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Wooster resident asks council for audit of Flock camera program and data practices
Summary
A resident raised privacy concerns about the city's Flock license‑plate cameras and asked council to audit retention policies, data sharing and whether footage or metadata is aggregated into vehicle/face databases by the vendor.
At the miscellaneous‑public‑comment portion of the May 18 meeting, resident Matt Galada (data governance specialist) asked the Wooster City Council to audit the city's Flock camera program. He said the contract approved by council in 2024 limited the system to license‑plate images and did not include facial recognition; he expressed concern that Flock’s product and terms have changed to include video capture and data uses that could aggregate records across jurisdictions.
Galada requested three specific audits: (1) how long Flock retains footage and metadata (he noted that while Flock’s terms state 30‑day retention, other jurisdictions have found shorter retention in practice or adopted stricter limits), (2) where and with whom the city’s camera data are shared and for what purposes, and (3) whether Flock stores or analyzes the data in centralized databases that could be used to identify vehicles or individuals across sites. He cited other jurisdictions’ incidents (including marketing‑use demonstrations and enforcement cases) as reasons for caution and urged the council to adopt local safeguards to protect residents’ privacy.
Council members thanked him for raising the issue; no formal audit motion was introduced at the meeting. The transcript includes inconsistent vendor and partner spellings that the city should verify when preparing any response. The city did not take immediate action on the request; the item was recorded as a public comment for the record.
