City of Madison launches transparency portal for police Flock cameras

Our Take

Credit to WDRB+WAVE for covering Madison's new transparency portal for its Flock Safety license plate readers. On paper, this sounds like progress — a public-facing page where residents can supposedly see how the cameras are used. In a surveillance landscape defined by secrecy, any crack of daylight is worth noting.

But let's be clear about what a "transparency portal" actually is: a PR tool built and controlled by the same department deploying the cameras. It tells you what the police want you to know, not necessarily how often data is queried, shared with federal agencies, or retained past what's legally required. Real transparency means independent audits, hard retention limits, and public logs of every search — not a dashboard designed in-house. Departments across the country have learned that a friendly-looking portal buys goodwill while the underlying data-sharing network keeps expanding unchecked.

If you're in Madison or anywhere else, don't just take the portal's word for it. Check our camera map to see what's actually been documented near you, and visit our take-action page to push your city council for the kind of binding oversight a dashboard alone can't deliver.