Lindsborg council holds off on Flock camera policy change, sets study session

Lindsborg's three Flock license plate cameras keep running under current 30-day retention and data-sharing settings after the City Council took no action Monday, Sept. 21, on a policy amendment and set a study session instead. The amendment would add a single section to the city's automated license plate reader policy. Council members discussed strengthening the wording so misuse could bring termination. City Administrator Tanner Faust recommended adopting the section even with a broader review still to come, and the mayor said no motion to table was needed.

Eight residents signed up for public comment, all against the cameras. One read an account of a hacking collective that pulled a Flock camera from the field and extracted its stored images and software. Another said Flock has been caught selling data on the back end and that avoiding such sales should not depend on a customer checking an opt-out box. Others questioned handing data to a profit-driven private business, read from scripture, offered a prayer for the council, and cited an unofficial community-page poll in which roughly 71% of about 149 voters favored removing the cameras.

Public Safety director Terry Reed said the cameras are used strictly for investigations, not traffic enforcement. Officers log in with multi-factor authentication and must enter a case number and reason for each search. Searches can be audited by officer or department, and the policy requires an annual audit. All eight full-time and three part-time officers have access; the department ran about two searches in the past month, for a possible missing person and a theft. He said he knows of three misuse cases in Kansas, that those officers lost their certification, and that Flock has since required case numbers and search reasons and added an automatic lockout tool. He asked the council what residents want, saying "we work at the will of the city council and of the city."

The study session, open to the public, will be part of the council's next meeting and will move through the policy section by section, centered on retention and data sharing. No date was announced. Flock recently moved new customers to a seven-day retention default that existing customers may adopt. The director said he has not changed the city's rate pending those conversations. The city has not opted out of optional data sharing but has opted out of sharing traffic analytics. Under the contract, the data belongs to the city, which could restrict searches to its own officers at the cost of other agencies not learning a suspect vehicle had passed through. The council renewed the $6,000 subscription in August on the condition that a policy review precede two more cameras in October. The director said he will not pursue the expansion before the community settles where it stands.

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