![\"CEOs](\"https:\/\/dailycallernewsfoundation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Flock_Safety_camera_with_solar_panel-e1784130138112.jpg\")
![https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/1\/1a\/Flock_Safety_camera_with_solar_panel.jpg<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nBy Nicole Silverio<\/p>\n\n\n\nTechnology CEOs did not show up to testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing Wednesday about mass surveillance concerns related to Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs).<\/p>\n\n\n\nRepublican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who chairs the Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, invited CEOs Garrett Langley of Flock Safety, Rick Smith of Axon Enterprise, Greg Brown of Motorola Solutions and Filip Kaliszan of Verkada to testify about their products\u2019 access to Americans\u2019 data. Five witnesses, including alleged victims of automated surveillance and a cybersecurity engineer, testified before the committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThe CEOs of Flock Safety, Axon, Motorola Solutions, and Verkada declined to testify today,\u201d Hawley said on X.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHawley announced Friday that he invited the CEOs to testify after the subcommittee opened an investigation<\/a> into automated surveillance technologies. A Verkada spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation Friday they would be \u201cunable\u201d to attend the hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cUnfortunately, our CEO is unable to attend next week\u2019s hearing. We are in communication with the Subcommittee and are providing information to assist Chairman Hawley and Ranking Member Durbin as they prepare for the hearing. As we\u2019ve explained to the Subcommittee, none of our customers can search a national Verkada network \u2013 because none exists. Our customers can only access the data in their own systems,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFlock Safety, Axon and Motorola Solutions did not respond to the DCNF\u2019s question on why they did not appear.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAmong those who testified were Lindsey Isaacs, a driver from Florida who was wrongfully accused of fleeing a fatal car accident due to data collected from Flock cameras. She spent 13 days in jail and faced eight felony counts, according to Hawley\u2019s letter<\/a> to Langley in August.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Milwaukee, Wisconsin, prosecutors charged a police officer who allegedly searched his girlfriend\u2019s license plate 124 times and her former boyfriend\u2019s plate 55 times, and was later caught by a private citizen instead of Flock\u2019s audit system, according to Hawley\u2019s letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAn innocent driver in Wisconsin was held at gunpoint<\/a> in August after a camera made a mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMotorola Solutions and its subsidiary, Vigilant Solutions, were slapped with a massive class-action lawsuit<\/a> that accused the companies of violating California\u2019s strict privacy laws related to vehicle-tracking data. The suit alleged that the data collected by its automated surveillance technologies was illegally shared with out-of-state law enforcement and federal immigration agencies without proper consent or oversight safeguards.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAn international hacker bypassed<\/a> Verkada\u2019s security by finding \u201csuper admin\u201d credentials left exposed online, allowing hackers to gain access to over 150,000 Verkada cameras worldwide in March 2021. The hackers viewed real-time footage inside psychiatric hospitals, women\u2019s health clinics, prisons and elementary schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHawley asked Langley in a letter<\/a> to answer a series of questions, which included stating the parameters by which customers can conduct statewide or nationwide searches of vehicles or driver data, according to the letter. The letter asked Langley to state the total number of confirmed instances of misuse since Jan. 1, 2021, describe what a user must enter to justify a search and name every restriction Flock imposes on the purposes for which its systems can be searched.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNot a single bill in Congress has yet been introduced to ban Flock cameras or other automated license plate readers (ALPRs) outright. Republican Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said on July 22 that she was working on a bill to ban them completely, though that bill has yet to be introduced.<\/p>\n\n\n\nRepublican Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett introduced<\/a> the \u201cProtection Against Mass Surveillance Act\u201d in July to ban federal agencies from purchasing or operating Flock cameras or any form of automated surveillance that \u201cidentify, track, or record individuals.\u201d Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie said he planned to introduce a bill aiming to withhold federal funds from local municipalities and police departments using Flock and ALPRs.<\/p>\n\n\n\nA Flock spokesperson previously told the DCNF that Congress should consider \u201cstrong, clear safeguards\u201d rather than outright banning automated surveillance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And these hearings are all for show without anything really substantial ever getting done, though we did learn about a fourth player in the market. And they have a substantial amount of cameras installed worldwide, and the hack they suffered granting a hacker access to the whole network is alarming. I suspect these corporations are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","category-world"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18867"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18868,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18867\/revisions\/18868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/1\/1a\/Flock_Safety_camera_with_solar_panel.jpg\"){kind=link}
By Nicole Silverio<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Technology CEOs did not show up to testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing Wednesday about mass surveillance concerns related to Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who chairs the Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, invited CEOs Garrett Langley of Flock Safety, Rick Smith of Axon Enterprise, Greg Brown of Motorola Solutions and Filip Kaliszan of Verkada to testify about their products\u2019 access to Americans\u2019 data. Five witnesses, including alleged victims of automated surveillance and a cybersecurity engineer, testified before the committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe CEOs of Flock Safety, Axon, Motorola Solutions, and Verkada declined to testify today,\u201d Hawley said on X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hawley announced Friday that he invited the CEOs to testify after the subcommittee opened an investigation<\/a> into automated surveillance technologies. A Verkada spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation Friday they would be \u201cunable\u201d to attend the hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUnfortunately, our CEO is unable to attend next week\u2019s hearing. We are in communication with the Subcommittee and are providing information to assist Chairman Hawley and Ranking Member Durbin as they prepare for the hearing. As we\u2019ve explained to the Subcommittee, none of our customers can search a national Verkada network \u2013 because none exists. Our customers can only access the data in their own systems,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Flock Safety, Axon and Motorola Solutions did not respond to the DCNF\u2019s question on why they did not appear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among those who testified were Lindsey Isaacs, a driver from Florida who was wrongfully accused of fleeing a fatal car accident due to data collected from Flock cameras. She spent 13 days in jail and faced eight felony counts, according to Hawley\u2019s letter<\/a> to Langley in August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, prosecutors charged a police officer who allegedly searched his girlfriend\u2019s license plate 124 times and her former boyfriend\u2019s plate 55 times, and was later caught by a private citizen instead of Flock\u2019s audit system, according to Hawley\u2019s letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An innocent driver in Wisconsin was held at gunpoint<\/a> in August after a camera made a mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Motorola Solutions and its subsidiary, Vigilant Solutions, were slapped with a massive class-action lawsuit<\/a> that accused the companies of violating California\u2019s strict privacy laws related to vehicle-tracking data. The suit alleged that the data collected by its automated surveillance technologies was illegally shared with out-of-state law enforcement and federal immigration agencies without proper consent or oversight safeguards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An international hacker bypassed<\/a> Verkada\u2019s security by finding \u201csuper admin\u201d credentials left exposed online, allowing hackers to gain access to over 150,000 Verkada cameras worldwide in March 2021. The hackers viewed real-time footage inside psychiatric hospitals, women\u2019s health clinics, prisons and elementary schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n