Ohio lawmakers ask ODOT to halt certain Flock camera installations
Four state representatives — Rep. Justin Pizzulli (R-Scioto County), Rep. Levi Dean (R-Xenia), Rep. Darnell Brewer (D-Cleveland) and Rep. Tristan Rader (D-Cleveland) — sent a letter to ODOT this week asking the department to stop issuing permits to install automatic LPRs in state rights-of-way, provide transparency on how many such permits have been issued and where, and review whether existing permits can be revoked. Matt Bruning, a spokesperson for ODOT, said the department is reviewing those requests.
ODOT maintains an online portal where local law enforcement agencies can apply for a permit to install an LPR in a state right-of-way. The application must provide the coordinates for where the cameras will be installed and the details of any contracts between the law enforcement agency and whichever company produces the LPR.
The representatives do not expect to ban Flock cameras entirely, and acknowledge they have been effective at solving certain crimes. They do see plenty of reasons to pause and rethink how the technology should be used.
“We need to wind this down and we need to put some real strong safeguards in place before we attempt at revisiting installing these cameras again,” Rader said. “Stop issuing permits for this license plate reading technology, these license plate readers along highways and let us do our work as a legislature to figure out how we regulate this.”
As in many Ohio cities, the use of Flock cameras is hotly contested in Cleveland, which extended its contract with the surveillance company in July.
Brewer, who represents part of Cleveland, said Black people have long been wary of police surveillance and the sorts of technologies that make surveillance easier and more widespread.
“These are the kind of concerns that we’ve been talking about for many years, long before Flock became an issue,” Brewer said. “The surveillance of young African-American men and women in our community, reading their license plates when it was not necessary, trying to find some way to pull them over.” Brewer said Flock surveillance treats people as if they are “guilty until they’re proved innocent.”
Much like the national debate over data centers, worries about Flock cameras seem to be uniting Democrats like Rader and Brewer with Republicans like Pizzulli and Dean in what’s been dubbed the “techlash.”
“It goes hand in hand, I think people more than ever are concerned about technology and the future of surveillance,” Pizzulli said. “We’re going to be policed by computers, we’re not going to have a way to live and take care of ourselves and live in this giant surveillance state; that’s more of the overarching problem.”
On Thursday, Dean also announced legislation to effectively prohibit law enforcement from utilizing Flock and other LPR technology without a search warrant, and would prohibit the sale of surveillance data.
“The Fourth Amendment was written long before this technology existed, but the principle has not changed,” Dean said in a statement. “Government power must have limits. We don’t have to choose between catching criminals and protecting our constitutional rights. We can do both.”