Ohio lawmakers introduce legislation to limit or completely ban Flock camera technology statewide

Our Take

Credit to WTOL11 for flagging a development worth watching: Ohio isn't just nibbling at the edges of ALPR policy, it's got two separate bills in play. State Rep. Gary Click's moratorium would hit pause for a year, while a bipartisan group wants to kill statewide Flock deployment outright. When Republicans and Democrats find common ground on surveillance tech, that's a signal the concerns aren't partisan talking points — they're about data retention, warrantless tracking, and vendors building location histories on everyday drivers without a court ever getting involved.

Moratoriums are a reasonable stopgap, but they're also an easy way for momentum to fizzle once the news cycle moves on. A full ban forces lawmakers to actually answer the harder question: why do thousands of cameras need to log every plate that passes, indefinitely, with little transparency about who's pulling that data and why. Ohio residents who want to see exactly how dense this network already is in their state should check our camera map before these bills get watered down in committee.

Whichever version survives, this is the kind of legislative fight that only happens because people showed up and made noise. If you're in Ohio or anywhere else watching your city council quietly approve a Flock contract, now's the time to get loud — our take-action page has the tools to push back before the cameras go up, not after.