CORCA — The Federal Bill to Expand Flock
Six of the eleven senators set to grill Flock's CEO on September 23 are cosponsoring a bill that would fund more surveillance and put a new ICE-led intelligence center in charge of sharing it.
On September 23, Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism is set to question the CEOs of Flock and three of its competitors. Six of the eleven senators on that subcommittee are co-sponsors of a bill that would expand federal funding for surveillance like Flock cameras and establish a new national intelligence center under ICE leadership.
That bill, the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act (CORCA) (H.R. 2853, S. 1404), passed the House in a 348-60 vote this past May. As of September 20, 2026, it has 49 senators signed on as co-sponsors, including ranking member Dick Durbin (D-IL). Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is the bill’s sponsor.
Hawley has invited the CEOs of several surveillance companies to answer a few questions before the subcommittee this week. His letter is critical of surveillance and lists several incidents involving abuse of Flock surveillance, including one instance of abuse discovered after a citizen consulted “a public website” (this one).
Six of the eleven members of his subcommittee seem far less critical:
- Josh Hawley (R-MO), chair: Not listed
- John Cornyn (R-TX): Cosponsor (since 10/09/2025)
- Ted Cruz (R-TX): Original cosponsor
- Marsha Blackburn (R-TN): Original cosponsor
- Katie Britt (R-AL): Original cosponsor
- Darline Graham (R-SC): Not listed (her late brother, Lindsey Graham, was an original cosponsor)
- Richard J. Durbin (D-IL), ranking member: Cosponsor (since 12/10/2025)
- Amy Klobuchar (D-MN): Original cosponsor
- Chris Coons (D-DE): Not listed
- Richard Blumenthal (D-CT): Not listed
- Cory Booker (D-NJ): Not listed
CORCA would direct the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Attorney General to evaluate current grants for Organized Retail Crime (ORC), and “include[] recommendations on ways to expand grants, training, and technical assistance for combating organized retail and supply chain crime.”
Many of these grants exist at the state level and elsewhere; they are often used to fund Flock contracts and other surveillance services. Flock’s funding guide (archive) tells police departments that Byrne JAG and COPS grants “have funded LPR deployments before,” and the Bureau of Justice Assistance lists at least one JAG award titled simply “Flock Camera Program.”
But more importantly, CORCA would establish the “Organized Retail and Supply Chain Crime Coordination Center” (ORSCCCC, I guess) under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security.
It would “establish[] a secure system for sharing information regarding organized retail and supply chain crime threats by leveraging existing information systems at the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.”
ORSCCCC would be headed by a director appointed by the Director of ICE. It would work with the FBI, the Secret Service, CBP, ATF, DEA, the Postal Service, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and state, local, and tribal police.
It allows for sharing data with broad, vague categories of corporations:
retail, transportation, and other companies determined by the Executive Associate Director [of Homeland Security Investigations] to have significant interests relating to organized retail and supply chain crime threats
We know Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Ulta Beauty already put Flock cameras in their parking lots — they would be the “retail companies” the Center is directed to share data with, and to receive “investigative information” from. The “other companies” is vague, and nothing appears to exclude commercial data brokers or insurance companies.
It also waives the statutory limit on disclosing confidential information on the Director’s say-so:
information that would otherwise be subject to the limitation on the disclosure of confidential information set forth in section 1905 of title 18, United States Code, may be shared if such disclosure is operationally necessary
On paper, the Center sunsets after seven years, but nothing in the bill requires that the data it collected be deleted, or that the sharing system it built be dismantled.
139 criminal justice, civil rights, immigrant rights, human rights, and community organizations wrote a letter to the Senate on July 9, 2026, listing many of these concerns:
This legislation would dramatically expand the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) role in domestic law enforcement, authorizing sweeping new authority to collect, analyze, and share Americans’ personal data without meaningful civil liberties safeguards, adequate oversight, or accountability mechanisms should DHS abuse this power.
If Flock appears before the subcommittee, the senators who might be grilling Flock on its practices are the same ones who are putting support behind a bill that would expand, entrench, and federalize the worst of those practices.
This bill would plug ICE and ATF directly into your daily life. It would create a federal center that could, under a secret agreement, let ICE see whether you bought hamburger buns with your ground beef at Walmart, or that could take the Form 4473 you filled out at Walmart’s gun counter and send it to Target so they know to keep an eye on you when you pop in for your new Stanley cup.
If “your” senator thinks that is what America should look like, please take a minute to let them know what you think and ask them to raise CORCA’s data-sharing provisions at Wednesday’s hearing, on the record.