Does your community have license plate reader cameras on its roads?
Flock Safety has cameras installed in thousands of cities and townships across the U.S. including in Greater Cincinnati. The technology gathers license plate numbers and vehicle descriptions and adds that to a database accessible by all law enforcement so they can investigate crime.
But privacy advocates worry that's creating a mass surveillance system that can be used in ways local officials don’t anticipate.
On Cincinnati Edition, we take a closer look at how the devices work, whether they are rooting out crime and what is being done with the information they’re collecting.
Guests:
- Morgan Watkins, reporter, Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting
- Cathy Ulrich, trustee, Colerain Township
- Gary Daniels, legislative director, ACLU Ohio
A full transcript of the show is below.
Beginning at noon, call 513-419-7100 or email talk@wvxu.org to have your voice heard on this topic. You can catch a recorded replay at 8 p.m.
Subscribe to our podcast
This episode was transcribed using a combination of AI speech recognition and human editors and has been lightly edited for clarity. It may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
Does your community use flock cameras? The devices are meant to prevent crime and help law enforcement, but privacy advocates have concerns. This is Cincinnati Edition on WVXU, I'm Lucy May. Joining me now to talk about this are Colerain Township trustee Cathy Ulrich, ACLU of Ohio legislative director Gary Daniels and Morgan Watkins, a reporter with The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. Thank you all for being here today. Morgan, several communities in Greater Cincinnati use license plate reader cameras. I know Louisville and Lexington have a bunch of them too. How do these cameras work? What kind of information do they capture?
Morgan: So they often, you'll see these cameras, once you know what they look like, posted up at intersections, along streets, they record whatever cars pass by, and basically will kind of fill up a database with information they collect from the images that they're recording. So it'll be, typically, the big one is they want your license plate number, the technology will record that. Sometimes some of the systems might also collect other data about your car. So it might be, you know, what? What brand of car are you driving? What color is it? Sometimes it might catalog like, if there's a big dent in the back, one of the major but not only suppliers of license plate readers, is the company flock safety, and they've got kind of a they use AI as as a tool to help kind of catalog the information that are recorded on these cameras. But they can also be mobile, like you can have a camera in a on a police patrol car, so when the officer is driving around, the camera attached to their car is recording anything that happens to pass by them.
Trustee Ulrich I know after some debate, Colerain township decided to start using these cameras. What was your rationale? Why did you think these would be a good, good thing for the for the township to have?
Ulrich: Our police chief came to us several years ago and gave us the statistics of what flock is doing and helping them use this is a spread to help there and get investigations. And we have several places around Colerain township that took it upon themselves to install the flock cameras. One of them is a neighborhood. They put it on both entrances into their neighborhood. And we were not affiliated with flock at this time, but our neighboring Township, Green township was and there was a sex offender that entered this residential neighborhood because of our relationship with Green Township, they called us immediately, and we were able to apprehend that individual in that neighborhood. And that's just one of the stories that had touched my heart, which, which I think is just such an asset to our community.
So Trustee Ulrich how else has this aided police work in Colerain Township? In your view, what kind of results have you all seen in the places where you've installed these cameras?
Ulrich: Well, we we have approximately 22 right now, and with those, 22 with the interfacing with the other block camera areas and other municipalities, we have had arrest, 44 arrests. We have recovered 31 stolen vehicles. The incident where leads were generated were 17, and we found five missing subjects. So I think for the first minimal time that we've had these cameras up, we've had tremendous results.
Gary, I want to get you into this conversation. Crime is certainly a big concern for a lot of people, but I know the ACLU has privacy concerns about these cameras. What are those concerns?
