Missouri Rep. Burlison TEARS Into the Surveillance State — Should Flock Cameras Be Abolished? Is China Spying Through Your Cell Phone?

America’s surveillance debate has entered a new and potentially explosive phase. What began after 9/11 with expanded government surveillance has evolved into a world of artificial intelligence, automated license-plate readers, massive databases, facial recognition, smartphones and increasingly sophisticated systems capable of reconstructing where people have been. Now Missouri Rep. Eric Burlison is demanding that Americans…

America’s surveillance debate has entered a new and potentially explosive phase.

What began after 9/11 with expanded government surveillance has evolved into a world of artificial intelligence, automated license-plate readers, massive databases, facial recognition, smartphones and increasingly sophisticated systems capable of reconstructing where people have been.

Now Missouri Rep. Eric Burlison is demanding that Americans hit the brakes.

And he has joined Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie in introducing legislation that would cut off federal funding for Flock-style surveillance cameras.

The question is no longer simply whether cameras can help police catch criminals.

The question is:

How much surveillance can a free society tolerate before public safety becomes indistinguishable from government tracking?

Burlison: “I Don’t Wanna Live in a Surveillance State”

In an interview published by The Gateway Pundit, Burlison said he does not believe opposition to Flock cameras means opposition to law enforcement.

His argument is that police can use technology without creating systems capable of monitoring innocent Americans.

“Everything’s moving so rapidly,” Burlison said, warning about surveillance technology, artificial intelligence and massive data collection. He argued that government needs to “hit the pause button” and establish stronger protections for civil liberties.

That concern is no longer limited to one congressman.

Flock says its network has grown to more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states, while the technology is now deployed in thousands of communities.

Supporters say the cameras help locate stolen vehicles, missing people and criminal suspects.

Critics see something much larger:

A searchable map of Americans’ movements.

What Exactly Does the “Flock-Off Act” Do?

Burlison and Massie introduced the Flock-Off Act, H.R. 10221, on September 3.

The legislation would prohibit federal funds from being used to purchase, install, maintain, operate or upgrade automated license-plate readers and biometric surveillance cameras.

It would also restrict federal money from paying for associated contracts, cloud services, databases and data-sharing arrangements. Federally supported systems could face removal or shutdown requirements within 180 days under the legislation.

But there is an important distinction:

The bill does not simply abolish every Flock camera in America.

Local governments could still potentially purchase surveillance systems using non-federal funds.

The legislation is primarily aimed at federal funding and federally supported surveillance infrastructure.

As of September 7, the bill has been introduced but has not become law.

Do Flock Cameras Violate the Fourth Amendment?

This is where the constitutional debate becomes complicated.

The Fourth Amendment protects Americans against unreasonable searches and seizures.

But courts have historically treated information visible from public places differently from information that reveals a person’s private life.

A license plate is ordinarily visible on a public road.

That does not necessarily mean, however, that government has unlimited constitutional authority to create a permanent historical record of every vehicle’s movements.

The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States is particularly important. The Court ruled that obtaining extensive historical cell-site location information constitutes a Fourth Amendment search requiring a warrant supported by probable cause in the circumstances before the Court. The justices emphasized the extraordinary ability of digital records to reconstruct a person’s movements over time.

ALPR technology raises a related but legally unsettled question.

Courts have generally allowed the collection of license-plate information from public roads, but the constitutional implications can become considerably more complicated when individual observations are aggregated into a long-term database capable of reconstructing someone’s movements.

That distinction may ultimately become one of the defining surveillance battles of the AI era.

The Technology Is Getting More Powerful

The controversy has intensified because Flock’s technology is no longer simply about reading license plates.

WIRED recently reported on Flock’s FreeForm AI search capability, which can allow searches using natural-language descriptions across camera networks.

That raises an entirely different question.

Instead of asking:

“Where was this license plate?”

An investigator could potentially ask:

“Find vehicles matching these characteristics.”

The broader the database becomes, the more powerful the search becomes.

And the more powerful the search becomes, the greater the consequences of abuse.

Documented misuse of surveillance systems by law-enforcement personnel has already fueled public concern.

More than 150 cities have reportedly canceled or opposed Flock contracts amid the growing backlash.

Florida has also moved to prohibit local police from using ALPR systems on state highways, citing privacy and surveillance concerns.

But Supporters Have a Powerful Argument Too

There is another side to this story.

Police departments argue that Flock cameras can help identify stolen vehicles, locate missing children and solve serious crimes.

The technology can provide investigators with information that would have been extremely difficult to obtain through traditional police work.

That matters.

A society has a legitimate interest in protecting its citizens.

The question isn’t whether surveillance technology can be useful.

It clearly can.

