Council votes 6-1 to keep Flock safety cameras in place citywide
The short version: Steubenville's council voted 6-1 to keep Flock ALPRs running citywide, proving once again how rare it is for these systems to be removed once installed.
Our Take
WTOV News 9 captures a pattern we see in city after city: a lone council member raises concerns, a new policy gets tacked on to quiet critics, and the cameras stay exactly where they were. Credit to the station for actually covering the vote — most of these decisions happen with zero local press in the room and zero public debate.
A 6-1 vote isn't really a debate, it's a formality. Once a department gets hooked on the convenience of always-on plate scanning and vehicle tracking, "new policy" language almost never means fewer cameras or less data sharing — it means paperwork that makes the surveillance look more palatable while the hardware keeps running and the database keeps growing. Steubenville residents should ask who else can query that data, how long it's retained, and whether it's shared with other agencies or federal databases, because that's where the real civil liberties exposure lives.
This is exactly why we track deployments nationwide — check the map to see what's already watching your streets, and if you want to push back before your own council rubber-stamps a renewal, our take-action page has the tools to make your voice count before the vote, not after.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WTOV News 9, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.