Texas Governor Abbott Freezes State Funding for Flock’s AI Surveillance Cameras

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered state agencies to stop spending money on Flock Safety’s AI-powered license plate readers, a move that landed just before a Texas Tribune investigation revealed how much the state had already spent building out the camera network.

Abbott gave the order Thursday night, and his office confirmed it the following day. Spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris told reporters: “To the extent that cities get any funding for those cameras, most of it comes from the federal government. To the extent any funding comes from Texas agencies, those agencies are clarifying that those funds cannot be used for Flock cameras.”

What the Investigation Found

The Texas Tribune’s investigation, published August 28, found that the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, a board whose members are mostly appointed by Abbott, has devoted at least $30 million to expanding the state’s Flock network since 2023. The Texas Department of Public Safety alone holds a three-year, $15.9 million contract with the authority that covers roughly 1,200 camera installations. Combined with grants to local police departments and sheriff’s offices, the funding has helped put at least 3,200 Flock cameras across the state.

That money traces back to a 2023 Texas law that added a $1 fee to auto insurance premiums, originally pitched as a way to help combat catalytic converter theft. The Texas Tribune reported that lawmakers said there had been no discussion, before the law passed, that the fee would end up subsidizing a statewide license plate camera network.

A Pattern of Misuse

The funding freeze follows a string of cases in which officers have faced discipline or criminal charges for misusing Flock’s system. In Lufkin, a police officer now faces 100 counts for allegedly using Flock cameras to track 11 people over the course of a year. KVIA reported that at least six Texas law enforcement agencies have placed officers on leave, opened internal investigations, or filed criminal charges over Flock-related misconduct in the past month alone. In a Friday radio interview with Glenn Beck, Abbott called the response a “crackdown,” saying Flock cameras “are being reduced dramatically” and that “they’re going to be required to be used responsibly if they’re used at all.”

Those incidents sit alongside a broader set of concerns that have followed Flock nationally: how the company shares camera data across agencies and states, the placement of some cameras near playgrounds, how many of Flock’s own employees can access live video feeds, reports of unsecured feeds, and criticism of the company’s transparency. Cities around the country, including several in Texas, have already begun canceling their Flock contracts.

Bipartisan Backlash

The politics around Flock in Texas cut across party lines. Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic state representative running against Abbott for governor, released an ad earlier this week blaming him for the spread of Flock cameras across Texas and calling the devices a method of “warrantless surveillance.” On the Republican side, U.S. Representative Keith Self has introduced federal legislation that would require a warrant before law enforcement can pull data from Flock’s system, and recently posted on Instagram that “From Flock cameras to kill switches, we will NOT surrender our Fourth Amendment rights to the growing surveillance state.”

Flock Safety, for its part, said in a statement that it supports “thoughtful legislation” with privacy guardrails, adding that “Flock’s technology is an important public safety tool for law enforcement agencies across Texas, helping officers solve serious crimes, find missing people, recover stolen vehicles, and support safer communities.”

A Familiar Pattern

The Texas freeze is the latest sign that Flock’s automated license plate readers, marketed to police departments as a fast way to spot stolen cars and flag wanted suspects, have become one of the more contested pieces of AI infrastructure in American policing. sxz.io covered a related flashpoint earlier this month, when a security researcher’s adversarial-pattern project defeated a real Flock camera at DEF CON, showing that the same AI models Flock relies on to read plates can be fooled outright. It is not yet clear whether Abbott’s order affects cameras already installed under existing contracts, or only blocks new state money for further expansion, but it does mark one of the highest-profile state-level pullbacks yet from a technology that keeps drawing scrutiny from both parties.