You may not have noticed the cameras on the side of the road, as they’re easy to ignore. Often mounted on a skinny black pole or telephone pole, the solar panel charger is more noticeable than the camera itself, but it sure notices you.
What you’re seeing is an Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR). Their main job is to scan your license plate and log it in a searchable database, but they can also log your car’s color, make, model, bumper stickers and even unique dents.
Even harder to spot are microphones throughout the city, which are often intentionally concealed. Their intended use is to listen for gunshots and alert police. However, while these systems are not constantly recording, they’re always on and listening.
This technology is part of what is known as the Law Enforcement Software Market. It was valued at around $20 billion in 2025 and it’s rapidly growing.
Advocates for privacy have been trying to sound the alarm about the Law Enforcement Software Market for years. They’re concerned about the massive amount of data this technology collects and the lack of privacy laws to protect it.
“This is done with no real notice or input of the public, a meaningful chance to weigh in on what exactly is going on, what these technologies are, how they're used, the level of effectiveness, anything like that,” said Gary Daniels, legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio. “Really no statutory, that is, no laws on the books governing how exactly these technologies should be used.”
But what does one of the issue's biggest advocates say? People don’t know how much they’re being watched.
The companies that watch us
How many ALPR cameras are in Franklin County? WOSU filed public records requests with local police departments which confirmed contracts for a total of 305 of Flock Safety’s AI-powered ALPR cameras across 15 departments. The contracts total nearly $2 million.
A number of private businesses also contract with the company and several police departments did not respond to records requests, which means the true number of ALPRs in Franklin County may be a lot higher.
DeFlock.org is an organization that has led a grassroots effort to log the locations of Flock and other ALPR cameras, knowledge they say the public has a right to know. DeFlock has mapped around 500 cameras in Franklin County.
“I started mapping the things on my own for the better part of two years,” said Bob Smetana, who developed a mobile app for DeFlock. “It eventually got to a point where I opened up the map and I went, this is getting ridiculous and they're going up like gangbusters.”
Smetana said DeFlock’s primary goal is to show how widespread this technology is.
“Most people that I talk to don't like this kind of stuff,” Smetana said. “They just don't know, either that it's going on or how much it's going on.”
The organization’s website said it’s mapped 89,884 ALPR cameras across the United States. The website also said 57 cities nationwide have rejected or canceled their Flock contracts. The reasons given for recent contract cancellations include privacy concerns and public opposition. Only one city in Ohio, Kent, has rejected a Flock contract.
The Columbus Division of Police currently has 38 Flock cameras. The contract for those cameras started in December 2024 and ends at the end of this year.
However, Flock isn’t the only surveillance contractor Columbus police use.
The Columbus Division of Police contracts with four companies for surveillance technology: Flock, Axon, Genetec and SoundThinking.
In the nearly $26 million contract CPD has with Axon, the company provides body-worn cameras, drones and automatic license plate readers mounted in patrol cars. Genetec provides “Neighborhood Safety Cameras.” SoundThinking provides its product “ShotSpotter,” a gunshot detection system that includes mounted microphones, some of which are hidden, across the city.
The city’s contract with SoundThinking began in 2018 and initially only covered nine square miles of the city in the Hilltop, South Side and Linden areas. In 2020, three square miles of the Near East Side gained the gunshot detection system. Later in 2023, the Hilltop area added an additional 0.64 square miles of ShotSpotter. The contract does not include how many microphones were deployed.
The current contract the city has will expire in 2028. Over the years, Columbus has spent about $6.5 million on ShotSpotter.
The areas ShotSpotter has been deployed were decided by the city in 2018 as part of the “Comprehensive Neighborhood Safety Strategy,” an initiative that was revamped in 2021.
According to a bulletin from 2018, the deployment areas were chosen based on “feedback from the Columbus community, insights from law enforcement professionals, and data-driven, proven practices from other cities.”
One of the loudest voices advocating for the city to implement ShotSpotter was Hilltop activist Lisa Boggs. She said she started looking for a solution to combat the rise in gunshots in the neighborhood after New Year’s celebrations in 2012 included people shooting off guns.
