{"id":258306,"date":"2026-05-28T23:33:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T03:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/28\/some-skeptical-of-flock-cameras-as-harris-county-renews-contract\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T00:15:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T04:15:24","slug":"some-skeptical-of-flock-cameras-as-harris-county-renews-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/28\/some-skeptical-of-flock-cameras-as-harris-county-renews-contract\/","title":{"rendered":"Some skeptical of Flock cameras as Harris County renews contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some skeptical of Flock cameras as Harris County renews contract<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/abc13.com\/post\/skeptical-flock-cameras-harris-county-renews-contract\/19190111\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-28 23:33:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: abc13.com<\/a><\/p>\n

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — <\/span>Some Houstonians are voicing concerns after Harris County commissioners voted Thursday morning to renew the county’s contract for license plate-reading Flock cameras.<\/p>\n

The new contract will run until June 2027 and cost the county just under $869,000.<\/p>\n

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office says it currently has access to 480 Flock cameras and lauded them as a powerful crime-solving tool.<\/p>\n

But some who spoke at Thursday’s commissioners’ meeting clearly view the cameras as a violation of privacy.<\/p>\n

“It puts our county’s residents’ lives at risk of mass surveillance, loss of privacy, and personal data,” one man told commissioners.<\/p>\n

The sheriff’s office said the data collected by the cameras is accessible only to authorized law enforcement personnel.<\/p>\n

But Christopher Rivera, with the advocacy group Texas Civil Rights Project, worries about the possibility of rogue police officers misusing the information.<\/p>\n

“There are no safeguards,” Rivera told Eyewitness News. “We actually reached out to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and asked them to produce any protocols which would justify a reasonable versus a non-reasonable search, and they were not able to provide this data.”<\/p>\n

Eyewitness News asked the sheriff’s office about its protocols for accessing Flock camera data.<\/p>\n

The sheriff’s office said the data can only be accessed for criminal investigations. To prevent abuse, it says all access is logged and that any of its employees who misuse the data are subject to discipline, including possible termination.<\/p>\n

As for Flock employees, the company says only a limited number have access to the database and that it’s strictly for maintenance purposes.<\/p>\n

“Any time that is accessed, there is also an audit trail of any sort of access in that regard,” said Trevor Chandler, director of public affairs at Flock.<\/p>\n

Some have raised concerns that the company could sell the data that’s collected to third parties. But Flock insists it’s unable to, since local police departments own the data,…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some skeptical of Flock cameras as Harris County renews contract https:\/\/abc13.com\/post\/skeptical-flock-cameras-harris-county-renews-contract\/19190111\/ Publish Date: 2026-05-28 23:33:00…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":258307,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.abcotvs.com\/dip\/images\/19190320_052826-ktrk-camera-img.png?w=1600","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258306"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258308,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258306\/revisions\/258308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}