Last week, local conversation surrounding police surveillance exploded regarding Athens; discussion to join a $300,000 statewide drone program for first responders. Community members shared valid concerns about potential civil liberty violations, costs, and the prioritization of policing over initiatives that keep us safe; like DEIA+ programs.
While Council voted down the drone initiative, our community’s discussion around surveillance shouldn’t stop. In fact, last week’s vote was only the beginning if we want a true system of accountability and transparency for policing in Athens.
In 2024, both the City of Athens and the Athens County Sheriff Office’s signed a contract with the automatic license plate reader company Flock Safety. Founded in 2017, Flock has created a national database of the comings and goings of countless people across the country. Granting small town police departments and large federal agencies access to a centralized mass surveillance system, tracking the daily habits of anyone who may find themselves under the gaze of Flock’s ever-growing network of taxpayer funded spy cams.
With this sensitive location data being collected at nearly every turn, it is a matter of when, not if, this information is misused and abused by law enforcement. The independent media company, 404 Media, has published several articles linking the surveillance alliance between ICE and local police. It’s been revealed that local agencies are using Flock to perform lookups on behalf of ICE. And in Texas an officer went as far as searching cameras nationwide for a woman who self-administered an abortion.
It is our civic responsibility to question how and why these types of technologies are being use in our communities especially when both [the City and County’s] contracts with Flock gives the company the right to “collect, analyze, and anonymize customer data … to use and perform the services and related systems and technologies, including the training of machine learning algorithms” and allows the company to “access, use, preserve and/or disclose the [ALPR] footage to law enforcement authorities government officials, and/or third parties … if Flock has a good faith belief that such access … is reasonably necessary to comply with a legal process.”
These kinds of provisions open up our daily lives to national, federal, and corporate speculation, directly violating Athens’ values and pre-existing policies. These policies include the 2020 declaration of racism as a public health crisis; the 2022 resolution asking the mayor to de-prioritize the enforcement of laws criminalizing access to reproductive healthcare and declaring that the City of Athens honors the right of all people to bodily autonomy; and the 2025 resolution declaring Athens a safe haven for individuals seeking gender-affirming healthcare with specific commitments to promote equitable policies and protect the physical and psychological well-being of all individuals.
How can we as a city claim to oppose racism, honor bodily autonomy, and promote equity when we have allowed national corporations and federal agencies a window into our daily lives? By allowing Flock Safety “a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable, worldwide license to use the customer data…” we have turned our backs on the privacy rights of the most vulnerable members of our community, fully entrapping ourselves in the process.
The good news? Athens County’s contract ends this summer and the City’s ends this time next year. Though, unless the City or County affirmatively opts out, the contracts will renew. With cameras placed near major intersections, anyone who passes through Athens on their daily commute, running errands, or visiting friends, will be monitored.
There’s even evidence of Flock surveilling people attending No Kings Protests. What, at one time, would have required probable cause and a warrant can now be done en masse with little to no public oversight. We must change this, and the ACLU Action Team is committed to safeguarding our privacy rights. Further, we must work as a community to ensure that contract provisions giving corporations ownership of our sensitive data cannot be signed without intense public scrutiny and oversight.
As brought up in last week’s council meeting, contracts such as the City’s with Flock can fly under the radar since amounts under $50,000 do not need to be heard by Council. Instead, they hide under the City’s general fund where single line items can be easily overlooked and may not catch the public’s attention.
We can change this by adopting a policy known as Community Control Over Police Surveillance. A CCOPS ordinance can ensure that decisions surrounding police surveillance are made with public oversight and government accountability. It’s time to demand control over police surveillance and adopt a CCOPS ordinance. Join us as we call on our elected officials to not renew their contract with Flock and ensure community safety and transparency for all through CCOPs in Athens.
Natalie Johnson, Athens
Advocacy strategist, ACLU OH
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