Who is watching the watchers?

All right, well, license plate cameras have helped police solve homicides, find missing children and recover stolen cars. But a growing number of cases are raising questions about who's watching the watchers, so to speak. In Milwaukee, for example, a second police officer is now facing criminal charges for allegedly misusing the flock camera system to track people for personal reasons. Closer to home, Westland police have decided not to pursue renewing the city's flock camera contract after months of community concerns about privacy, transparency and oversight. Well, joining us now is attorney Eli Mouad to talk about the legal concerns, privacy and whether there are enough safeguards. Thank you for coming in and talking to us. Nice to see you, Dan. So what's your take overall on this? I mean, this is a delicate balance, obviously. So as a criminal defense attorney, we get a lot of business from the flock cameras. Lately, you've been seeing a lot more mentions with law enforcement on flock cameras. The United States Supreme Court has said you put your car out there in the public, you're subject to have your license plate read, it's fair game, doesn't violate the Constitution. You see a lot of the flocks on the expressways and highways that are controlled by the state. So they're legal if the city wants them or if the state wants them. So what kind of legislation or reform do people want to see as far as the storage of this kind of information and who ultimately accesses? So the concern is that they're going to take that information, share it with other states. But I've seen other states, law enforcement officials from other states ask Michigan, we need your flock to see if they're in that state for an investigation. There is a concern that private companies are going to take that information and do stuff with it if it's set to private. So the legislature has to kind of peer down who can use the flocks for what purpose and what you can and cannot do with it. It seems like this technology is moving faster than lawmakers and policymakers really can move in their debate on this on both sides. I will tell you the majority of people that are public safety conscious want them. Westland really, this is probably the first city that I've seen that is really, really, really against them. And the city council members said, look, they're so against them, we are not going to renew the contract with the flock company. So I guess it depends what type of politics you have and what your community mainly is more right, more left, maybe more independent. But to a lot of people, nobody pays attention to the flocks anyway. It's only people that are either arrested by them or because of them or some people that seem on the streets and make a comment on a boy, I don't really like people watching me. On one hand, it seems that we see a lot of police chiefs defending it across Metro Detroit, across the state. There's also a grassroots movement going from city council to city council meeting, urging elected officials to say no to renewals or to drop any consideration if they haven't used it already. Yeah. And I can tell you that when I've talked to police officers, at least on my cases, they love the flock for this, but they also say, well, if they help in kidnapping, they help in shootings, they help in so many situations that if let's say me, if I was kidnapped, they have my plate number. Somebody takes me in my car. You're going to want that flock out there. You're going to want that security. So a lot of people like it, but a lot of people don't like it right now. You're you've got to have a balance. Yeah. We just had a carjack and we were reporting on tonight. We don't know if flock has been assisting law enforcement in that, but it's just one of those things that we have to keep watching. If a license plate was involved, I guarantee a flock was involved. All right. Attorney Eli Mouad, thank you so much for coming in on Friday night. Happy weekend to you. Happy weekend to you.