A college student is suing Genesee County after he says the county unlawfully refused to provide him with public records about its use of Flock Cameras.
Josh Tewolde is a Genesee County resident and a student at Kettering University. He’s been interested in automated license plate readers — like those produced by Flock Safety — for years, even constructing one while in high school.
Earlier this year, he filed a Freedom of Information Act request with Genesee County, asking for information about its use of Flock cameras. That included the county’s contract with the company, a map of the camera’s locations, access logs for the camera's data, and records of scans involving his own vehicle.
Tewolde said he planned to make the data public so Genesee County residents can make a informed decision about the future of Flock in their community.
“As it stands now, it's a one-way camera,” Tewolde said. “The government can see you, but you cannot see back into the government. The government is not transparent. And so long as it remains this way, I think that the cameras are a threat to privacy rights more broadly”
According to the lawsuit, the county denied most of the request, claiming the majority of the documents are property of Flock and therefore not subject to public records requests.
But Flock publicly maintains that its customers own the data its cameras collect. Moreover, according to the suit, Genesee County’s contract with the company — which it provided to Tewolde — says the same thing.
“To see Genesee County, where I lived all my life, use a reason that's contradicted by their own internal policy to deny the public their right to government transparency was really disappointing,” Tewolde said.
So, he reached out to Steve Delie, a senior attorney at the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation. The foundation is part of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank.
Delie agreed to take the case, and on Tuesday they filed a complaint in the Genesee County 7th Judicial Circuit Court. Delie said if the government is working with a private company like Flock — even if Flock does own the records — those records are public property.
"Government can’t simply contract away transparency obligations,” Delie said. “You can't rely on a third party and then say ‘well, that's a third party, those records are no longer public.’”
Tewolde said he hopes the court forces Genesee County to give him the records, and that it prompts a broader conversation about transparency.
“With this, we have a chance to really draw a line in the sand and say that government cannot hide behind contractors or third parties to prevent the release of government records,” Tewolde said. “If we're paying for something with our tax dollars, we deserve to know what's going on.”
Genesee County and Flock Safety did not respond to a request for comment.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story spelled Tewolde incorrectly. It has been fixed.
