The legislation is part of a bipartisan backlash against a technology that has been abused by law enforcement.

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) are debuting legislation that would crack down on Flock license-plate-reader cameras, part of a bipartisan backlash in recent weeks against the technology.

The bill would largely bar the federal government from using the AI-powered cameras or accessing data collected by them. It would also prohibit the Justice Department and other federal agencies from making grants to state and local governments unless they put similar bans in place.

In an interview, Sanders compared Flock cameras to every American being forced to wear an ankle monitor and described the legislation as an effort to head off a surveillance state before it is too late.

“The United States is moving toward a surveillance state where a handful of giant companies make huge profits by giving the government, by selling to the government the power to track our every move,” Sanders said. “And I think that is a terrible direction in which to go.”

The Democrats are introducing the bill after a Washington Post investigation published in August found that at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of using license-plate-reader cameras for unauthorized purposes, including to stalk women and to spy on wives, girlfriends and exes.

Flock, which operates more than 120,000 such cameras across the country, said in response that it would change its policies to try to prevent abuse. Prosecutors last week charged five Indianapolis police officers with misusing their access to Flock cameras.

Congress has also taken notice. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s crime and counterterrorism subpanel, held a hearing on the cameras, where he described them as “a surveillance network unlike any we’ve ever seen in this country.”

He said Wednesday that he would introduce a bill to regulate the cameras.

“AI-powered cameras produced by Flock and its competitors are tracking and creating digital footprints of everyday Americans — a nightmare for individual liberties unless Congress enacts meaningful rules and accountability,” Hawley said in a statement.

The Democratic bill would go further by barring the federal government from using the cameras and giving state and local governments an incentive to stop using them. It would also give individuals and state attorneys general the right to sue over violations.

Sanders argued that the Democratic bill’s approach is more effective than Hawley’s because such cameras would be difficult to regulate effectively.

“It’s a very, very powerful tool,” Sanders said. “And I think once it’s out there and widely used, it’s going to be very hard to bring it back.”

Flock has said it is open to regulation.

“Flock does not believe that Americans’ privacy should depend on one vendor’s good judgment, its current leadership, or its commercial incentives,” Dan Haley, the company’s chief legal officer, wrote last month in a letter to Hawley. “That is why Flock has consistently supported clear, sensible legislation governing how this technology is used.”

The Democratic bill is unlikely to be taken up this year by the House or the Senate, both of which are controlled by Republicans. Sanders said he expected regulating artificial intelligence broadly to be a priority for Democrats if they retake the Senate in the midterm elections in November.

In the meantime, Sanders and his allies have harshly criticized the cameras. Merkley warned in a statement that Flock cameras are “laying the groundwork for a surveillance state while enriching corporate executives.”

And Ocasio-Cortez criticized them Sunday after getting a question at a town hall in Ithaca, New York.

“To me, the idea that Flock cameras even exist is unconscionable,” she said. “And I want to congratulate the city of Ithaca on kicking Flock out of your city.”

Still, she said cracking down on license-plate-reader cameras and other surveillance technologies would be hard “because Washington, by and large, is bought and paid for.”

Flock and several of its competitors — Axon, Motorola and Verkada — all employ Washington lobbying firms. Flock spent $430,000 on federal lobbying in the first six months of the year and brought on two new firms in August, according to disclosure filings.

Garrett Langley, Flock’s chief executive, said in an interview in August that the company had expected that states and localities would mandate the use of optional features meant to prevent abuse of the cameras.

“I had this hope that local lawmakers at the state and local level would move very quickly and they’d look at the things that we’re recommending as optional and say, ‘Great, we’re going to force it.’ And they haven’t,” Langley told The Post. “Instead of waiting, we said, ‘Look, we should just move faster.’”

License-plate readers and facial recognition software have played a crucial role in aiding law enforcement, including helping the FBI track down suspects in the investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. Some law enforcement officials have defended license-plate-reader cameras, but others have decided recently to stop using them.

“If we rely on private-camera networks to act as a dragnet, continuously logging the habits of innocent Americans without a warrant, we are paving the way to an AI-driven surveillance state,” Ross Teeple, the sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona, testified last week during Hawley’s hearing.

Sanders said the intrusion into Americans’ privacy was too high a price to pay for any benefits they provide law enforcement.

“We all want to do our best to reduce crime in this country,” he said. “We all want to do our best to capture criminals. But we don’t do that in a democratic society at the expense of giving away our very basic freedoms.”