Ohio AG calls Flock cameras useful case-solving tools, says police abuse of system should be felony

Our Take

Credit to WTVG 13 Action News in Toledo for getting Ohio's Attorney General on record defending Flock Safety cameras as crime-solving tools rather than surveillance infrastructure. That framing is the industry talking point, and it's worth noting how often officials repeat it word for word. A network of cameras that reads every plate that passes, logs the time, location, and vehicle details, and stores that data for law enforcement to query later is, by definition, a surveillance system. Calling it something else doesn't change what it does.

The call to make misuse of the system a felony is actually revealing. If Flock were merely a benign tool for finding missing kids and violent suspects, why would lawmakers need criminal penalties to keep police from abusing it? The answer is that everyone involved already knows these databases are ripe for misuse — stalking by officers, political surveillance, selling access, tracking exes. A felony statute is an admission that the power concentrated in these networks is dangerous enough to warrant serious deterrence. That's not a reason to trust the system more; it's a reason to ask harder questions about why it exists with so little oversight in the first place.

Ohio residents who want to know whether these cameras are already watching their streets can check our camera map, and anyone looking to push back against unchecked ALPR deployment in their community can find resources on how to take action.