Newport considers purchase of 6 Flock Safety license plate readers

Concerns for neighbors Wednesday night about automatic license plate readers in Newport. I trust our police. I don't trust Flock. There's voluminous information available that Flock shouldn't be trusted and can't be. This comes as Newport police are mulling the possibility of buying six Flock safety cameras after piloting the technology across the city over the last several months. We started at 17 and throughout this process we narrowed down now to just the six that we if we if the city commission agreed on it depending on our public input, we had six that we were going to keep. One of the main concerns mentioned, how that data is shared with federal agencies. In Mountain View, California, Flock enabled a nationwide setting without police knowledge on which federal agencies access local data, they terminated their contract. The Carrie McCormick with Flock Safety says for most cities and agencies that hasn't been the case. 2025 numbers, about 30 canceled their contracts. We're on 925 either renewed or came on with company for the first time. So, I asked Flock officials myself about how Newport data could be shared with federal agencies. Back in May, multiple media outlets reported that the FBI was looking to gain national access to automatic license plate reader data. I just wanted to follow up and ask, has there been any conversations between Flock and federal agencies about that possibility and what sort of safeguards are currently in place for how the data can be used by federal agencies? Yes, so I we got a media team on our Flock media relations. So, I reached out to their media team with that same question and they said in part, quote, "We're not going to speculate on prospective deals, but it's worth noting that we already work with several federal agencies, all of whom are subject to the same obligations, constraints, and transparency mechanisms that apply to every other Flock customer." And at that meeting here tonight, Newport police also provided an eight-page document guiding how they would use that technology and what it could be used for. Most policies will have a a clear use of what you are to use those license plate readers for, um some limitations, uh the data retention periods, access restrictions, public transparency, there are audit requirements, and uh you know, other constitutional rights that we have to follow with those policies. The next step now What's the next event? Yeah, what's the next event? Is there one with the commission? Yeah. So, those things will be scheduled and advertised and once once we uh have recommendations. In Newport, I'm Luca McDonald, WCPO 9 News.