Congress Asked the Hard Questions. Our Local Officials Are Marching the Other Way.
We are used to criticizing Washington. This time, Washington did the thing our own officials will not: it held a public hearing, on the record, and asked the surveillance companies to answer for themselves. Here at home, not one Cape Fear board has done the same — and Raleigh voted to build the system out.
What Washington did
On September 23, 2026, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism held a hearing titled “Always Watching: Flock’s Nationwide AI Surveillance Network.” The chairman, Sen. Josh Hawley, had invited the chief executives of the four largest plate-reader companies — Flock Safety, Axon, Motorola Solutions, and Verkada — to appear and answer questions. All four declined. The senators heard instead from lawyers, a sheriff, a cybersecurity engineer, and a driver who was wrongly accused because of the technology. Members of both parties voiced alarm at a network of more than 120,000 cameras in 49 states, stored in a cloud database searchable with, in the chairman’s words, “no meaningful curbs on it.” (Hawley release; Roll Call; CNBC. Watch it yourself: the full hearing on video.)
Whatever one thinks of Washington, that is what accountability looks like: a public hearing, on the record, with the companies asked to defend what they built. The people who refused to show up were the vendors. The people who showed up and asked the questions were elected officials doing their job in the open.
What our officials did
Now turn to the Cape Fear. Here, the cameras are already up, already searching residents, and already sharing data out of state. And not one local board has held a public hearing on them. What our officials have offered instead is a study in avoidance.
Brunswick County — sent it behind closed doors
Faced with a documented record of misuse and roughly nine-in-ten searches carried with no case number, the Brunswick County Board on September 21 referred the whole question to county staff — not a committee, not a public hearing, just staff, out of public view. Along the way the Chair described the technology from the dais as “just a license plate reader,” and another commissioner asserted the cameras “don’t track people.” Both claims are wrong: Flock’s own U.S. Patent 11,416,545 B1 describes tracking a vehicle’s movements, and its “Vehicle Fingerprint” and person-search features are in use in this region. Saying it is “just a plate reader” does not make it one. (What the Sept. 21 meeting revealed · the tracking patent.)
Onslow County — residents speak, the board sits
In Onslow, residents have raised the county’s PlateRanger plate-reader system — run by a vendor that is not licensed as required under North Carolina’s private-protective-services law — at meeting after meeting. The board has taken no action. Its own Vice-Chair, Robin Knapp, has repeatedly referred to the system as “Flock” — a different company entirely — a small tell that the board has not troubled itself to learn what it is defending. (The unlicensed-vendor problem.)
Columbus County — silence
Columbus is the simplest case. The Sheriff’s Office runs Flock. The Board of Commissioners has held no public review, taken no recorded vote, and said nothing.
Pender County — approved on a consent agenda, defended with a deflection
Pender adopted its Flock contract on a consent agenda in January 2025 — the batch of routine items a board passes in a single motion, without discussion or a stand-alone vote. When the cameras came up later, the Chair defended them from the dais by arguing that a cell phone already sends your information to China. That a private phone collects data is not a reason for the government to build its own searchable record of where every resident drives. It is a change of subject.
Raleigh — said the right things, then voted the other way
Our state delegation deserves its own line. Several legislators have told us, or told constituents, that they have concerns about plate-reader surveillance. We credit the ones who put a position in writing. But when it counted, the General Assembly folded the statewide ALPR expansion into the state budget in June 2026 and made the highway plate-reader program permanent — inside a must-pass bill where no member had to cast a stand-alone vote on surveillance. Concerns in the district; a vote to expand it in Raleigh. Words are not a record; votes are. (Where they stand, and how they voted.)
The contrast, in one line
Congress put the companies under oath and asked them to justify a nationwide surveillance network. Our local boards will not even hold a hearing, and our state delegation voted to grow the system. While Washington asked the hard questions, the officials closest to home are marching quietly toward a panopticon — one consent agenda, one closed-door staff referral, one budget rider at a time.
There is nothing partisan about wanting a hearing. The Senate’s alarm was bipartisan; so is ours. The ask here is modest and it is the same one Washington managed to meet: hold a public hearing, put the program to a recorded vote, and let residents be heard before the cameras keep watching them. If the U.S. Senate can find the time, so can a county commission.
The Senate hearing figures above are drawn from the cited reporting and Sen. Hawley’s own release. The local characterizations are drawn from public meetings of the respective boards; the Brunswick discussion is preserved in our meeting coverage and transcript. Companion analysis: law enforcement wrote its own ALPR standards — the Cape Fear isn’t following them.
You’re not a suspect. So stop being tracked like one.
It takes one minute. Add your name — then tell the officials who represent you to take the cameras down.