China built the world's most complete surveillance state one camera at a time.
A private company now operates 120,000 automated cameras scanning American license plates without a warrant.
The man who ran Pentagon AI just told Fox News what those cameras are really building.
How 120,000 Flock Safety License Plate Readers Got Into Your Neighborhood Without a Warrant
Mark Beall ran artificial intelligence policy for the United States Department of Defense.
He knows how surveillance systems are built because he helped build them.
What he told Fox News last week should disturb every American.
"We have to be careful that we don't go too far to the other direction and create a China-like surveillance state, which is literally what AI capabilities will ultimately enable and are enabling right now," Beall warned.
Not eventually, right now.
Flock Safety is the Atlanta-based company behind most of this infrastructure.
Its cameras – more than 120,000 of them across 49 states – are bolted to poles in American neighborhoods, on every daily commute, outside the local hardware store, and at the entrance to subdivisions from coast to coast.
Every car that passes one gets its license plate read, make, model, color, bumper stickers, and roof rack cataloged, location timestamped, and that data fed into a searchable national database.
No warrant is required.
Law enforcement agencies across the country – more than 7,000 of them – can query that database at will, share it with any department in the country, and build a complete record of where any vehicle traveled, when, and how often.
Beall told Fox News that the technology's law enforcement benefits are real – and that is precisely what makes the threat so serious.
"I think what we're seeing across the board when it comes to artificial intelligence is that the innovation upside is so tremendous, but across all of these different use cases, including the Flock cameras, what we really need are strong guardrails," he said.
Congress has passed no federal guardrails, set no national retention limits, required no warrants, and created no oversight body with real authority over any of it.
Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley admitted as much to Fox News.
"Today, it is too often that in Flock and in other technologies, there's no regulation. There's no accountability, and we think that's wrong," Langley acknowledged.
Nearly 60 Officers Caught Using Government Surveillance Cameras to Stalk Their Exes
The Institute for Justice has documented nearly 60 separate cases of police officers using Flock cameras to track ex-girlfriends and women they were chasing.
A Milwaukee officer used the system to track a woman he was dating 124 times and her ex 55 more – then resigned after being charged with misconduct in public office.
An officer in Katy, Texas was fired and indicted for running his ex-partner's vehicle through the system more than 2,000 times over 11 months.
Five officers in Albany, Georgia were arrested and fired in a single month.
Two more in Greer, South Carolina.
Those are the cases that got caught – by a company that, until recently, had no mandatory auditing in place at all.
Flock has since announced a seven-day default data retention limit and a required audit tool that flags abnormal searches.
Beall's warning doesn't depend on whether the company cleans up its act.
The cameras are already built, the network is already live, and whoever runs it tomorrow inherits the same unchecked power to track every vehicle in America.
Governor Ron DeSantis understands this.
Florida's Department of Transportation ordered more than 8,000 Flock cameras stripped from state highways by September 30 – with the state handling removals itself if local agencies miss the deadline.
"What we don't want in the state of Florida is to have a digital AI surveillance state where everything we're doing is being tracked at all times," DeSantis said.
DeSantis's order covers state roads.
The other 98 percent of Florida's Flock cameras sit on local roads and private property – untouched.
When the man who ran Pentagon AI goes on Fox News and calls this a "China-like surveillance state" – present tense, not future warning – a seven-day data retention policy is not a serious answer.
DeSantis already showed what the serious answer looks like.
Every other governor in America is watching to see if they have the nerve to follow.
Sources:
- Madison Columbo, "Flock cameras could turn American neighborhoods into a 'China-like surveillance state,' ex-Pentagon AI chief warns," Fox News, September 5, 2026.
- Kristen Altus, "None of the government's damn business: DeSantis pushes back on highway surveillance," Fox Business, September 1, 2026.
- Christopher Ingraham, "Police Have Reportedly Used License Plate Readers to Stalk Romantic Interests Dozens of Times in Recent Years," Institute for Justice, September 3, 2026.
- "Dems and Republicans Unite Behind a Common Enemy: Flock Cameras That Are 'Documenting Everybody All the Time,'" Cato Institute, August 2026.
