Gavin Newsom Just Expanded the Surveillance Network Republicans Are Trying to Defund

Gavin Newsom personally announced hundreds of Flock surveillance cameras for Oakland's streets and freeways.

Two years later, Oakland's city council just approved millions more for the same camera network.

Congress finally noticed the surveillance state Newsom built, but no bill actually shuts it down.

Democrat Cities Built This Network Years Before Congress Cared

Fox News mapped it out: more than 119,000 Flock cameras are already running in communities across the country, scanning billions of plates every single month.

Oakland and Denver aren't outliers.

They're just the two blue cities where local reporters caught the mayor's office moving without asking anyone first.

Newsom stood at a podium in 2024 and bragged about installing nearly 500 Flock cameras around Oakland to fight crime.

Oakland's city council followed up by approving another two million dollars for the same network late last year.

Denver's Democrat mayor, Mike Johnston, did the same thing without even asking his own city council first, extending his city's Flock contract on his own authority.

Denver council members were furious, with one telling local reporters it was "not a pattern I want to see continue."

Every one of these camera networks logs your plate, your car, and your travel pattern whether you've ever broken a law or not.

Democrat leaders built this dragnet in blue cities for years while lecturing the rest of the country about government overreach.

Newsom's press office called it a public-safety win and never asked Oakland drivers whether they wanted to be part of a five-hundred-camera experiment.

Republicans Are the Only Ones Trying to Claw It Back

Congressman Tim Burchett stood up in Tennessee and said flatly, "We gotta ban these dadgum things," pointing straight at the cameras spreading across Knox County.

Rep. Thomas Massie filed a bill in Washington, nicknamed "Don't Flock Me," to strip federal funding from any city or police department still running Flock's network.

Burchett filed his own version of the same funding cutoff.

Neither bill bans a single camera outright, a gap the Washington Times called out directly this week.

Both bills would leave Oakland, Denver, and every other city currently on local budgets completely untouched, since neither one reaches a dime of city or state money.

Still, Massie and Burchett are the only members of Congress doing anything at all while Newsom and Johnston keep building.

Finish the Job Congress Started

Here's why this should matter to you even if you've never gotten a speeding ticket.

Ammoland flagged exactly why that matters to gun owners: the same camera trail that tracks a stolen car also logs every trip to a range, a gun show, or a dealer.

The Washington Examiner put it plainly: your car is being tracked without a warrant, and only a couple of Republicans in Washington are trying to end it.

Institute for Justice attorneys have laid out the exact problem: these networks raise the same Fourth Amendment question the Supreme Court flagged in United States v. Jones back in 2012, when the justices ruled police need a warrant to slap a GPS tracker on your car.

A camera network that logs every car on the road all day, every day, is that same warrantless tracking problem at a scale the Jones court never had to imagine.

Cutting federal money is a start, not a finish line.

Cities like Oakland and Denver can keep running Flock on local budgets alone, funding cutoff or not.

Massie and Burchett know how to write a bill that actually bans warrantless plate tracking outright, the same way courts already require a warrant for GPS trackers.

Until one of them files it, Newsom and every Democrat mayor like him get to keep building the surveillance state Congress claims to be worried about.

Sources:

• The Daily Caller, "There's Not a Single Bill in Congress to Outlaw Flock-Type Spying," Daily Caller, August 19, 2026.
• The Washington Times, "Congress Talks Tough on Flock Cameras, but No Bill Would Ban Them Outright," Washington Times, August 20, 2026.
• Fox17, "'We Gotta Ban These Dadgum Things': Congressman Criticizes Flock Cameras, Police Respond," Fox17 Nashville, 2026.
• The Washington Examiner, "Your Car Is Being Tracked Without a Warrant. Two Republicans Are Ending the Dragnet," Washington Examiner, 2026.
• Ammoland, "Burchett Bill Aims to Stop Flock Cameras From Tracking Americans and Gun Owners," Ammoland, July 2026.
• Denver7, "Denver Council Members Voice Frustration With Flock Contract Extension," Denver7, 2026.
• Oaklandside, "Governor Gavin Newsom Announces License Plate Reader Cameras From Flock Safety in Oakland," Oaklandside, 2024.
• Oaklandside, "Oakland Approves $2M Flock Surveillance Camera Plan," Oaklandside, December 2025.
• Fox News, "119,000 Flock License Plate Cameras Track Drivers Nationwide," Fox News, 2026.