09/08/2026
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
A retired Navy sailor named Lee Schmidt and a home health aide named Crystal Arrington sued the city of Norfolk, Virginia in 2024 over its Flock network. Neither had a warrant out. Neither was charged with anything. In discovery, the city's own data showed the cameras logged Schmidt's car 526 times and Arrington's 849 times in about four months. Four sightings a day, for two people nobody suspected of anything.
A federal judge ruled for the city in January. His reasoning was that 176 cameras aren't enough to map a person's whole life. That's the standard now. Not whether they're watching you, but whether they're watching enough of you yet.
The case is on appeal to the Fourth Circuit as Schmidt v. City of Norfolk. Norfolk's police chief once described the goal as building a "nice curtain of technology" around the city.
The Supreme Court held in Carpenter v. United States that cell phone location data needs a warrant, because it reveals too much about a person's life. In June the Court held in Chatrie that location searches get Fourth Amendment protection regardless of scope. Flock now operates roughly 120,000 cameras in more than 5,000 communities. Someone should tell the Supreme Court about this.
The Washington Post reviewed police and court records last month and found at least 50 officers accused, charged or convicted of misusing license plate readers. Flock's system was in 46 of those cases. In 26 of them, the targets were wives, girlfriends, exes, exes' new partners, or women the officer wanted to meet.
An officer in Lufkin, Texas ran his ex-girlfriend's plate more than 10,000 times, plus her family and everyone she'd dated. He was indicted on 100 felony counts. His department pulled every Flock camera it had.
A Kentucky officer tracked his ex-girlfriend over 2,000 times. A North Carolina officer tracked her boyfriend's ex-wife. In Wisconsin, an officer tracked his partner 124 times and his partner's ex 55 times. Then one of the detectives who investigated him got arrested for doing the same thing, plus putting a GPS tracker on someone's car.
Both the Washington Post and the Institute for Justice say those numbers are undercounts, because most departments never audited their own logs until a reporter or a victim forced them to.
Flock has an AI tool now that flags improper use. They added it after the stories started spreading. The pattern is typical. Every safeguard arrived after somebody caught them, not before.
Also, many people have a deep distrust of AI, and for good reason. Robert Williams was arrested in front of his daughters in Detroit because facial recognition matched him to a crime he had nothing to do with. Porcha Woodruff was arrested eight months pregnant on another false match. Plate readers have already put guns in innocent people's faces over a misread. The machine is confident. That's the problem. A human sees a screen that says match and stops asking questions.
Austin, Cambridge and Flagstaff have all cancelled their contracts. Part of what drove those decisions was outside agencies searching data those cities had collected, for purposes those cities never signed up for.
Sure, these cameras do solve crimes. DeWine says so, Attorney General Andy Wilson says so, and police departments across Ohio say so. Stolen cars get recovered. Missing people get found.
The question is at what cost?
Benjamin Franklin, 1755: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
There are Flock cameras at 100 locations in Cleveland right now. Your city may have signed up for them, too. Reporting shows agencies well outside city hall have been running searches through them. Nobody in Cleveland, Columbus, or anywhere in Ohio asked for this.
Where the governor's race stands, per Jeremy Pelzer at cleveland.com. Amy Acton would support bipartisan legislation banning Flock across Ohio and backs the request that ODOT stop approving new plate readers on state highways. Libertarian Don Kissick says he'd issue an executive order on day one barring the Department of Public Safety from using them.
Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign did not respond. He has warned about a "Chinese-style surveillance state" at one county fair and said private spaces are a "hard boundary" at another. Flock cameras are not typically in private spaces, they're on our city streets. He has not said what he would actually do.
A Republican, state Rep. Levi Dean of Xenia, is introducing a bill to ban government agencies from deploying them. This isn't a left or right thing. It's a question of whether anyone in Ohio still has a private life.
Every camera on every pole got there because somebody with a title said yes. Those people were elected, or appointed by people who were elected. The next governor signs or vetoes whatever the legislature sends over on this, and that seat is on your ballot.
Make a plan to vote, and vote early. Anything can happen between now and then. Family emergencies, car trouble, illness. The sooner you vote, the better. Registration closes Monday, October 5th, and boards of elections stay open until 9 p.m. that night. Early voting starts Tuesday, October 6th.
56 days until November 3rd.
