As police agencies drop Flock, Kaul calls for state law regulating automatic license plate readers
MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Wisconsin's top law enforcement official weighed in Tuesday on the most controversial topic in American policing today. Attorney General Josh Kaul took several questions about automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology at a Rotary Club event at the War Memorial downtown.
Kaul's appearance came less than a week after several Wisconsin law enforcement agencies announced they were either placing new restrictions on their agreements with the controversial ALPR vendor, Flock, or moving to end their contracts with Flock altogether.
Kaul said he shared the concerns critics have expressed about ALPR camera systems being a tool for mass surveillance, but he added he still supports the technology, itself.
"I don't want to live in a surveillance state, and I don't think anybody here wants to live in a surveillance state," Kaul said. "There are cases where kids go missing, and being able to use license plate reader technology can help law enforcement recover a missing child safely."
The Racine County Sheriff's Office announced last week it was taking down its Flock cameras and moving to end its contract with the company.
Sheriff Christopher Schmaling said the agency learned Flock retained the ability to store data for five years, significantly longer than the 30-day period stipulated by Racine County, and he added authorities found out Flock also reserved the right to sell that data to private companies.
"When we saw that it stated they had five years of data collection they were able to sell, that was definitely shocking to us," Cpt. Cary Madrigal told CBS 58 in an interview Tuesday. "The technology did not fail. The company which owned it definitely failed."
Madrigal said the sheriff's office still valued ALPR technology, noting how it has helped in missing children and homicide cases. Still, she added the agency would do a thorough search before deciding whether to sign on with a new vendor.
Flock cameras remain active in the city of Racine. A spokesperson for the Racine Police Department said she was unaware of any changes to how Flock currently captures data in the city, but she added she knew the city plans to revisit its agreement with Flock.
Kaul, a Democrat seeking re-election this fall, told reporters he believed the first step in adding safeguards to how ALPR vendors operate in Wisconsin is the Legislature establishing a state law governing how the technology can be used in Wisconsin.
"The reality is most of us don't spend all our time in one location," Kaul said. "We drive from one city to the next, and it doesn't do much good for somebody's privacy if you have one carve-out here and one carve-out there if cameras can follow you everywhere you're going in the rest of the state."
Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney is the Republican challenger in a rematch of the 2022 election Kaul won. Last week, five Fond du Lac County law enforcement agencies, including the sheriff's office, issued a joint statement announcing they were ending their Flock agreements over data sharing concerns.
“Based on what I learned from my local law-enforcement this week, I fully support their decision to discontinue the use of flock based on the risk to ongoing investigations, victim privacy, and community privacy rights," Toney told CBS 58 in a statement Tuesday. "Flock has been a tool to take dangerous criminals off our streets but there must be legislative action to protect the confidentiality of investigations and the privacy of victims and community members.”
One of the biggest concerns critics of ALPR technology have raised is the companies' ability to sell data to private businesses. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has pointed to instances of ALPR data being used by auto insurers in their risk assessments, and there are also concerns about what companies may do with data showing drivers' movement patterns.
Kaul said he believed that, with perhaps few exceptions, a state law governing ALPR technology use should restrict sales to private companies.
"I don't see any reason off-hand why private companies need to have those informations (sp)," Kaul said. "It might be there are limited circumstances where somebody is a contractor, but I think you would want to have very strong safeguards on anybody who is not a government agency having access."