“We were diving to the floor and bullets were flying all over the Hilltop. I was just so upset by it. I was so glad that no one got killed, but it sounded like a war zone here on the Hilltop,” Boggs said. “I just kept thinking there's got to be a way to stop this, or at least decrease the shots. So I started researching, and I came across the ShotSpotter technology.”
Boggs credits ShotSpotter with saving the life of a friend's husband who was shot shortly after the system’s installation. She said no one called the police, but the gunshots were detected by ShotSpotter, prompting emergency responders to respond to the area.
Companies like SoundThinking, Flock Safety, Axon and Genetec often point to cases like the one Boggs described as why their products are needed. However, there has been limited academic research into the effectiveness of the technology.
“There's crime prevention and crime solving,” said Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel for ACLU. “For crime prevention, surveillance has been studied extensively in terms of whether or not it actually deters crime.”
Marlow said there’s only one instance where surveillance deters crime, referring to car thefts in public parking lots.
“Other than that, surveillance has never been demonstrated to actually deter or prevent crime,” Marlow said. “Now, if people want to make an argument that surveillance can be used after the fact to solve crimes, I think that's an accurate statement, but how often it actually succeeds in solving crimes is a completely different issue and it's not that often.”
Marlow argued that solving the occasional crime doesn’t justify the harm done by this level of surveillance.
“There are other methods for solving crimes that don't involve mass violations of civil liberties,” Marlow said.
The technology also generates a lot of data through its constant scanning. Storing that amount of data can get expensive, which is why companies often offer data storage as part of their services. This also places companies in charge of data security and retention.
Most companies' contracts have a clause regarding data retention and its deletion, including clauses regarding if data is subpoenaed or being used for an investigation.
Flock said it holds on to that data for 30 days before they delete it. Genetec and Axon offer personalized retention lengths, with Genetec’s default set at seven days and Axon’s default set at 90 days. ShotSpotter stores the audio of an incident for 30 hours, but holds on to incident data for seven years.
Then, there’s the question of who owns the data generated by surveillance technology.
SoundThinking’s contract said it owns all data generated by its technology, reading “ShotSpotter expressly reserves the rights to copy, publish, display, adapt, modify, translate, perform publicly, make works derived from, transfer, sell, offer for sale and to use any and all Data for any purpose.”
WOSU has not been able to confirm any instance of SoundThinking selling ShotSpotter data.
Axon, Genetec and Flock all give data ownership to the contractor, in this case, the City of Columbus. However, they can still access this data.
“They actually say that the data that Flock collects is owned by the police department, but they have a perpetual worldwide license to use it,” Marlow said. “There's other companies like Flock that say, ‘no, no, no, you own the data, but we have a license to use the data in any way we want.’”
The way companies use that data can vary widely. Collected data can be used to improve the company’s product, train its Artificial Intelligence models or be shared with other police departments.
Privacy, ICE and other concerns
Flock has a feature that allows police departments to share access to its cameras with other police departments. Flock said each police department sets its own parameters, but that sharing can range from a few hand-selected police departments to every police department in the country that uses Flock.
This feature has been heavily criticized by activists, who cite incidents like Texas officials who searched Flock cameras nationwide to find a woman who allegedly left the state for an abortion.
The independent media outlet that broke that story, 404 Media, also found evidence that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has accessed Flock cameras to perform “immigration” related searches.
These are among the top concerns for Kat Finneran, an Ohio State doctoral candidate and community advocate. She’s lived in Columbus for about 12 years and strongly opposes how police surveillance technology is currently used.
“The core problem I have is Flock. It's the constant surveillance in our communities, but it's also who has access to it,” she said. “I think the lack of transparency around who and how that information is obtained is the part that is what is particularly unsettling for me.”
Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel told WOSU that Flock's system requires officers to provide a reason for their search, that it must be for law enforcement purposes and that police departments can filter out certain types of searches, like reproductive care or immigration investigations.
