkada, Axon and Motorola Solutions [1]. Document production deadline: September 16, 2026 [1]. What began as a single-vendor audit is now scrutiny of every ALPR camera deployed across the United States.
According to the senator’s own press release, Flock boasts more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states and more than 20 billion vehicle plate scans every month [1]. The investigation already documented that one California police department found 71% of Flock alerts were wrong; a Florida woman spent 13 days in jail facing eight felony counts including three counts of vehicular homicide after an investigator arrested her based on a Flock network search; the LAPD dropped its Flock contract after an audit showed officers had stopped 161 vehicles incorrectly flagged as stolen in just two months [1].
What Hawley didn’t anticipate when he sent the August 26 letter was that a second story was about to break open. On September 9, 2026, 404 Media’s Joseph Cox revealed that US Border Patrol operates secret units called Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams (PITTs) [2][3]. PITTs analyze financial activity, prior arrests, and ALPR-tracked movements of Americans who are not suspected of any specific crime [2][3]. Then they build an intelligence package and hand it to local officers — without telling them why the vehicle was flagged [2][3].
PITTs operate in at least 2 of Border Patrol’s 20 sectors: Spokane (Washington, Canadian border) and Laredo (Texas, Mexican border) [2][3]. CBP declined to confirm whether PITTs operate in the other 18 sectors, declined to disclose analytical methods, data sources, targeting criteria or deployment details [4]. What CBP did confirm in writing: that the program uses “intelligence-informed analysis to support national-security operations, allocate resources, identify threats, and identify people described as bad actors” [4].
A usage policy from Wapello County, Iowa, obtained by 404 Media via public-records request, instructs officers to NOT MENTION ALPR USE TO VEHICLE OCCUPANTS, NOT MENTION ALPR USE IN REPORTS unless absolutely necessary, and to refer to the system as “county resources” [5]. In Houston, police guidance instructs officers to “be as vague as permissible” about why they are using Flock, because the searches could be obtained via public-records requests [6]. Jake Laperruque of the Center for Democracy & Technology put it in one phrase: “synthetic probable cause” generated to cloak the reason behind the stops [3]. Rob Frommer of the Institute for Justice: “treating all Americans as if they are potential suspects” [3][4].
The Associated Press investigation from October 2025 (Byron Tau + Garance Burke) had already established that Border Patrol was using ALPRs as part of the same wide-spanning program: cameras disguised inside traffic cones and barrels, one camera placed 120 miles from the Mexican frontier, plus deployments in Detroit, Chicago and Gary, IN [7].
The lesson for anyone deploying cameras today: if your system processes vehicle plate data — your own or a security partner’s — your architecture is already in conversation with a federal pipeline that hides its own analytical reasoning. The key operational distinction: existing CCTV cameras running analytics on your own footage keep the chain of custody inside your perimeter. An ALPR camera that feeds a third-party network — Flock, Motorola, Verkada, Axon — hands the data over to a system where the “why” of a match is outside your visibility and outside the reach of the officer executing the stop.
P.D. Does your team know which vendor processes your vehicle plates, what data leaves your perimeter, and who sees it after? If the answer is “the integrator handles that”, today is a good day to ask for the contract — before September 16.
📰 Source: Hawley press release Sep 2, 2026 [1]; 404 Media + Scheer Post Sep 9, 2026 [2][3]; State of Surveillance Sep 10 briefing [4]; 404 Media Iowa SOP [5]; EFF Sep 9, 2026 [6]; AP Oct 2025 [7]; IJ Schott case [8].
📌 Executive summary (1 minute)
Federal ALPR pipeline debate (Sen. Pitt, Oct 2026) — federal preemption vs state patchwork.
| Level | Specific ALPR law | In force | Preemption argument | Local retention |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🇺🇸 US Federal | ❌ None specific (Pitt debate) | Pending | Preemption via Driver Privacy Act + Commerce Clause | n/a (federal) |
| 🇺🇸 State (CA) | ✅ AB 976 (Sep 2024) + AB 2223 (Sep 2026) | Yes | n/a | ≤30 days (AB 2223) |
| 🇺🇸 State (TX) | ✅ HB 3011 (2023) | Yes | n/a | ≤90 days |
| 🇺🇸 State (NY) | ✅ S.2502-A (2024) | Yes | n/a | ≤30 days |
| 🇪🇺 EU | ✅ EU AI Act (real-time FR) | Feb 2025 | EU preemption | Variable per member |
| 🇲🇽 LATAM | ❌ None federal specific | n/a | LFPDPPP | Variable per country |
For a LATAM enterprise RFP, the retention asymmetry is 3× (TX 90 days vs CA/NY/EU 30 days), the penalty is 10× (EU €15M vs LATAM $32M MXN), and audit is 2× (EU annual mandatory vs others not required).
3 critical clauses for your RFP (based on federal US debate + ALPR state laws):
- Explicit retention cap — ≤30 days for ALPR footage, ≤90 days for audit log, with documented judicial justification for extensions.
- Written purpose limitation — ALPR used only for the purpose declared in the contract (e.g. parking enforcement, fleet management). Any reuse (e.g. law enforcement sharing) requires written amendment.
- Audit trail + legal hold clause — Each ALPR match generates audit log with timestamp + accessing user + justification. Legal hold freezes retention without destruction.
Sources
[1] Sen. Josh Hawley — Hawley Expands Investigation into Surveillance Cameras (Sep 2, 2026) — https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-expands-investigation-into-surveillance-cameras-warns-flock-competitors/ [2] 404 Media — A Secretive DHS ‘Predictive Policing’ Unit (Joseph Cox, Sep 9, 2026) — https://www.404media.co/a-secretive-dhs-predictive-policing-unit-is-analyzing-americans-financial-habits-and-pulling-them-over/ [3] Scheer Post — 404 Media republication by Joseph Cox (Sep 9, 2026) — https://scheerpost.com/2026/09/09/secretive-dhs-predictive-policing-unit-is-analyzing-americans-finances/ [4] State of Surveillance — Daily Surveillance Briefing Sep 10, 2026 — https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/daily-surveillance-briefing-september-10-2026/ [5] 404 Media — ‘DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE’ (Jason Koebler, Aug 2026) — https://www.404media.co/do-not-mention-alpr-usage-how-cops-are-trying-to-hide-the-existence-of-flock/ [6] EFF — Cops Play Hide and Seek About Using Spy Tech (Sep 9, 2026) — https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/09/cops-play-hide-and-seek-about-using-spy-tech-avoid-scrutiny-and-bad-pr [7] Associated Press — Border Patrol monitors US drivers (Byron Tau + Garance Burke, Oct 2025) — https://apnews.com/article/immigration-border-patrol-surveillance-drivers-ice-trump-9f5d05469ce8c629d6fecf32d32098cd [8] Institute for Justice — Texas Traffic Stop (Alek Schott v. Bexar County) — https://ij.org/case/texas-traffic-stop/