Ohio AG recommends criminalizing misuse of Flock camera technology

Our Take

WKYC Channel 3 reports that Ohio's Attorney General is recommending new criminal penalties for people who misuse Flock Safety's license plate reader network. Credit to WKYC for getting an official on record acknowledging what we've been saying for a while: this technology gets abused, and the people running it know it.

Here's the problem with the "let's just criminalize misuse" approach — it treats Flock's dragnet as a given and only argues about the rules for peeking inside it. Nobody asked whether a statewide network that logs every plate, every car, every trip should exist in the first place. Penalties for misuse don't un-collect the data, they don't stop agencies from sharing it across jurisdictions, and they do nothing about the thousands of searches that technically follow policy but still track people who've done nothing wrong. An officer getting fired or charged after the fact is cold comfort to the person who was stalked, profiled, or harassed because the lookup already happened.

If lawmakers in Ohio are finally admitting misuse is a real risk, that's an opening — but the real fix is scrutinizing whether these camera networks belong in our communities at all, not just adding a law nobody will enforce. Check our camera map to see what's already watching your streets, and hit up take action if you want to push back where you live.