Port St. Joe Police launch Flock Safety Transparency Portal for residents

Our Take

WMBB News 13 reports that Port St. Joe police have rolled out a Flock Safety Transparency Portal, giving residents a window into how the department's license plate readers are used. Credit to the station for covering this rollout — transparency portals are becoming Flock's go-to PR move whenever a small department wants to get ahead of privacy criticism.

Here's the catch: a portal that lets you see search logs after the fact doesn't change the fact that every plate on every car passing through Port St. Joe is being scanned, timestamped, and stored, whether you've done anything wrong or not. Dashboards create the appearance of accountability without addressing the core problem — no resident voted on whether this network should exist, how long the data sits in a database, or which outside agencies can query it. 'Transparency' about surveillance is not the same as consent to be surveilled.

If you live in or around Port St. Joe, don't just take the department's word for what's on these cameras — check our camera map to see where Flock has planted readers near you, and visit our take-action page for tools to push your city council for real limits on retention, sharing, and use before the network expands further.