Invest1 publisher2 min readPublished
Trump backs the 120,000-camera network Hawley's subcommittee is investigating
The president told reporters he likes Flock's license plate readers, a month after Josh Hawley opened a formal investigation into the company's data practices and Greg Abbott halted Texas state funding for the cameras.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Flock has installed more than 120,000 cameras across more than 6,000 U.S. communities, and Decrypt reports the network scans roughly 20 billion vehicles a month.
- Josh Hawley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary crime subcommittee, opened a formal investigation into Flock's data practices in late August and later widened it to Motorola Solutions, Verkada and Axon.
- Texas ordered state agencies to halt funding for Flock cameras in late August, and the Los Angeles Police Department suspended its own contract in July over data-sharing and security concerns.
- Wired reported that Flock built a tool, first called Nightshift and now Flock OS Investigate, that can identify and track drivers without ever capturing a name or a license plate.
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Why it matters
- constraint Flock's purchase orders are signed in city halls and state agencies, so a governor's funding halt takes money off the table that a presidential preference cannot put back.
- decision With Massie's bill proposing to cut federal funding to agencies that deploy the cameras, a chief signing a renewal has to price the chance the federal money stops mid-contract.
- exposure Hawley's expansion to Motorola Solutions, Verkada and Axon makes answering the subcommittee a cost across the vendor set, so investors in any of the four now carry the same inquiry.
- contradiction The endorsement and the investigation come from the same party, so a council voting on a camera contract has no single federal position to cite.
Divide roughly 20 billion vehicle scans a month by the 120,000-plus cameras and the average pole logs about 167,000 reads a month, near 5,600 a day, close to four a minute [7][6][21]. That average matters because of the two-minute window in one of the presets Wired found. A query that flags a vehicle's "associates" by checking which other cars pass the same camera inside two minutes is drawing from roughly eight vehicles at an average site [10][22]. Traffic is lumpy, so a county road sees far fewer and a city arterial many more.
Flock's money comes from police departments and city governments, and Decrypt did not report contract values or revenue [24]. Both purchasing halts on the record were ordered by a governor and by a police chief [15][16]. Out of Washington, so far, there is an investigation and Bernie Sanders's pledge of separate legislation [11][13].
Asked aboard Air Force One on the flight back from Ireland whether he would back the plate readers, Trump said, "Yeah, I sort of like them because of that, because of law enforcement" [1][2]. He allowed that "some people" consider the cameras "an infringement" [3]. When a reporter noted that the network "helps catch a lot of criminals," he said, "I like them" [4]. In August he had said the administration was still weighing the "pros and cons" [5].
The same in-flight session turned to AI safety. Decrypt reported that Dario Amodei had published an essay a day earlier urging the industry to slow down, that Sam Altman made a similar case for pacing development, and that the market crashed as soon as Monday's session began [20]. Trump said, "I'm not downplaying," then, "but it's going to be more good than bad, but by a lot" [17]. He also told reporters, "Whoever wins AI, and we're leading by a lot. Whoever wins AI, wins," and put calls for tighter guardrails down to "negative forces" raising alarms about things that "won't happen" [18][19].
In my view the endorsement is worth less to Flock than one state's funding halt costs it, because the buyers are municipal and a governor or a city council can stop payment without consulting the White House. The counter-thesis is straightforward. A stated presidential preference deters the next governor from copying Abbott, the installed base keeps compounding across more than 6,000 communities [6], and the Senate inquiry ends up as a document-production expense shared with Motorola Solutions, Verkada and Axon [12]. Hawley opened his investigation and Abbott issued his order in the same month, late August [11][15].
What to watch
- Whether a second state copies Abbott's funding halt, or the Los Angeles suspension becomes a termination.
- Whether Massie's bill to cut federal funding to agencies deploying the cameras gets a committee or floor vote.
- Whether Hawley's subcommittee sets hearing dates or issues document demands to Motorola Solutions, Verkada and Axon.