An internal audit of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District’s Flock camera system found no issues with searches after the district restricted access in July, but did not closely examine more than 130,184 earlier searches by outside law enforcement agencies.
Signal Cleveland requested the audit in June and again following the school board’s Oct. 13 meeting where district officials presented on its findings. A district spokesperson initially said it was not available and was still in draft form. The district released it last week. It was dated Sept. 30.
The audit found that new safeguards on who could search the data were only put in place while the review was underway. Its findings come as the school board considers renewing the district’s $603,000 annual contract for 201 license plate readers at 62 schools. The board could vote on the contract at its meeting this week on Oct. 27.
CMSD Flock audit followed privacy concerns
District officials had assured the public earlier this year that only CMSD security staff and Cleveland police could access the camera data. But more than 500 outside law enforcement agencies searched it before the district cut off their access on July 7. Some of those agencies were automatically given access by the system’s default settings but the audit also found 341 of them were “approved by a named CMSD administrator.”…