Josh Hawley Asks Surveillance CEOs To Testify As Industry Faces Heat Over Privacy

Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley announced Friday that he invited technology CEOs to testify before Congress about mass surveillance concerns relating to Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs).

Hawley opened an investigation into Flock Safety cameras and their access to Americans’ data, highlighting several incidents where Americans were falsely accused of crimes after Flock cameras processed their information. Hawley asked Flock CEO Garrett Langley and the CEOs of Axon Enterprise, Motorola Solutions and Verkada to testify about their products’ access to Americans’ data during a Wednesday hearing before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, but weren’t subpoenaed to attend.

“I’ve invited the CEOs of Flock Safety, Axon, Motorola and Verkada to testify in front of my committee NEXT WEEK. Americans deserve answers,” Hawley said Friday.

A Verkada spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation they were “unable” to attend the upcoming hearing.

“Unfortunately, our CEO is unable to attend next week’s 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’ve explained to the Subcommittee, none of our customers can search a national Verkada network – because none exists. Our customers can only access the data in their own systems,” the spokesperson said.

A Flock camera in Florida collected information about a resident who spent 13 days in jail and faced eight felony counts, including three counts of vehicular homicide, for a crime she did not commit, according to Hawley’s letter to Langley in August.

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, prosecutors charged a police officer who allegedly searched his girlfriend’s license plate 124 times and her former boyfriend’s plate 55 times, and was later caught by a private citizen instead of Flock’s audit system, according to Hawley’s letter.

An innocent driver in Wisconsin was held at gunpoint in August after a camera made a mistake.

Motorola Solutions and its subsidiary, Vigilant Solutions, were slapped with a massive class-action lawsuit that accused the companies of violating California’s 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.