The question is what restrictions should exist when technology makes surveillance dramatically cheaper, faster and more comprehensive than anything previous generations could have imagined.

The debate therefore should not be reduced to:

Police versus privacy.

It is about whether America can have both.

Is China Spying Through American Cell Phones?

Burlison also expressed a much broader concern: the possibility that hostile foreign governments could exploit modern technology for espionage.

His concern about China should not be dismissed as imaginary.

U.S. intelligence and cybersecurity agencies have repeatedly documented Chinese state-sponsored cyber operations targeting American telecommunications infrastructure.

The FBI has specifically warned about PRC-linked activity associated with the Salt Typhoon campaign, which compromised multiple U.S. telecommunications companies.

CISA has likewise warned that Chinese state-sponsored cyber actors have targeted telecommunications and other critical infrastructure worldwide, maintaining persistent access to compromised networks.

The FBI has separately warned about compromised internet-connected devices, noting that many devices involved in the BADBOX 2.0 campaign were manufactured in China and that some Android-based devices were compromised with backdoor malware before purchase.

But there is an important distinction.

That evidence does not prove that China is secretly listening to every American through every Apple or Android phone.

It does demonstrate that Chinese state-sponsored cyber activity against American telecommunications and technology infrastructure is a genuine national-security concern.

Burlison’s broader warning therefore deserves scrutiny without turning an important security issue into an unsupported universal claim.

News Watchmen Analysis: The Real Danger May Be the Database

The greatest surveillance danger may not be a single camera.

It may be the aggregation of data.

One camera sees one vehicle.

Thousands of cameras can reveal a travel pattern.

Combine that information with cellphone location data, facial recognition, purchasing records, social media, vehicle telemetry and artificial intelligence—and an extraordinarily detailed picture of a person’s life can emerge.

That is precisely why Carpenter remains so important.

The Supreme Court recognized that technology can fundamentally change the privacy equation because modern systems can accomplish things that traditional surveillance simply could not.

The government did not suddenly become more powerful.

Technology made government more capable.

And that means constitutional protections have to keep pace.

Prophetic Perspective: A World Where Surveillance Becomes Normal

The Bible does not specifically mention artificial intelligence, Flock cameras or smartphones.

Therefore, Christians should be careful about declaring that any particular surveillance system is a direct fulfillment of prophecy.

But Scripture repeatedly warns about a future world in which economic participation becomes subject to centralized authority.

Revelation 13 describes a system in which buying and selling becomes connected to allegiance to a powerful governing authority.

“No one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark…” — Revelation 13:17

Modern surveillance technology does not prove that Revelation 13 is being fulfilled today.

But technology is making something increasingly clear:

The infrastructure necessary for unprecedented monitoring and control is no longer science fiction.

That should cause Christians—and every defender of liberty—to take questions of privacy, government power and centralized control seriously.

The answer is not panic.

It is vigilance.

The Question America Must Answer

Burlison is asking a question that reaches far beyond Flock Safety.

How much information should the government be allowed to collect about innocent citizens?

Should investigators need a warrant before reconstructing someone’s movements?

How long should surveillance data be retained?

Who can access it?

Can artificial intelligence search it?

What happens when the system is abused?

And perhaps most importantly:

Who watches the watchers?

The Flock-Off Act represents one answer: stop using federal taxpayers’ money to expand the surveillance infrastructure until stronger safeguards exist.

Whether Congress agrees remains to be seen.

But the underlying debate is not going away.

America is entering an age in which technology can protect freedom—or make surveillance easier than ever before.

The choice may ultimately depend less on what technology can do than on what Americans decide government should be allowed to do.

Related News Watchmen Coverage

Frequently Asked Questions

Are Flock cameras unconstitutional?

Not automatically. Courts have generally permitted ALPR collection of information visible on public roads, but the constitutional implications of extensive, aggregated tracking remain an evolving legal question.

What is the Flock-Off Act?

It is legislation introduced by Reps. Thomas Massie and Eric Burlison that would prohibit federal funding for covered automated license-plate readers and biometric surveillance cameras and associated services.

Does the Flock-Off Act ban every Flock camera?

No. Its principal mechanism is restricting federal funding and federally supported systems rather than creating an outright nationwide ban on all locally funded cameras.

Is China spying on Americans through smartphones?

Chinese state-sponsored cyber espionage against U.S. telecommunications infrastructure is documented. However, that does not establish that China is secretly monitoring every American smartphone.

Does the Fourth Amendment protect cellphone location information?

Yes, in important circumstances. The Supreme Court ruled in Carpenter that government acquisition of extensive historical cell-site location information constitutes a Fourth Amendment search and generally requires a warrant supported by probable cause.

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