- Documents reveal OKC police lack any audit rules for plate-reader systems.
- A $270K-a-year surveillance network is raising serious privacy concerns.
- Even agencies with formal policies have faced misuse and data breaches.
Automatic license-plate readers are cameras that do exactly what the name suggests. Of course, most of them do far more than just read license plates. They record every single car that passes, saving information on make, model, dents, dings, and sometimes even bumper stickers. From there, authorities, and in some cases, private citizens too, can gain access to that data.
Now, one police department is under fire for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on the technology while maintaining no meaningful oversight, audit logs, or transparency rules around its use.
That department is in Oklahoma City, where a local resident filed several Freedom of Information Act requests. The department admitted that it spends $270,000 in tax dollars annually for the Flock Safety system it uses. It doesn’t own the cameras; it simply pays for access to the data Flock gathers. Over the course of the contract, the OCPD has spent around $800,000 on the system, the Oklahoma City Free Press reports…