Gubernatorial Candidates Acton and Ramaswamy Push for Tighter Flock Camera Regulation

The privacy concerns Mentor residents brought to City Council this summer have landed at the center of the governor's race. Both Democratic candidate Amy Acton and Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy now say they want tighter regulation of Flock automated license-plate readers — a rare bipartisan alignment on a technology Ohio has virtually no statewide rules to govern.

Republican lawmakers are already drafting legislation, and the debate is playing out in a closely contested campaign: a Bowling Green State University poll puts Ramaswamy at 48% and Acton at 47%.

Mentor's front-row seat

Mentor's police department has used Flock Safety cameras since April 2021, and city reporting credits the program with more than 100 arrests, the recovery of dozens of stolen vehicles, and the location of four missing or endangered people. But the technology's reach prompted a backlash. On Aug. 18, City Council rejected a motion to pause the city's Flock contract by a 5-1 vote, and eight days later residents raised privacy concerns about the privately operated surveillance cameras during public comment.

Mentor is not alone in Lake County. Willoughby Hills began using Flock readers in 2021, and the Lake County Sheriff's Office also operates them. In Painesville, police proposed roughly 10 camera sites under a 36-month Flock contract funded by levy money, but City Council delayed final approval until a second reading after residents raised concerns of their own.

What the candidates are saying

Acton's campaign said she would push for strict guardrails and work to prevent abuse of AI surveillance. "I've publicly called for a thorough review of Flock cameras" and other AI technology used by our public safety officers in Ohio," Acton said. "As governor, I will stop the abuse of any AI surveillance."

Ramaswamy has framed the issue as a civil-liberties red line, arguing that networked camera systems could create an authoritarian surveillance state. "I do not want an authoritarian surveillance state," he said. "If the government has the ability to map every movement you make, that is a Chinese-style surveillance state."

Neither candidate has called for an outright ban.

Two bills taking shape in Columbus

Rep. Levi Dean, a Republican representing Ohio House District 71, is drafting a bill that would require warrants for investigative use of Flock cameras and ban government entities at all levels from using AI-assisted Flock or similar cameras. Private entities could still use the technology, but the bill would limit how their data could be applied.

Sen. Al Cutrona, a Republican representing Ohio Senate District 33, is working on a separate measure that would prohibit any government entity in Ohio from sharing Flock data with outside parties, cap data retention at 10 days, and impose a fourth-degree felony — up to 18 months in prison and a $5,000 fine — for using Flock cameras or their data for personal purposes rather than active law-enforcement cases.

What the legislation would mean locally

If Dean's warrant requirement becomes law, Mentor police and other Lake County agencies would need court approval before using Flock data in investigations, and the ban on AI-assisted cameras could force agencies to disable or remove advanced features. Cutrona's 10-day retention cap would shorten the storage periods some agencies use now — Akron, for example, currently keeps license-plate data for 30 days across nearly 150 cameras searchable by law enforcement nationwide — and his ban on outside data sharing would cut off that nationwide access.

The Sheriff's Office also holds a federal 287(g) immigration-enforcement agreement, a combination that has drawn scrutiny of data-sharing practices in other jurisdictions. Flock Safety offers immigration and reproductive-care filters that agencies can enable to block searches tied to those purposes, and the company says customers control data access and can set their own prohibited-use rules.

Abortion-rights concerns add pressure

Abortion-rights advocates have raised a separate alarm: because Flock cameras scan and store vehicle data across public streets, the systems could be used to track women traveling for abortions, particularly those arriving from states where the procedure is restricted or banned. Critics point to the risk of cross-state enforcement, citing a Texas case revealed by 404 Media. An Akron city council member discovered that Flock explicitly allows its technology to be used to enforce anti-abortion laws unless agencies proactively enable a reproductive-care filter.

Flock responds

Flock Safety announced new privacy guardrails in August 2026, cutting its recommended default data retention from 30 to seven days, requiring case codes for law-enforcement searches, and adding audit tools and controls on inter-agency data sharing.

Statewide regulation could standardize retention periods, data-sharing rules, and prohibited uses across Ohio's patchwork of local Flock deployments. Whether that happens — and how fast — will determine whether the transparency and accountability questions Mentor residents raised this summer are answered by legislation or left, once again, to each city on its own.