Bartholomew County Flock Cameras

Our Take

When a county-level candidate starts making Flock Safety cameras part of his platform, you know this issue has left the realm of tech blogs and landed squarely in local politics — which is exactly where it belongs. Josh Burbrink's video on Bartholomew County's ALPR network is a reminder that these systems aren't installed by some faceless federal agency; they're approved by local sheriffs, city councils, and county commissioners who answer to voters. That makes every mayor's race, every council seat, every commissioner's chair a potential referendum on whether your daily movements get logged and stored.

We don't know the full contours of Burbrink's platform, and we're not in the business of endorsements. But we appreciate anyone willing to put automated license plate readers on the ballot instead of letting them get rubber-stamped in a budget line item nobody reads. Flock's pitch is always the same — solve crime, find stolen cars — but the actual deployment maps tell a different story: dense corridors of plate capture blanketing entire counties, often with little public debate about data retention, access sharing, or audit oversight.

If you're in Bartholomew County or anywhere else in Indiana, check our camera map to see what's already watching your commute, and visit our take-action page for ways to push your local officials toward transparency before the next camera goes up. Credit to Josh Burbrink for putting this on residents' radar — the more local candidates treat surveillance infrastructure as a campaign issue, the harder it gets for these networks to expand unchecked.