Gary: Yeah, the concerns are that we have now entered this moment in US society, including here in Ohio, where we have the capabilities and we do surveil all kinds of people and all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons, but with extremely little regulation regarding how that is conducted. Certainly you can use this type of technology, and it doesn't exist in a vacuum, automatic license plate readers and surveillance cameras. More broadly speaking, we're also talking about drones, we're talking about facial recognition, we're talking about a variety of other things. But what we don't have is we don't have any statewide laws governing the use of this type of technology, automatic license plate readers, other than the data is not public record, and we also do have some to our credit, a bipartisan, very strong privacy law with regard to search. And incidents and people that do not fall under Ohio's public records laws. But otherwise, the fundamental questions of such things is, how can these devices, how can this technology, what can it be used for, versus what can it not be used for? And so in this particular instance, you know, we're worried about government turning its cameras and its surveillance equipment on any number of things, rallies and protests on the left and on the right, surveilling mosques, surveilling gun stores and gun shows, surveilling abortion clinics, all kinds of things that, without the necessary regulation in place, it really becomes kind of the wild west out there. And in addition, how long is this data kept for? The longer the data is kept for, the more subject it is to abuse and widespread surveillance. And who is this data shared with? Is it shared and under what conditions is it shared with other local law enforcement throughout Ohio, throughout the country, throughout the federal government, under what circumstances and again, the problem we have here in Ohio, at both a local level and a statewide level, is almost an entire absence of laws governing this type of technology. We adopt it, we use it, we pay for it, but we have very little legally speaking to regulate it.
We're talking about flock cameras, the use of these automated license plate readers and the concerns of privacy advocates. Morgan, Louisville had an instance of unintentional data sharing. Didn't it?
Morgan: So, yeah, it was interesting. We at the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. We obtained audits our Louisville police department uses flock safety. That's the supplier for license plate readers, and you can get audits that will show whenever that system, that database of license plate information was searched. And we found incidents where law enforcement used immigration related keywords, listing that as the reason for searching for a specific license plate for example, we found that one an account belonging to a Louisville police officer, had run 150 searches using immigration keywords last year, and Louisville has a city ordinance that basically says police are not supposed to assist with federal immigration enforcement. That led to an internal investigation by the police, and what they found was that those searches by a Louisville police officer had actually been conducted by a DEA agent whom the Louisville officer had shared his login information with him because they worked together on a task force handling narcotics cases, and unbeknownst to the Louisville officer, the DEA agent had run searches last February and March for immigration. The Trump administration tapped the DEA and other federal agencies that don't typically do immigration enforcement to do that kind of work during his new administration.
Trustee Ulrich, what do you think about this point that Gary raised about regulation. Do you think the state has enough laws to kind of and guidelines for how communities and other places can use these cameras? Do you think there should be more? What are your thoughts on that?
Ulrich: Well, I talked to House Representative Cindy Abrams, and I know they are anticipating some of these issues, and it's going to be they're trying to get something together about the selling it and of the data from what these systems acquire. And when we negotiated with flock, we were very meticulous with our attorney to go over all these privacy issues, storing of data. And we did a lot of tweaks to our contract, which other municipalities didn't do to protect our citizens, because that is one of our top priorities in our community.
Okay, we do have some callers on the line. Hi, Tom, thanks for calling. What's your question or comment?
Caller: Yeah, my comment was that the flock cameras, to me, amongst all the security conversations, are really kind of the devil. You know, there's a lot more surveillance going on in the world that we don't know about. So to me, the flock cameras, which are out in public where there's no expectation of privacy, you can see them mounted to the poles, that should be the least of everyone's worry, and these publicly known cameras really to everyone's benefit. Thank you.
Thank you. Tom appreciate that we have another caller on the line. Hi Janet, thanks for calling. What's your question or comment?
Caller: Let's see I driving around. There's these polls up, and they say you. Slow down, like, like, driving a point in the road. There's one it says, slow down. You're driving too fast, and you slow down, and you see, like, a little blue light flick, you know, while you're driving by it. So I was wondering, and I've seen them several places, are those, are they going to, like, one of these days, send somebody 1000 tickets, speeding tickets. That's my question.
That's a good question. What those were? Yeah, thank you. Do any of you have thoughts about those, those signs that Janet's talking about trustee Ulrich is that something you all are using these flock cameras for in Colerain Township?
