How You’re Paying for All These Flock Cameras

A Mother Jones investigation found that 19 police agencies in 10 states have spent nearly $1 million from opioid settlement funds on Flock automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), which use AI-powered surveillance, diverting money intended for addiction treatment. The report highlights growing public concern over the secretive deployment of surveillance technology, with critics like Michigan congressional candidate Will Lawrence calling it 'a deeply un-American thing.'

As Donald Trump engages in the bold midterm election strategy of telling 75 percent of the country that they will be “ backwards and poor https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-says-communities-that-oppose-data-centers-risk-becoming-backwards-and-poor-601f41d7 ” if they refuse to allow substantial portions of land to be handed over to data centers, he’s one expression of transpartisan outrage behind. Anger is building just as persistently about Flock cameras, the automatic license plate readers ALPRs powered by artificial intelligence and the data centers that make AI run, which are used increasingly by law enforcement to surveil and track citizens, often improperly. “This is a deeply un-American thing that is being done,” said Will Lawrence, the congressional candidate in Michigan who has been well ahead of the political class on identifying and acting on technology products that inflame local communities, from data centers to Flock. “It flies in the face of something fundamental to our country, the small-r republican condition of suspicion to arbitrary authority, from big business and big government.” People are as concerned about the panopticon of ever-present surveillance as they are about the implications of an artificial intelligence sold to the public as destroying jobs if not the planet. But the two technology rollouts share something else in common: the rather sneaky ways in which they are being foisted on the public. City officials repeatedly are signing nondisclosure agreements https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/data-center-ai-google-amazon-nda-non-disclosure-agreement-colossus-rcna236423 with developers and concealing the details about data center development from the public. Flock cameras have also appeared without public deliberation or warning in a lot of communities, but the bigger issue is that municipalities are purchasing the equipment with money originally intended for other purposes. In both cases, the secrecy and underhandedness give the impression that public officials value tech partnerships more than transparency, and that there really is something to hide with these systems. People clearly want a voice in deciding the future of their communities and the terms upon which that future will proceed. In this sense, data centers and Flock cameras are in some ways physical manifestations of the nation’s soaring inequality, an egregious example of how economic power gets translated into political power. Shady closed-door deals just make that perception more egregious. Diverting settlement funds for other uses is a favorite pastime of the powerful. In the aftermath of the foreclosure fraud settlement, states stole the money to fill budget holes https://www.salon.com/2015/06/16/california is screwing its citizens how the state broke the law -and left distressed homeowners to drown/ or other purposes rather than help victims of illegal foreclosures. The latest pot of cash that states can raid comes from the national opioid settlement. More than $50 billion was made available to heal communities destroyed by the epidemic, expected to be spent on initiatives like treatment and detox centers and anti-overdose medications. But as a KFF investigation https://kffhealthnews.org/public-health/opioid-settlements-law-enforcement-spending-states-towns-guns-narcan/ reveals, a nontrivial amount of these settlement funds has gone into policing for things like Tasers and drones. And since law enforcement loves nothing more than purchasing new toys, that also means that opioid settlement dollars are buying Flock cameras. Mother Jones https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/08/police-opioid-funding-flock-alpr-camera-surveillance-tech/ was able to find 19 agencies in ten states that have spent close to $1 million on ALPRs; the total number is likely much higher. Police departments have justified this by saying that ALPRs can fight crime, and drug crime in particular, and therefore will prevent epidemics from recurring. But that is manifestly not the purpose of the opioid settlement, which was to get help for addicted people who needed it. Incredibly, seven of the 19 expenditures on ALPRs came out of West Virginia, ground zero of the opioid crisis. That may not be the most outrageous Flock financing scheme. In Texas, the legislature imposed a new $1 fee on auto insurance, they said to combat the persistent stealing of catalytic converters, which is real says this victim of catalytic converter theft . But $30 million in revenues from that fee out of a total of $81 million has been diverted toward purchasing and installing Flock cameras along state highways, according to The Texas Tribune https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/28/texas-flock-cameras-auto-insurance-fee-mvcpa-grants/ . That’s 3,200 Flock cameras coming from the auto insurance fee. Again, you can twist yourself into saying that license plate readers can stop catalytic converter theft. But exactly how do Flock cameras on the highway do that? I don’t think the thieves are wrenching these things out of the undersides of vehicles operating at top speed. Hilariously, when the Tribune asked Gov. Greg Abbott about this multiple times, he didn’t respond but then announced https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/08/29/flock-cameras-stir-bipartisan-fury-gov-greg-abbott-blocks-them-texas/ that the state would pause all funding for Flock cameras. People are definitely angry about the all-seeing, all-knowing aspect of Flock cameras, and the easy opportunities for abuse, from the mundanity of rogue police officers using them to spy on their ex-girlfriends https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/texas-officer-arrested-after-searching-ex-girlfriend-s-license-plate-10000-times-using-flock-cameras-records-reveal/ar-AA2b8lNu something we hear about seemingly daily , or the more invasive collaborations with ICE to find immigrants, or even searches to find women https://www.404media.co/a-texas-cop-searched-license-plate-cameras-nationwide-for-a-woman-who-got-an-abortion/ who got abortions. But I would argue that the bait and switch is a critical angle as well. In the Trump era, people’s radar for corruption is heightened. The combination of not wanting Flock cameras in their communities https://www.vox.com/podcasts/499822/flock-ai-cameras-backlash-stalking-surveillance and local and state governments raiding money earmarked for other purposes to buy them is magnifying the frustration. If these are truly benign technologies that help stop crime, people reasonably think, why are they being secretly funded? The lesson of Watergate was that it’s not the crime but the cover-up. Flock cameras would capture attention even if municipalities were deliberately installing them after public debate. But the cover-up is just heightening the anger.