Ohio attorney general calls for tougher penalties on Flock camera misuse

Our Take

Credit to 19 News for this one, because it's a quiet admission from inside the system: Ohio's attorney general is calling for tougher penalties on people who misuse Flock Safety's ALPR network. Let that sink in for a second. If the state's top law enforcement official thinks misuse is common enough to warrant new legislation, that's not a hypothetical problem civil liberties groups made up — it's happening, on the ground, with real plates and real people's movements being pulled up by folks who shouldn't have access.

The trouble is that "tougher penalties" is a band-aid, not a fix. Flock's entire pitch to police departments is that this data is useful precisely because it's comprehensive and easy to query. You can't have a system designed for frictionless mass lookup and then act shocked when officers, dispatchers, or whoever else has login credentials start using it to track exes, neighbors, or political rivals. Punishing abuse after the fact does nothing to stop the next person from trying, and it does nothing about the thousands of readers quietly cataloging every car that passes, abuse or no abuse.

We'd rather see fewer cameras and fewer databases than better-policed ones. If you want to know how many of these things are already watching your commute, check our map, and if you want to push back where you live, our take-action page has a place to start.