Lebanon officials review detailed response from Flock on surveillance cameras

Our Take

Credit to WCPO 9 for tracking this one: when a town's own officials draft 66 pointed questions about license plate readers, that's a signal they smelled something worth scrutinizing. The fact that Flock Safety had to produce a detailed written response at all tells you the usual sales pitch — "it's just for finding stolen cars and Amber Alerts" — isn't landing the way it used to with elected bodies who actually read the fine print.

Here's the problem with grading on this curve: a company answering its own critics' questions is not the same as independent oversight. Flock wrote the terms of service, Flock controls the data retention defaults, and Flock benefits financially from every new city that signs on. Lebanon officials deserve credit for pushing back, but 66 answers from the vendor itself isn't an audit — it's a PR document with footnotes. The real questions are the ones no company can fully answer: who else gets access to that plate data down the line, how long until a breach or misuse story breaks, and what happens when a national network of cameras built one small town at a time becomes a de facto tracking system nobody voted for.

If you're in a city weighing the same pitch Lebanon just got, don't let a glossy Q&A substitute for public records requests, retention audits, and a hard look at who can query the system. Check our camera map to see what's already watching near you, and hit up take-action for tools to push your own council toward real transparency instead of vendor talking points.