Oshkosh police to establish advisory committee for license plate readers

Our Take

Credit to WBAY TV-2 in Green Bay for flagging this: Oshkosh police say they'll form an advisory committee — cybersecurity expert, IT staff, cops, and residents — to weigh in on their license plate reader program. On paper, that's more public input than most departments bother with. Flock Safety rollouts across the country have typically gone through with a single council vote and zero structured community oversight afterward.

But we've seen this movie before. The real questions are the ones a press release rarely answers: does this committee get to see actual audit logs of who searched the database and why? Can it recommend killing the contract, or just tweak the signage? Is it public-meetings-law transparent, or a closed-door rubber stamp that lets the city say "we consulted residents" while changing nothing? An advisory board with no subpoena power over vendor data-sharing agreements is not oversight — it's a PR layer.

Residents in Oshkosh and anywhere else this spreads should push to get on that committee, or at least attend and demand meeting minutes stay public. If you want to see whether ALPRs are already watching your commute, check our camera map, and if you'd rather push back than just watch, our take-action page has the tools.