Ulrich: Well, those aren't our flock cameras. We have those, those specific items, because we have found through studies that does slow traffic down, and there's no reporting agency from any of those type of slowdowns. I mean, I do it myself. There's one unfair field. And you know, you come from a 45 to a 35 and it's right there. Slow down. I do it. It mentally works for me. So those what are those signs are working. They're not the flock cameras. The flock cameras are set in positions just to read license plates. And if there was an accident and it was a hit and run, they could say like was said before that, a black Cadillac with a dent in it just hit this person, and it alerts our police, and they do research so they can have the paperwork and so they can go after that car. It's not they're not going to be sending tickets from those machines in Colerain Township. And I think it was Judge Joe legal, quite a few years ago to do that.
Thanks for that call Janet. We appreciate it. Gary. I want to circle back with you with the comment that Tom made, that sort of devil, you know, comment. I mean, should we have an expectation of privacy when these cameras are mounted and out in the public?
Gary: Yeah, it's one of the let's call it a struggle with regard to how courts deal with this type of issue. There's, there's been plenty of court rulings out there in the past that indeed talk about having almost no expectation of privacy once you leave your home or your apartment or what have you, and you're out there where anybody can see you. And so law enforcement and government have used that argument over the years and over the decades to say, hey, what's the problem if we surveil someone, you know, what's anybody can see them? What's the problem if we follow them around 24/7, but these court decisions were done and reached, and the facts of them were well before we had this surveillance technology. And so even today, the courts are still trying to catch up with okay, how do we deal with this new world of surveillance technology, with these old court rulings and case law with regard to privacy, or really no expectation of privacy. So the courts have been really sort of slowly coming around on this. There's a case from a number of years ago about law enforcement using a GPS tracking device on a criminal suspect's vehicle without a warrant, the suspect obviously didn't know about it. The government goes in makes that exact case. What's the problem with us surveilling 24/7, it should be no problem. And ultimately, the court said, Hey, we get it, but we're going to say, You at least need a warrant, because things have changed. When you're talking about the old days of surveilling criminal suspects. You're talking about a lot of financial and personnel variables where it's like, okay, you know, practically speaking, you're not going to follow this person around 24/7, unless they've committed an extremely serious crime. But now we have accelerated very quickly to the point where if we want to, and if finances are not an issue, we can surveil every single person in a city or a township or in a county going about their business, whatever they do, whether they're criminal suspects or not, and that has huge privacy and civil liberties implications. Of course,
We have another caller on the line. Hi, Kathy, thanks for calling. What's your comment?
Caller: Well, I just wanted to say that this isn't the devil we know, as I think was just previously laid out. I mean, if we think about cell phone technology and how pervasive it is, and how data and metadata has been used against computer consumers and and how, you know, legislators and and consumers aren't even able to keep up with it. And really, it's owned by, you know, the technology company or the platform it's it's really become just on. Wieldy, and I'm really concerned about how the state and these companies are going to use this data against us, either financially or in some sort of surveillance state. Thank you.
Thanks Kathy, appreciate that comment. There's still lots to talk about, but Morgan, I want to come back to you. Tom, that first caller, talked about how these cameras are in public. Some municipalities make the locations of their flock cameras public. I believe Lexington does that, while other communities are opposed to that. Can you talk about that and how communities explain their decisions?
Morgan: Absolutely, that's something that has interested us. I put out a bunch of public records requests to different law enforcement agencies in Kentucky and some surrounding states to see if police would tell us so Lexington, Kentucky is one where they have a map online that shows where all of their license plate reader cameras are. Louisville Police Department will not reveal or provide public information, detailing it the location of its cameras. The they say that it's a concern for public safety. Their big concern is that it would enable quote, unquote, criminals to essentially avoid detection if they know where the cameras are, and thus reduce the license plate reader's efficacy as a crime fighting tool, whereas then you have Yes, we spoke with someone at the Lexington Police Department, and their reason for posting the cameras was basically, we posted the locations because we care about transparency. And while yes, theoretically someone might be able to avoid the license plate cameras if they know where they all are and try to plot a course that avoids them. You know, they said, I believe, as someone else on this conversation mentioned, this is just one form of surveillance. You know, they said, maybe they'll avoid the license plate reader cameras, but what are the odds they're going to be able to avoid all the traffic cameras that are in town as well? So they sort of felt that the transparency concern outweighed the possibility of it reducing its effectiveness as a crime fighting tool. But some law enforcement, like Louisville's disagree with that, and so it's it's very much it depends on where you live, because each state has different public records rules, but it certainly seems, at least in Kentucky, that it's at this point seems to be up to the individual agency on if they want to disclose that information or not, there have been efforts to crowdsource the locations of the cameras. There's a couple websites online where people are doing that, posting, Hey, I saw one on this street and sort of trying to build out a map on their own. But obviously that's not as that's more difficult than if a city would just hand over the locations.
