Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has strongly criticised Flock Safety's license plate-reading cameras, joining a growing bipartisan backlash that has turned the technology into an unexpected issue in America's midterm elections. Speaking in a Wednesday interview, she said the cameras were "terrible" and warned they risked creating a "surveillance state" in which private companies harvest data via AI, calling their proliferation and often opaque contracts with police forces a threat to Americans' freedom to move without being watched.

Flock Safety's network has expanded from a local policing tool into a vast, searchable system spanning roughly 120,000 cameras across 49 US states, automatically logging licence plates of passing vehicles. Concerns about potential misuse, including tracking related to abortion and immigration enforcement, plus the possibility of federal access to the data, have pushed the issue into races across several states. Candidates from both parties, including Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro and his rival Stacy Garrity, and Wisconsin's gubernatorial candidates David Crowley and Tom Tiffany, have all voiced opposition or proposed restrictions, while some residents have staged protests, including vandalising a camera system in Houston.