‘Fuck the Flock cameras’: On big tech, Vermont’s candidates for governor differ on style and substance

A license plate reader camera on VT Route 7A in Manchester seen on Thursday, June 11, 2026. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

" data-large-file="https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/license-plate-camera-4-20260611-1200x798.jpg" /> A license plate reader camera on VT Route 7A in Manchester seen on Thursday, June 11, 2026. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

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“Fuck the Flock cameras, dude. Let’s ban ‘em.”

Amanda Janoo, the Democratic nominee for governor of Vermont in this fall’s election, left no room for doubt about her feelings on the controversial license plate readers used by police in Vermont and around the country in a social media video last week.

In the same post, Janoo also said Vermont needs to pass legislation telling the companies that run large data centers that “you are not welcome here,” at least for the time being. On that front, she drew a distinction between herself and her Republican opponent, five-term incumbent Gov. Phil Scott.

Scott vetoed a bill earlier this year, Janoo noted, that would have put new regulations on where large data centers could be built and how they could operate, though would not have banned their construction outright. Passing the bill was the right decision, she said — and “let’s do it again.”

There are a host of differences between Vermont’s leading candidates for governor this year in a race that polls and campaign spending suggest could be the closest in a decade. And the style and substance of Scott and Janoo’s comments on data centers and artificial intelligence technology make those differences especially clear.

Janoo says new regulations on AI and the data centers that power it are needed to reign in what she called, at a recent campaign event in Marlboro, the rise of “techno-authoritarianism” in the U.S. That trend, she said, threatens people’s civil liberties and access to the resources they rely on. Scott has taken a softer tack, saying the potential impacts of AI worry him but he thinks it should be the federal government — working alongside tech companies — that regulates it.

Scott’s distaste for new state regulations mirrors how he has approached other issues, such as housing and data privacy, said Matthew Dickinson, a professor of political science at Middlebury College. Meanwhile, Janoo’s support for more locally-tailored standards has echoes of how she talks about local schools in the face of Scott’s attempts to force some schools to close or merge, he said.

“I think what you’re seeing here is an issue that really gets to the heart of the different governing philosophies between the two,” Dickinson said in an interview Tuesday.

Across the country, Democrats like Janoo are betting that the broad unpopularity of data centers will be a winning issue for them in next month’s election, Dickinson noted — particularly as President Donald Trump, a Republican, has become a strong supporter of building more of the facilities, which he says are vital to growing the U.S. economy.

“Janoo is playing off that a little bit,” Dickinson said.

In response to what her campaign website calls “one of the greatest threats of our time,” Janoo wants Vermont to enact “the nation’s strongest public standards for AI,” including independent testing, human oversight and ongoing audits. The site also calls for banning “AI systems designed for mass political or immigration surveillance.”

Scott’s campaign has shared few, if any, public proposals about AI. Asked about the technology at a recent press conference, he said he sees a difference between “good AI and evil AI.” The former could be used to cure cancer, Scott said, while the latter could “take power away from humans and go rampant.” Because the technology has upsides, he said, it’s important to take a balanced and measured approach when regulating it.

“We don’t need a patchwork quilt of state regulations. We need the federal government to take control of this,” he told reporters, adding that the feds “should be working with the private sector to determine what is needed to make sure this is safe as we move forward.”

In a statement Tuesday, Dustin Degree, a spokesperson for the governor’s campaign, said Scott has been collaborating with other governors around the country, of both parties, “to coordinate action in Washington and ensure the voices of states and state governments are at the table” about their concerns over AI. Degree also pointed to how Scott signed an executive order in May creating a task force to study how the state could use AI to better serve the public and educate state leaders how to do so.

More recently, the governor’s administration has started to embrace the technology itself. Vermont Public reported last month that state officials have been using AI created by Anthropic to probe their IT systems for security vulnerabilities.

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Janoo’s AI platform also includes banning license plate readers manufactured by the Atlanta-based company Flock Safety. According to the company, more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies around the country use its AI-powered cameras to track vehicles. VTDigger reported in June that some police departments in Vermont are among the users.

Janoo would not be alone in her opposition. The Republican governors of Florida and Texas, for instance, took steps to curtail the use of license-plate readers in their states last month, and lawmakers in other states are now considering similar measures.

While Flock cameras have been used in Vermont, the state does not have any large data centers like the ones that would have been subject to the regulatory framework Scott vetoed. The governor has said repeatedly that he doesn’t think one would be built in the state regardless of the regulations lawmakers put on the books.

“Vermont’s current regulatory system virtually guarantees that no large-scale data center will ever be (sited) within Vermont’s borders,” Degree said, pointing to how it took decades for a Walmart store to get built in St. Albans Town.

He added that Scott would support a moratorium on large data center construction while the state monitors what steps the federal government takes, but remains opposed to the broad slate of regulatory changes in the bill he vetoed. Lawmakers also considered a moratorium proposal during this year’s legislative session but did not advance it.

Janoo also supports a moratorium on data center construction, though couches it in very different terms. “We will oppose the development of energy-intensive AI data centers,” her campaign site states — “not subsidize the growing concentration of wealth and power in a handful of global technology corporations.”

In addition, Janoo has proposed enacting new taxes on revenue that many of those companies generate from digital advertising on Vermonters’ screens. She says the plan would help Vermont extract revenue for public services from companies that, in her view, should be contributing more to Vermonters’ wellbeing.

And while Scott has made a case for letting the federal government regulate AI, Janoo thinks regulating the technology at the state level could, instead, be a way to push back against a federal government she views as harmful and aligned with the interests of those very same companies.

At the national level, Democrats have criticized President Trump for having close ties to AI executives and tech investors, making the case those relationships have led to weak federal oversight. Trump and the leaders of the country’s largest AI companies announced last month they had signed a “self-policing” agreement governing future development of the technology.

Janoo’s platform calls for reviewing Vermont’s public pension investments for stock “in companies that enable mass surveillance, political repression, algorithmic discrimination, or other practices that undermine democratic rights.”

The state should also be ready, it says, to “pursue coordinated divestment” from harmful companies though does not specify any in particular.

“We have more economic power than we recognize right now, and it’s a moment where we really need to be thinking strategically on, like, how are we using this?” Janoo said at the Marlboro forum. “I do think there are ways in which we can use strategic, nonviolent political resistance in this moment to stop this (Trump) administration.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘Fuck the Flock cameras’: On big tech, Vermont’s candidates for governor differ on style and substance.