Sure, because I guess once you know what they look like, you can look for them, and they're not not difficult to spot. Trustee Ulrich, what have you been hearing from residents of Colerain Township? Have any expressed concerns about their privacy? Did you have you? Do you have a lot of support for these flock cameras in the community? What are you hearing from people?
Ulrich: There was an actual community meeting after an incident in Colerain township that the citizens actually came out and demanded slot cameras. They were that adamant about having them for their own protection in our area, so we have not had privacy issues come from any resident that I know of.
And Trustee Ulrich, have you all been publishing the location of the cameras? Is that something that's come up, or I don't know if you all have discussed that?
Ulrich: I knew you were going to ask me that I really don't know that information. We are having a meeting on February 10, our trustee meeting, and Lieutenant John Middendorf will be answering all these questions and giving all the statistics, so anybody out there listening can watch us on way cross, or they can come to our meeting and they these questions can be answered.
Okay, well, that's good to know. Well, I know flock safety's chief communications officer told Politico in November that the company has rolled out compliance features to its systems, including requirements for law enforcement to provide reasons for requesting data and embedded search blocks halting data lookups if they include a type of search that's prohibited by a city or a client. Gary, what do you think of those features? Does that address any of the ACLU concerns?
Gary: It does in a very minimal way. I mean, you know what you find with this type of technology and its use? Yes, you have contractual agreements between police or local government and the company such as flock that's providing the surveillance technology and access to all kinds of data. And you have, in an awful lot of places, you have internal police policies that govern the use of these types of things. These can all assuming that the policies are good, or the contractual agreements are good, or whatever. They can be positive, no doubt about it. But. It is absolutely not a substitute for local and state laws governing their use. A violation of a contractual agreement is a violation of a contractual agreement, a violation of a police policy is something that's handled internally, but we need actual laws where there are consequences for breaking the law, and laws that are common sense. You know, it wouldn't be the kind of thing where local governments and local law enforcement or state law enforcement couldn't use this type of technology. Now, say, I don't think you're ever going to get the ACLU of Ohio comfortable with this type of technology and its uses, but certainly law enforcement can be able to use these various types of technologies in ways of the type that we have discussed here, somewhat with no or little civil liberties implications. But what we're worried about is how quickly all of this spreads. I can remember quite clearly almost 20 years ago taking a media call about automatic license plate readers in the state of Ohio, and they said, hey, look, they're just going to roll it out at a couple highway exits. They're looking for stolen cars, but that's all they're going to do with this. ACLU, what do you think about it? I said, Well, it's not going to stop there. We're going to see this being more widespread over the years for all kinds of uses, and indeed, as we often see with surveillance technology, that's exactly what's happened. So we think it's really incumbent upon local and state officials to pass actual laws governing this use without waiting for something to go wrong. We don't pass, for instance, restaurant safety inspection, types of laws before there's an incident at a restaurant, we do it before, hoping to prevent it, and send a message and what have you. And that's the type of thing that's really needed here. We think it's it's essentially irresponsible for local and state government to proceed with buying and utilizing and deploying these types of technologies without those basic protections that still allow law enforcement to use these types of technologies in ways that don't impact civil liberties.
Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. I've been talking with Colerain Township trustee Cathy Ulrich, ACLU of Ohio legislative director Gary Daniels and Morgan Watkins, a reporter with The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. Thank you all so much for your time today and for this important conversation.