Kent State University’s administration and police had intended to use license plate readers on campus, but reversed themselves after public outcry became apparent.
The university announced in late April that it had signed a trial agreement with Flock Safety, the same company that Kent City Council rejected last year.“
We at the university police department abide by the five moral standards of policing, and one of those is public trust,” said Kent State Police Sgt. Vance Voyles. “The trust was being eroded quickly due to the implementation of the Flock system.”
Behind the university leadership’s and Kent State University police department’s reversal was community opposition.
“They spoke and we listened. The community didn't agree with that because they felt it was invasive, so we listened to our community,” Voyles said. “They had issues with the technology and how they felt it was going to be used.”
One of those voices was Kent State student Eric Luster, who said he has been actively objecting to the use of Flock cameras to anyone who will listen. Flock, he maintained, “has a perverse history of negligence in cybersecurity and in privacy laws.”
Informed by The Portager that the university had reversed course, he said, “that’s fantastic! I’m very happy about that. It shows they are listening to the students.”
There is no way to ensure that privatized surveillance systems will work in the best interests of the people they’re supposed to serve or to know how the data will be used in five or 10 years, he said. Private companies like Flock don’t have to respond to public record requests, so contracted customers have no idea what happens to their data once it enters Flock’s infrastructure. All technology can be hacked, he said, and Flock cams and data banks are no different.
And, though data sharing agreements between customers are meant to be specific, Luster suggested that federal agencies such as ICE, DHS and CPB have found backdoor access.
Kent State police had planned to use images the cameras captured only after a crime had been committed, but Voyles said people were concerned about more steady and invasive surveillance. They also expressed concerns that Flock Safety would use the images without the university’s express consent, even though Kent State’s contract safeguarded against that, he said.
It didn’t help that Flock has a previous record of data misuse, Voyles said.
“That's not what it was going to be used for, but it wasn't an opinion we could change, and we didn't want to lose the trust, so it was more important for us to have their trust than it is for six cameras on campus,” he said.
Per the university’s contract, Flock Safety had recently installed four license plate readers and had plans to install two more, putting camera locations at the East Summit Street/Risman Drive roundabout, the intersections of East Summit Street and Terrace Drive, Midway and Theatre drives, Loop Road and Jackson Drive, Loop and Rhodes roads and the Campus Center Drive T-intersection off state Route 261.
License plate readers are placed on roadside poles and track vehicle license plates as they pass by the cameras. Not livestream technology, license plate readers provide a continuous series of snapshots that are uploaded to a database police can then search by punching in a vehicle’s make, color, decals or other identifying information.
Vehicles associated with criminal activity or missing persons are tagged in Flock’s nationwide network.
Police initiating a search can, but do not have to, enter a vehicle’s license plate. Instead, the technology zeroes in on vehicles that match the officer’s search parameters and captures the license plate associated with that vehicle. The technology does not capture drivers’ identities.
Flock license plate readers may be out, but cameras on campus are nothing new, Voyles said.
“We have thousands of cameras on campus that are filming students walking down somewhere,” he said. “All the parking lots have cameras on them, so that we can make sure that if something happens, that we can protect the students and staff and faculty, so that we have evidence for investigative purposes.”
Flock Safety mandates that customers cannot easily back out of contracts, but Voyles said the department was still in its trial period.
Wendy DiAlesandro
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.