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Hawley invites four camera vendor CEOs to testify, but only Verkada responds on who can access surveillance data
A Senate subcommittee will ask four camera vendors on Sept. 23 who has access to hundreds of millions of Americans' data. Verkada answered in writing first and said its chief executive cannot attend.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- Sen. Josh Hawley's Judiciary subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism will hold a surveillance hearing on Wednesday, Sept. 23, and he has invited the chief executives of Flock, Axon, Motorola and Verkada to testify.
- A Verkada spokesperson told Gizmodo on Friday that chief executive Filip Kaliszan will not attend the hearing, and that the company is providing information to the subcommittee instead.
- Axon president Josh Isner told an earnings call earlier this year, according to the Guardian, that customers switching from other vendors cited the company's privacy and ethics record as a deciding factor.
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Why it matters
- decision Any agency renewing one of these contracts now has to decide in public whether cross-agency lookup stays switched on, because a feature sold as reach is the same feature the subcommittee is asking about.
- exposure The chief, not the vendor, answers for an officer who searched a plate for personal reasons, and the record that would settle it sits in software the department bought.
- contradiction Hawley's framing treats the vendors as one nationwide system, while Axon has been telling investors that its privacy record wins it customers from rivals, so the industry does not share a position going in.
- precedent Answering the access question on paper and staying out of the witness chair gives the other invited vendors a route through Wednesday, and gives the subcommittee written statements it can hold them to later.
The Flock misuse allegations are about logins. At least 50 law enforcement officials have been accused of using the system to stalk wives or ex-girlfriends, according to the Washington Post [4]. Flock's cameras can be called up by police departments across the country [20]. The feature being sold is reach, so that a small department can find a car that left its county.
"Americans do not surrender their privacy rights when they drive to work, drop their kids off at school, or go to church," Hawley told Fox News Digital [16]. He has run this kind of hearing before, on surveillance pricing [17].
Verkada has already put its answer to the access question in writing. "Our customers can only access the data in their own systems," a spokesperson told Gizmodo on Friday [7], adding that the company runs no national network for customers to search [8]. The same statement said the company is providing information to help Chairman Hawley and Ranking Member Durbin prepare for the hearing [9].
Axon is best known for tasers and also deploys automated license plate readers [10]. The company has suggested that anger at Flock sent it new business [12]. Josh Isner, Axon's president, said on an earnings call earlier this year, according to the Guardian, that customers, some of whom came from other vendors, told the company "our track record on privacy and ethics was a deciding factor in their decision" [11]. The Gizmodo report includes no contract language, and no buyer in it names an audit-log requirement. The evidence that procurement has moved is that earnings call.
Motorola Solutions also makes ALPRs, and local agencies sometimes present them as having more privacy safeguards [13]. The Electronic Frontier Foundation posted video of Motorola cameras hidden in orange traffic cones near the U.S.-Mexico border in Southern California [14]. Where a camera sits and who can search it are separate questions.
Hawley posted the invitation on Sept. 18 for a hearing five days later [3][18], titled "Always Watching: Flock's Nationwide AI Surveillance Network" [2]. Of the four invitations, one has a public answer [5]. Gizmodo said Flock, Axon and Motorola had not immediately responded to its questions [15]. Three of the four seats are unsettled on the record [19].
Two questions sort these products before a renewal, and both are answerable from an admin screen. One: whether a single credentialed user can retrieve a record the agency never collected. Two: whether the log of that retrieval leaves the vendor's system on a schedule the agency controls. Wide reach with logs only the vendor can produce is the pairing to worry about, because the misuse lands on the department and the evidence lives in the product. Verkada answered the first question on Friday [7]. The other three vendors get asked out loud on Wednesday [1].
What to watch
- Whether Flock, Axon or Motorola confirm their CEOs will appear on Sept. 23 or file written statements like Verkada's.
- Whether any police department or city publishes contract language after the hearing requiring exportable audit logs or disabling cross-agency search.
- Whether the subcommittee releases the information Verkada says it is providing to Hawley and Durbin.