City covers all Flock cameras amid data sharing investigation | WHIO-TV
The short version: A city physically covered all 37 Flock cameras after an internal probe into data sharing, proof that even officials don't fully trust this surveillance net.
Our Take
Credit to WHIO-TV for catching this one: when a city has to throw tarps over its own license plate readers pending an internal investigation, that's not a minor IT hiccup — it's an admission that nobody, including the people who approved the contract, had a real handle on who was accessing this data and why. Thirty-seven cameras isn't a pilot program, it's a dragnet, and the fact that it took a shutdown and a cover-up (literally) to get answers tells you how little oversight exists once these systems go live.
This is the pattern we keep seeing nationwide: cities adopt Flock promising it's just for stolen cars and Amber Alerts, then it turns out the data is being pulled, shared, or queried in ways nobody disclosed to the public or, apparently, to the council that signed off on it. 'Data sharing investigation' is doing a lot of work in that headline, and residents deserve to know exactly which agencies, states, or private entities had access to their movements before the cameras go back up.
If your town has Flock cameras, don't wait for a scandal to find out how they're being used. Check our camera map to see what's already watching your streets, and use our take-action guide to push your local officials for the same kind of transparency this city only offered after getting caught.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WHIO, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.