Your car’s license plate. Intersections all over Cleveland. All of it logged, stored, and held by a private company with a profit motive and a track record of security vulnerabilities.
That’s the reality at the center of Cleveland’s fierce debate over Flock surveillance cameras — and on Wednesday’s Today in Ohio podcast, hosts criticized some elected leaders for taking an easy but unacceptable path instead of doing the hard work to come up with a genuine solution.
Cleveland’s city council safety committee recently voted down a contract renewal with Flock, a private company whose automated license plate readers are already deployed across the city, Cuyahoga County and much of the United States. The vote wasn’t close — only one committee member, Safety Chairman Michael Polensek, voted in favor of renewal. But with three members absent that day, Council President Blaine Griffin is pushing for a do-over. This time, he’s bringing in Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Mike O’Malley and a county judge to make the case for keeping the cameras…