⁠Will lawmakers revisit open records laws as Flock camera usage grows?

Our Take

Give credit to FOX 56 News for digging into a quiet but consequential change: Kentucky's open records law now lets police departments withhold the physical locations of license plate readers from public requests. That's not a small technical tweak — it's a direct hit to the public's ability to know where they're being tracked. When the mechanism for public transparency itself is the department that benefits from secrecy, the whole point of open records law collapses.

Flock and similar ALPR networks already operate with minimal independent oversight. Departments buy the systems, deploy them quietly, and often self-report their own usage stats — if they report at all. Stripping location data from public records removes one of the last remaining checks citizens had: the ability to find out for themselves what's watching them and where. Lawmakers 'discussing' whether this needs revisiting is a good start, but discussion isn't disclosure. Kentucky residents deserve a law that defaults to transparency, not one that lets police departments quietly decide what the public gets to know about surveillance in their own neighborhoods.

Until that changes, community-driven documentation is doing the job government transparency laws are failing to do. Check our camera map to see what's been found near you, and if you spot a Flock camera that isn't listed, help fill in the gaps. If you want to push back on secrecy laws like this one, our take action page has resources for contacting lawmakers before more states follow Kentucky's lead.