When asked if officers can lie about the reason for their search to get around these limitations, Lewbel said, “That is why we have our audit features built into the system, and again, the system must be used for a law enforcement purpose.”
Flock denies any current contracts with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or ICE, but admitted to a pilot program in 2025 with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which is part of DHS. The pilot program with CBP has since ended. The company claims the program was to combat human trafficking and fentanyl distribution.
When asked for comment on these alleged practices of ICE, DHS responded, “DHS is not going to confirm or deny law enforcement capabilities or methods. Under President Trump, ICE is using all lawful tools to remove dangerous criminal illegal aliens from the U.S.”
Marlow is skeptical about Flock’s claims. He said the lack of a contract with ICE or DHS does not mean the government organizations cannot access Flock’s systems.
“What has actually happened is then ICE just goes to a friendly local police department whose philosophies are aligned with ICE and says ‘hey can you run a search for us on your Flock system’ and they say ‘sure,’” Marlow said. “It's happened, by the way. It's not hypothetical. That has happened dozens, if not hundreds of times, maybe thousands of times.”
Another feature Flock offers is a "transparency portal." This is an optional webpage the company will set up for police departments that can show things like how many cameras a department has, what searches are prohibited on a department's cameras and how many cars Flock cameras have scanned in the last 30 days. What is actually shown is up to each police department.
Flock's transparency portals haven't done much to ease concerns about privacy. These concerns have prompted several cities and counties across the country to cancel their contracts with Flock. Last year, Lucas County commissioners attempted to cancel their Flock contract, citing the same concerns.
Lucas County Commissioner Pete Gerken initially voted to approve the Lucas County Sheriff’s Office’s contract with Flock, but later voted to cancel the contract.
“The more I dug into this, I saw less benefit to law enforcement or to the community,” Gerken said. “Having somebody mass surveil us every time we go (outside), that's an overreach. I don't think it's good public policy. I think the ability for the state and federal government to abuse us is high and we probably don't need it.”
Lucas County still has a contract with Flock. The sheriff’s office argued that the commissioners did not have the ability to cancel the contract because the sheriff is the one who actually signed the agreement. A spokesperson for the commissioners said there is no plan for legal action at this time.
Concerns over this technology extend past federal agents and other police departments accessing cameras. Some have anxieties around trusting local police with surveillance technology.
“We've seen it throughout history, including currently, that police and how laws are enforced can sometimes be very biased. Sometimes that's on an individual level, sometimes it's a systemic level,” Daniels said.
Waning trust in police is one of the main reasons the Columbus nonprofit SecUrban Living was founded. The founder of the organization asked not to be identified due to personal safety concerns.
SecUrban Living was created in 2022 after membership of local police-sanctioned block watches declined. The founder said they wanted to provide an easy way for their neighbors to provide police with evidence while maintaining privacy.
The nonprofit installs security cameras for residents and businesses in Columbus and helps to anonymize footage people want to share with police. The goal is to balance community privacy with the safety benefits of surveillance.
“If you're reporting a homicide and the shooter lives on your street, and you share with the public an image or a video of them rolling by your house, you are putting yourself at grave risk,” they said. “Our organization helps to mitigate that.”
Notably, only the people the organization installs the cameras for have access to the footage.
“All the cameras that we install for neighbors and businesses, they are in ultimate control of those cameras. They have the ultimate say,” the founder of SecUrban said. “We are all about the community's ability to play a role in this and if you don't want to play a role, that's fine.”
SecUrban's founder said community members they’ve spoken to feel more comfortable with the organization's approach to surveillance technology.
“We're not in it for the money,” the founder said. “We want to empower communities.”
The Wild West of surveillance laws
Police surveillance technology has been steadily growing over the years with very little regulation. A common argument against limiting police surveillance is that if you’re not doing anything wrong, then surveillance shouldn't be an issue.
However, who defines what “wrong” is, can be an issue. Daniels gave examples from across the political spectrum of when police surveillance could be used against people, such as going to a “No Kings” protest or a Donald Trump political rally.
