Flock camera contracts are public record. #acluohio #Flock #dragnet #surveillance

Our Take

Credit to ACLU Ohio for hammering on a simple but underused fact: the contracts cities sign with Flock Safety aren't secret. They're public record, which means the terms of these surveillance deals, the costs, the data-sharing agreements, the retention policies, are all things you're entitled to see. Most people have no idea a network of plate-reading cameras is logging their movements until they stumble on a pole with a camera and a solar panel bolted to it. Transparency starts with paperwork, and that paperwork is yours to request.

This matters because Flock's entire business model depends on nobody asking too many questions. City councils approve these systems in quiet consent-agenda votes, often without public debate about who gets access to the data, how long it's kept, or whether it gets shared with ICE, out-of-state police, or private databases. Once that contract is signed, the cameras go up fast and come down almost never. Knowing you can pull the contract, read the fine print, and show up to a council meeting with specifics is one of the few checks ordinary residents still have on a surveillance system that was never put to a real public vote.

If you want to know what you're dealing with locally, check our camera map to see if Flock has already moved into your area, and head to our take-action page for tools to request contracts, organize neighbors, and push your city council to answer for this dragnet before it becomes permanent infrastructure.