State lawmakers in West Virginia's Freedom Caucus are pushing to ban AI-powered Flock Safety surveillance cameras statewide, arguing the technology represents an unconstitutional expansion of government tracking that violates citizens' Fourth Amendment rights.
The caucus is calling on all state municipalities to immediately remove automated license plate readers and has announced plans to reintroduce the Fourth Amendment Restoration Act during the upcoming legislative session. The bill would prohibit facial recognition software, surveillance drones, license plate readers, and other AI-powered monitoring technologies from being used by law enforcement agencies.
What the Right Is Saying
"The West Virginia Freedom Caucus strongly opposes the unchecked expansion of automated surveillance technologies, including Flock Safety camera systems," said West Virginia Delegate Chris Anders, Chairman of the state's Freedom Caucus. "These technologies represent a dramatic expansion of government surveillance that is fundamentally at odds with the Fourth Amendment."
Delegate Anders argued that no state or local government should be mass tracking daily movements of law-abiding citizens without a warrant. "Mass surveillance has no place in a free society," he wrote in a statement posted to the caucus's X account.
West Virginia Freedom Caucus Secretary Henry Dillon emphasized that Flock cameras create databases documenting where law-abiding citizens worship, seek medical care, conduct business, and travel. "That is fundamentally incompatible with a free society," Dillon said.
State Sen. Craig Hart pointed to alleged police abuses involving Flock cameras in Georgia as evidence of the technology's potential for misuse. The caucus argues that constitutional protections should not erode simply because new surveillance tools become available.
What the Left Is Saying
Progressive advocates have long raised concerns about mass surveillance tools like Flock cameras, arguing that warrantless tracking of vehicle movements creates a detailed map of citizens' daily lives without constitutional justification. The American Civil Liberties Union has been among the organizations challenging such technologies in courts across the country.
Privacy rights groups note that license plate readers can capture data on hundreds of thousands of vehicles, creating databases that reveal where people worship, seek medical care, conduct business, and travel. Critics argue this constitutes the kind of generalized surveillance the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent.
Civil liberties advocates have pointed to documented cases of law enforcement abuse involving these tools, including a 2025 incident in Georgia where Braselton Police Department Chief Michael Steffman was arrested for allegedly using automated license plate readers to stalk and harass people. Such incidents, they argue, demonstrate the potential for mission creep and misuse.
What the Numbers Show
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Atlas of Surveillance, at least five West Virginia municipalities currently incorporate Flock Safety license plate readers. Additional cities in the state, including Wheeling and the capital Charleston, operate separate drone programs, camera registries, and intelligence fusion centers.
The Fourth Amendment Restoration Act has been introduced in two previous legislative sessions but failed to reach a vote both times. Caucus leaders place responsibility for those failures on House Speaker Roger Hanshaw and House Judiciary Chairman JB Akers, whom they accuse of declining to bring the bill forward for consideration.
House Judiciary Chairman JB Akers pushed back on that characterization. "We actually passed a bill last session that limits the amount of surveillance law enforcement may engage in on private property," Akers told Fox News Digital. He criticized the Freedom Caucus proposals as overly broad, noting that previous drafts would have prevented police from entering property even if a dead body were visible in plain view.
The Bottom Line
The debate over Flock cameras reflects a broader tension between law enforcement tools designed to solve crimes and libertarian concerns about government surveillance power. West Virginia's Freedom Caucus is promising to use parliamentary procedures to force an up-or-down vote on their Fourth Amendment Restoration Act this session, setting up a potential showdown with House leadership.
Whether the bill can gain traction may depend on whether drafters can address concerns about overly broad language while still achieving restrictions on mass surveillance. The clash between conservative legislators who support both strong law enforcement and strict constitutional limits on government power highlights the complexity of regulating emerging surveillance technologies.