“There's really nothing out there in Ohio law or local laws that prevent governments from turning this type of surveillance on ourselves and surveilling our whereabouts,” Daniels said. “It's quite literally the Wild West out here in Ohio.”
Legal framework around the issue of privacy rights in public spaces is complicated. Daniels said this area of law is still developing, but the traditional way courts look at privacy in public areas hasn’t caught up with the abilities of new technology.
“In the past, when these court decisions were decided, we were talking about a world, for instance, where if the police had a criminal suspect, and wanted to follow him or her around, that would take a certain amount of manpower to do that” Daniels said. “But technology has gotten to the point where you don't have to worry about that so much anymore.”
The ACLU has led lobbying efforts to enact regulations on police surveillance technology across the country. Marlow said the goal isn’t to take down companies like Flock, but to ensure the data and privacy of everyday Americans is protected.
One of the bills the ACLU champions is Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS). The model bill gives local communities the ability to comment on proposed contracts with police surveillance companies. It also requires that city councils revisit existing contracts and create a transparency and impact report.
Dayton and Yellow Springs are the only cities in Ohio that have enacted versions of CCOPS.
The ACLU also continues to advocate for state legislators to enact data privacy acts that include banning the sale of personal data and limiting the type of data companies can collect.
However, legislation takes time, and Marlow thinks some immediate action is necessary.
“Canceling these contracts is a really strong move and a really smart move, so I would encourage localities to do that,” Marlow said. “If unfortunately, because of the contracts that they signed, it doesn't completely protect the data, then that's deeply unfortunate. But it's a far better result than continuing to generate that data by continuing to be involved in those contracts.”
Finneran is also in favor of cancelling contracts with police surveillance technology companies. She’s noticed a change in her neighborhood since Flock cameras have gone up, and has also caught herself changing her behavior.
“It genuinely gives me anxiety,” she said. “To be trying to navigate the community and just not being able to feel freely like I can, having this feeling that I need to keep my head down or turn away.”
However, not all Columbus residents feel the same as Finneran. Boggs has little issue with police surveillance technology. She said this technology has made a positive difference in her neighborhood and that she doesn’t feel like police surveillance technology is invading her privacy. For her, safety comes first.
“Sometimes you might have to give up a little privacy to be safe,” Boggs said. “I'm so happy to have this technology. It's just another tool to help law enforcement keep us safe and free. Safety is freedom. Freedom is safety.”
Greater Hilltop Area Commissioner Carla Carr holds a similar view to Boggs. She believes in the technology and doesn’t feel like it affects her personal privacy, but acknowledges it’s a difficult balancing act.
“It is a complicated issue. Where do we draw the line? Where do we say ‘people's privacy is being invaded’ or ‘we're kind of turning our back on crime’ a little bit, right?” she said.
However, Carr said she would also support legislation like the ACLU’s CCOPS, because she thinks community input and consent are important aspects of safety.
“I think the ACLU is not wrong on that,” Carr said. “There shouldn't be an overreach. And if there is, that needs to be checked.”
Emmanuel Remy, a Columbus City Council member and chair of the Public Safety Committee, sent WOSU a statement about the ongoing discussions his office is having about the technology:
“I take privacy concerns surrounding police technology very seriously. This includes Flock cameras, which both residents and Council have questions about. Council has taken action and passed laws to ensure City resources are not used to support federal immigration enforcement, including DHS activity targeting undocumented residents. The use of any technology being used in law enforcement requires a careful, fact-driven understanding, which is why my office is actively engaged in dialogue with the Division of Police as it develops an updated comprehensive policy governing the use of Flock. I am also in conversation with local stakeholders and advocates to ensure any path forward reflects strong privacy protections, clear accountability, and the values of our community.”Columbus City Council member and Public Safety Committee chair Emmanuel Remy
Daniels and a few others from the ACLU of Ohio have met recently with legislative aides from city council about police surveillance technology. Daniels said the meeting was the first one they’ve had about the technology with anyone from City Hall, but he hopes there will be more in the future.
SoundThinking, Axon and Genetec did not respond to WOSU’s requests for comment.
