Lebanon council votes to remove all Flock cameras

Our Take

Credit to Brooklyn Andres for getting this on tape: a Warren County suburb's council didn't just question Flock Safety's ALPR network, they voted to tear out all 20 cameras. That's a rare outcome. Most city councils approve these systems with a rubber stamp and a vendor-supplied pitch about stopping car thieves, then never revisit the decision once the cameras are humming along and feeding data into a nationwide search network.

Lebanon joins a growing list of towns where residents and council members looked past the marketing and asked who actually has access to this data, how long it's retained, and whether a private company should be running a de facto tracking system on every vehicle that passes through town. Once those questions get asked out loud, in public meetings, the cost-benefit case for blanket license plate surveillance starts to look a lot weaker than the sales deck suggested.

This is exactly the kind of local accountability we want to see spread. If you want to know whether Flock or similar ALPR cameras are already watching your own streets, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for a viral video to spark the conversation in your town, our take-action page has what you need to start it yourself.