Flock wrote 7 commitments to the Senate.[2] Your next CCTV RFP should require all 7 in writing — before you sign.[2][3]

The backdrop: Flock is weighing a sale to Axon or Motorola per Semafor [1] — and the regulatory pressure surrounding those seven commitments is exactly the kind of risk Lexology [7] calls a “trigger” event under any change-of-control clause in an IT vendor contract.

On September 8, 2026, Dan Haley (Flock Safety’s chief legal officer) sent a letter to Senator Josh Hawley describing a series of operational changes to the platform that the company had already implemented over the prior months.[2]

On Wednesday, September 23, Hawley read the letter aloud during the Always Watching: Flock’s Nationwide AI Surveillance Network hearing, organized by the Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism of the Senate Judiciary Committee.[2][6] (trade-press coverage of September 23-24, 2026 by Mashable, TechSpot, HuffPost, Roll Call, and CNBC)

The letter exists because Flock itself chose to write it.[2]

The four invited CEOs (Flock, Axon, Motorola, Verkada) did not appear: Verkada declined on September 18, and the other three did not respond publicly by September 21.[5][6]

Hawley left the door open to a subpoena against all four, with subpoena power resting with the Chair of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).[5]

The editorial question isn’t what Hawley did: it’s what Flock wrote.[2][3]

The letter describes 7 operational commitments that any LATAM procurement officer can transcribe, almost verbatim, as contractual clauses.[3]

1 — Standardized search-reason dropdown. Flock replaced the free-text field with a menu of categories drawn from the FBI crime-data reporting standards; the change closes the surface where officers previously could type anything in the search-reason field, without guidance, without taxonomy, without structured audit.[2][3]

2 — Mandatory case number for LE users, with emergency waiver. By year-end, every officer will need to enter a case number before running a database search; the emergency exception remains permitted.[3]

3 — Default retention window reduced from 30 to 7 days. Agencies can adjust locally, but the product default drops to 7 days; ~3% of customers retain more than 30 days, with a hard cap of 1 year.[3]

4 — Audit assistance tool (proactive pattern monitoring). In April, Flock introduced a tool that automatically flags out-of-pattern activity — searches outside the user’s typical pattern, which warrant review by the agency administrator.[3]

5 — Evidence mode for active investigations. Open investigations can invoke an extended-retention mode under documented chain-of-custody, separate from the general retention regime.[3]

6 — Automatic lockout for abnormal behavior. In development at the end of September, the system must include a documented mechanism for automatic access suspension when usage pattern deviates from the institutional baseline.[3]

7 — Per-agency offense-type filters. Each city with a Flock contract can choose which offense categories are permissible for other agencies to query against its cameras — the camera-owning agency defines what the rest of the network searches against its data.[3]

All 7 clauses are in Haley’s letter.[2] They were in the letter before Hawley read it aloud [unverified]. They were in the letter before ACLU testified that 200 cities cancelled Flock in 18 months, at a rate of more than three per day in August [unverified]. They were in the letter before 240+ abuse incidents were catalogued by the Institute for Justice [unverified]. They were in the letter before Hawley opened the door to a subpoena.[5][4]

The editorial takeaway: if the largest ALPR vendor in the United States (120,000 cameras, ~20 billion plate reads per month, per TechSpot[3]) already wrote the 7 commitments to the U.S. Senate, those 7 commitments are the minimum any CCTV/ALPR RFP signed in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, or Chile should require — from Flock, from Axon, from Motorola, from Verkada, from Genetec, from Milestone, or from any other vendor — before the signature.[3] The question no Latin American compliance officer has yet put in writing: how many of these 7 clauses are already in your current contract? [unverified]. If the answer is fewer than three, today is a good day to renegotiate [unverified].

P.D. Today is a good day to pull out your RFP, count how many of the 7 points it covers, and start the conversation with your vendor with Haley’s letter in hand [unverified].

📰 Source: Mashable Sep 23 + TechSpot Sep 24 + HuffPost Sep 23 + Roll Call Sep 23 + CNBC Sep 23 — coverage of Hawley’s September 23 reading-aloud of the September 8 letter from Flock’s chief legal officer (Dan Haley).

Sources

[1] https://www.semafor.com/article/09/23/2026/flock-safety-weighs-selling-itself — Exclusive: Flock Safety weighs selling itself (Semafor, Sep 23 2026). [2] https://mashable.com/tech/flock-senate-hearing-mass-surveillance — Three takeaways from the Senate hearing on Flock’s camera network (Mashable, Sep 23 2026). [3] https://www.techspot.com/news/113975-flock-finally-requiring-police-have-real-reason-before.html — Flock is finally requiring police to have a real reason before searching its camera database (TechSpot, Sep 24 2026). [4] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/23/flock-axon-senate-hearing-josh-hawley.html — Flock, Axon CEOs won’t testify at Senate hearing on surveillance (CNBC, Sep 23 2026). [5] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/flock-cameras-backlash-subpoena_n_6ab40ddae4b0dab46c259fba — Something To Hide: Congress Looks To Subpoena Controversial Surveillance Company (HuffPost, Sep 23 2026). [6] https://rollcall.com/2026/09/23/flock-cameras-draw-bipartisan-concerns-at-senate-hearing — Flock cameras draw bipartisan concerns at Senate hearing (Roll Call, Sep 23 2026). [7] https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=a991b66c-f5c6-4fd2-ba80-9c7035a65109 — Navigating change of control clauses in IT contracts: Legal considerations and risk mitigation strategies (Lexology).

📰 Source: Mashable Sep 23 + TechSpot Sep 24 + HuffPost Sep 23 + Roll Call Sep 23 + CNBC Sep 23 — coverage of Hawley’s September 23 reading-aloud of the September 8 letter from Flock’s chief legal officer (Dan Haley).