Sanders–AOC Ban Flock Act Puts Federal Grants Behind a Camera Kill Switch

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Official U.S. Senate portrait, Feb. 15, 2007 — United States Congress / public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Official U.S. Senate portrait, Feb. 15, 2007 — United States Congress / public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Five federal cabinets. One condition. Zero license-plate cameras.

That is the core of the Ban Flock Act that Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) unveiled Oct. 2. Under Section 4 of the bill text posted by Sanders’s office and Ocasio-Cortez’s office, beginning the first fiscal year after enactment, no Justice, Transportation, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, or Homeland Security financial assistance could go to a state or city that still lets its agencies use automatic license plate readers — unless that jurisdiction adopts a ban at least as strict as the federal ban in Section 3.

The sponsors pitched the measure as a privacy shield against Flock Safety and other ALPR vendors. Ocasio-Cortez’s release says Flock runs more than 120,000 cameras that scan about 20 billion vehicles a month, and she accused “Big Tech companies like Flock Safety” of harvesting data “without their consent.” Sanders called the deployment an evisceration of privacy. Merkley said Americans should be free to move around “without every move being monitored.” The Washington Post and Politico both flagged the debut as part of a broader backlash against the technology.

The documentation of abuse is not imaginary. Indiana already has charged officers for turning plate-reader searches into personal tracking tools — coverage the Hoosier Enquirer has carried on IMPD and a Hancock County deputy. A bipartisan backlash against Flock is real. What Hoosiers need to see clearly is who is writing the federal cure, and what that cure does to grant-dependent police budgets that use the cameras for lawful case work.

The bill’s three hammers

Section 3 would bar federal agencies and federal officials from acquiring, possessing, accessing, or using ALPRs or captured plate data in the United States, except where an Act of Congress explicitly authorizes a particular use with tight retention and audit rules, or for narrowly cabined tolling. The same section creates a private right of action against the federal government for violations, with actual and punitive damages plus attorneys’ fees, and lets state attorneys general sue as parens patriae.

Section 4 is the state-and-local squeeze: DOJ, DOT, HHS, HUD, and DHS money stops flowing unless the jurisdiction has a law or binding policy prohibiting ALPR use by its agencies and contractors “to the same or greater extent” as the federal ban.

Section 5 then blocks federal funds from buying, leasing, operating, or contracting for ALPRs or plate data — and bars recipients from laundering around the ban by shifting accounts. Non-federal dollars for otherwise lawful activity would remain available under a rule of construction in the draft. Tolling systems get limited carve-outs.

Indiana’s fight is already on the calendar

Gov. Mike Braun said Sept. 28 that lawmakers should take up license-plate-reader rules in the January 2027 session. He framed the debate as bipartisan and civil-libertarian, then drew a line: he does not want to strip law enforcement of a tool that has been “beneficial” on the job, according to WRTV.

The same week, IndyStar reported that Hamilton County agencies have searched more than 23,000 plates on Flock systems since January 2023, with Carmel and Fishers among the heaviest searchers in a USA Today database of Indiana agencies. Axios reported that Eyes Off Indiana is pushing short retention, audit trails, and a public portal, while Rep. Jim Pressel (R-Rolling Prairie) is drafting House legislation for the January session. IMPD has already tightened its own search rules after five officers were charged, Axios noted.

Local heat is not limited to Indianapolis. Deflock Evansville packed a City Council meeting in late September to demand an end to the cameras, 14 News reported. And a City-County Council committee advanced IMPD’s nearly $400 million 2027 budget — still including Flock funding — toward an Oct. 19 final vote, per WISH-TV.

That is the Indiana ledger the Ban Flock Act would land on: documented officer abuse on one side, a governor who wants state guardrails without a total disarmament on the other, and a capital still budgeting for the cameras while drafting its own oversight bills.

Washington’s authors, Indiana’s grants

Sanders, Merkley, and Ocasio-Cortez are not writing a retention-limit statute or an audit mandate. Their text is a federal funding cutoff that treats every ALPR deployment — the stalking case and the stolen-car recovery alike — as a disqualifier for five major grant pipelines. Cities that keep the cameras for lawful policing would have to choose between those systems and Justice, Homeland Security, Transportation, HHS, and HUD dollars.

Indiana’s January session is the place where Hoosier legislators can write retention caps, search logs, and misuse penalties without inviting three of Congress’s furthest-left members to set the state’s camera policy through the appropriations back door. The Ban Flock Act makes that trade-off explicit. The authors put their names on it. Grant-dependent agencies will have to read every line.

Written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers.