Huntington council passes new guardrails for Flock cameras

Our Take

WOWK 13 News reports that Huntington's city council has passed an ordinance putting guardrails around its Flock Safety camera network, following an ongoing public conversation about how the system should be governed. We don't have the full text of the rules in hand, but the fact that a council felt compelled to act at all tells you something: these cameras don't stay uncontroversial once residents start asking who can access the footage, how long it's kept, and what it's actually used for.

Guardrails are a step forward, but they're only as good as their enforcement. Retention limits, audit logs, and use restrictions can quietly erode over time unless residents keep watching the watchers. An ordinance passed today can be amended or ignored tomorrow if nobody's paying attention, and mission creep is the default trajectory for ALPR programs nationwide once the initial privacy debate fades from the news cycle.

Huntington's fight is a reminder that local government is still the most effective venue for pushing back on automated surveillance — city councils can be lobbied, questioned, and voted out in ways federal agencies can't. If you want to see whether your own city has Flock cameras already installed, check our map, and if you'd rather not wait for a controversy to force your council's hand, our take-action page has tools to get ahead of it.