A Vehicular Flock-Off Act Is Needed

Please establish clear federal rules for cameras installed on vehicles that travel our streets, including those operated by USPS and private courier companies. The Washington, DC, USPS Next Base dashcam pilot shows why Congress should act before these systems become commonplace. USPS is testing Next Base cameras in 100 delivery vehicles. The agency says they will scan roads and signs, map roadways and sidewalks, and support community safety. Its letter to the letter carriers’ union highlights the fleet’s “scale and frequency” across communities. The cameras reportedly record forward-facing video when vehicles leave postal facilities. USPS says privacy safeguards apply, but public reporting has not detailed retention periods, who can access footage, or whether images of people, homes, and license plates are blurred or deleted. The cameras reportedly do not use automatic license-plate-reader software, but ordinary video still captures identifying details. The distinction between dashcam systems and stationary cameras like Flock is not relevant when it comes to privacy concern. Both types of systems demonstrate how vehicle observations can become searchable location records when images are linked to identifying details, times, and places, shared across agencies, or kept for later searches. Misuse of such systems by law enforcement is rampant, including searches to track people for personal reasons. The risk depends not only on the camera, but on what data is extracted, how it is queried, retained, shared, secured, and used. Congress should require public notice and oversight before government fleets begin such programs, and impose enforceable limits on all fleet-collected data. Those rules should specify a narrow purpose, minimize collection, require short retention and verified deletion, prohibit sale and unrelated use, restrict sharing, require warrants for searches that track individuals, and mandate access logs, independent audits, breach reporting, and meaningful penalties for misuse. Contractors must be bound by the same rules, with no secondary use of footage or derived data. The Flock-Off Act addresses federal funding for certain surveillance cameras, but courier vehicles raise a broader issue: cameras that may not be dedicated ALPRs can still generate sensitive location data. Congress should enact a vehicular version that governs the data and its uses, not just particular hardware. Please hold hearings and set these ground rules before the USPS pilot or similar programs expand.