MORGANTOWN – Members of the Monongalia County Commission said they, too, maintain some level of concern about the control of and access to the data collected by the Flock Safety license plate reader cameras coming to at least 10 undisclosed locations in the county.
In November, the body approved $60,000 out of its directly distributed opioid settlement dollars to support the placement of 20 cameras. The expenditure marks the first payment of what’s expected to be a three-year, $180,000 agreement.
Justin Musser, the IT administrator for WVU’s PRT system, said he would like the commission to reconsider that position altogether.
“I have some major technical security information and cybersecurity concerns about this proposed system,” Musser said. “But my main concern is with the sort of systematic overreach that the departments that have installed these cameras have experienced. There have been a lot of issues in terms of mass requests for the data from these cameras … I feel that this sort of intense surveillance of everyone in the county is a massive overreach as far as what I think would be considered reasonable. A lot of the issues that I have with this are with sort of the unchecked nature of the access to this information.”
According to Musser, the system’s default setting is to share data with law enforcement across the country. Further, he said 1% of images are kept by the company to train their AI models, and the cameras to be installed by Flock go beyond just recording plate numbers to the color, make, model and identifying features of every vehicle passing by.
“I have some extreme concerns about that stuff,” Musser said. “I feel that West Virginians highly value their privacy. And for me, this is a very concerning overreach of the privacy of the people of the county.”
He’s not alone.
Nationwide, and across the political spectrum, a growing number of political subdivisions are reconsidering their use of the cameras, be it out of a general fear of the Big Brotheresque nature of the growing surveillance state, or the very specific fear that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is accessing the cameras to assist with detainment efforts.
Thus far, however, the technology’s potential as a force multiplier for law enforcement has far outpaced any concerns. Flock Safety, which represents just one company in the field, boasts more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies, 6,000 communities, 1,000 businesses and an untold number of homeowner associations, neighborhood watch groups and other entities as customers.
Members of the commission said they will work to address Musser’s concerns, many of which they share to some degree.
“The biggest thing with this, and we pressed on the vendor before we ever started down this path, was control of the information. I don’t say we’re surveilling, though it is capturing images, but that information isn’t to be used for anything unless there is an issue to go look at something,” Commissioner Sean Sikora said. “So, I do have your concerns. I’ve been right on the fence as far as this issue, but I do see there is – if used and controlled correctly – there’s good that could be had from this.”
Commissioner Tom Bloom said that while the body has agreed to fund the program for one year, it will be monitored.
“It’s a program that nationwide has positives and negatives. We are very careful how it’s going to be used, and I was very concerned about the overreach. That was, I think, the biggest discussion we had,” Bloom said.
A representative of the Monongalia County Sheriff’s Department said there likely won’t be any information as far as a timeline for the placement of the cameras until after the first of the year.
