The Marshall County Commissioners have voted to cover up the county’s Flock cameras but leave them in place. Still, questions remain about who actually has authority over them.
Last month, the county council voted to defund Flock cameras in the 2027 budget, and the commissioners have been looking to make changes to the contract. But during a special commissioners meeting Tuesday, Prosecutor Nelson Chipman pointed out that the Flock contract is with his office, not the council or commissioners.
“An Indiana judicial officer lawfully contracts with a vendor since 2021, and local government aggressively moves to prematurely end that contract on nothing more than ideological rhetoric expressed by, so far, four council members and one member of the board of commissioners,” Chipman told the commissioners.
The prosecutor, sheriff and their presumptive replacements made the case for keeping the county’s six Flock cameras. They argued that privacy concerns could be addressed with increased guardrails, like required audits and limits on out-of-state searches. They expect some of those items to be addressed by new state and federal legislation.
But Noah Bazis with the nonprofit Institute for Justice said local governments may have limited control over Flock data. "Flock will tell you themselves that your data belongs to you. It doesn’t because it still feeds into the same nationally-accessible database," Bazis said. "If you have a login and as those hackers showed us, even if you don’t have a login, you can access this information."
In the end, the commissioners voted two-to-one to “bag and tag” the county’s six cameras. That’ll give the Indiana General Assembly and the new sheriff and prosecutor a chance to enact new guardrails.
Board President Stan Klotz cast the lone opposing vote. “That’s just a couple months of potentially drugs flowing into this area, which some of them will come back to this county,” Klotz said.
While the prosecutor’s office holds the contract, County Attorney Sean Surrisi noted that the council does control the funding, and the commissioners control the right of way where most of the cameras are placed.
