NC’s Pat Harrigan intros bill restricting Flock cameras nationally
It’s refreshing to come across an elected Republican who’s doing more than sitting around waiting for marching orders from *leadership.*
Congressman Pat Harrigan (R-NC10) has taken it upon himself to introduce legislation restricting and limiting the use of Flock cameras nationally:
Republican Rep. Pat Harrigan (NC-10) has apparently had enough of the government’s growing network of surveillance cameras that track Americans wherever they drive. On Thursday, he introduced legislation to impose serious restrictions on Flock cameras and other automated license plate readers, including requiring warrants before police can search most of the information they collect
The bill, H.R. 10822, would also require deleting most records within 24 hours, prohibit searches based on political or religious bumper stickers, and stop private vendors from selling the information or using it to train artificial intelligence.
Considering what these cameras can do, it’s overdue.
Flock cameras photograph passing vehicles, recording license plates, locations, timestamps, and even identifying features such as bumper stickers. Police departments can search that information, including records shared by other agencies, to reconstruct someone’s movements.
The company says its network scans roughly 20 billion license plates every month. That’s an awful lot of information on Americans who haven’t done anything wrong.
Harrigan explained his concern during an interview published Saturday:
“When you consider that these systems track everything that you do, where you work, where your kids go to school, where you even go to church, I think it’s pretty easy to understand why people are concerned.”
He continued: “So, that’s an extraordinary amount of information about somebody that the government has that has never committed a crime.”
He’s got a point. Police don’t need a searchable history of your daily routine simply because a camera happens to be mounted on a pole outside your neighborhood.
And we’ve already seen what happens when someone with access decides to get creative.
As RedState previously reported, Florida police officer Christopher Goodson was arrested in August after investigators alleged he searched for his estranged wife’s vehicle 717 times using Flock’s database. Some searches allegedly occurred while he was off duty.
In North Carolina, another officer was accused of using the system 31 times to monitor her boyfriend’s ex-wife. Harrigan pointed to that case during a September interview, warning that the technology was already being abused.
He didn’t mince words: “We have to approach this in a 702-like manner.”
Harrigan didn’t stop there. He had a specific framework in mind.
“We’ve got to put very, very serious 702-like guardrails on this, where that information comes from, what warrants are required in order to actually query or search the system.”
Harrigan was referring to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, another surveillance authority that has drawn criticism over government access to Americans’ information.
His proposed restrictions go beyond warrants. Agencies would face audits and reporting requirements, while people subjected to illegal searches could sue for at least $1,000 per violation. States without qualifying protections could also lose some federal criminal justice funding.
RedState’s Susie Moore recently covered a federal ruling in Oklahoma, where a judge found that police violated the Fourth Amendment by searching a month’s worth of a driver’s movements without a warrant.
Flock and its defenders insist the technology helps catch criminals. Sure it does. That’s never been the argument. But a useful investigative tool doesn’t automatically justify collecting information on millions of innocent drivers, and warrants exist for a reason.
Harrigan’s bill would still allow police to use the technology during legitimate investigations and emergencies. What it would stop is the routine, warrantless collection and searching of Americans’ movements, the kind the government has somehow managed to live without for most of its existence. The Constitution didn’t come with an asterisk for convenient technology. […]
On August 18, 2026, I wrote to Representatives Neal Jackson and Ben Moss and Senator Tom McInnis, copying the Moore County Sheriff, urging the General Assembly to establish stronger safeguards governing automated license plate reader systems such as Flock Safety.
On August 19, Representative Jackson responded, “Very good suggestions – thank you.” I appreciated his acknowledgment, but that was the only response I received.
My concern then, as it is now, was not the legitimate use of technology to assist law enforcement. It was the potential for abuse without adequate oversight and accountability.
I proposed common-sense protections, including mandatory audit trails, documented law-enforcement purposes for every search, independent audits, reasonable data retention limits, restrictions on information sharing, and meaningful penalties for intentional misuse.
Now, Congressman Pat Harrigan has introduced federal legislation addressing many of these same concerns.
Meanwhile, here in Moore County, we have seen considerable public pushback directed at the Sheriff and County Commissioners over the use of Flock cameras.
I cannot help but wonder how much of this controversy might have been avoided if our elected officials had taken a more proactive approach to addressing citizens’ legitimate privacy concerns.
Let me make something very clear: I trust our current Sheriff.
But our Sheriff will not always occupy that office. Eventually, someone else will take his place, and I cannot automatically assume that his successor will exercise the same judgment, restraint, and respect for citizens’ constitutional rights.
That is precisely why these protections need to be codified into law rather than left to the discretion of whoever happens to hold public office.
Good government does not depend upon always having good people in positions of authority. It depends upon establishing laws, safeguards, and accountability mechanisms that protect citizens regardless of who holds those positions.
And this extends beyond the Sheriff himself. Deputies, investigators, neighboring agencies, and potentially others may have access to information collected through these systems. Every authorized user should operate under the same clearly defined standards.
The Fourth Amendment is not dependent upon the character of an elected official, and neither should the protection of our personal information be.
Instead of allowing this issue to become a battle between supporting law enforcement and protecting constitutional liberties, why not recognize that we can do both?
Clear statutory safeguards, independent oversight, transparency, and meaningful consequences for abuse could go a long way toward restoring public confidence.
When citizens know how their information can be used, who can access it, how long it is retained, and what happens when someone abuses that access, they have a stronger basis for trusting the system.
I welcome Congressman Harrigan’s initiative, but North Carolina should not have to wait for Washington to establish protections for its own citizens.
Perhaps the lesson from the controversy here in Moore County is that public trust cannot simply be demanded. It must be earned through transparency, accountability, and respect for constitutional rights.
We should write laws that protect our citizens not only from those we distrust today, but also from those we may have reason to distrust tomorrow.