Rhode Islanders in towns with Flock cameras depend on individual police portals to learn how plate data is used and shared, and those pages vary widely and keep no public history — just as the state finishes a 60-day review that could set uniform rules.
The ACLU of Rhode Island said this week that the public “transparency portals” police departments and Flock Safety point to as proof of accountability give Rhode Islanders a snapshot of the present and almost nothing else — no dependable way to determine what a department’s camera count, retention period, sharing partners or audit disclosures looked like a month ago, a year ago, or before a town council voted on a contract renewal.
That is a narrower complaint than “the police are hiding something,” and it is more durable for being narrow. A portal that publishes rolling 30-day statistics is, by design, a window rather than a ledger: it tells you what is true this minute and lets the prior minute evaporate. The ACLU’s argument — is that live disclosure without an independent historical record is not the kind of transparency a resident can use to hold anyone to account…