We, the residents and community members of Streator, Illinois, are calling on our city officials and law enforcement to remove Flock Safety cameras from our community and reconsider the use of mass vehicle surveillance.

Flock cameras may be presented as a tool to help solve crimes, but they also create a system capable of tracking the movements of ordinary people who have done nothing wrong. These cameras can capture license plates and vehicle information as people drive throughout the community, creating records of where vehicles have been and when they were there.

Public safety should not come at the expense of everyone’s privacy.

Residents should not have to worry that simply driving to work, visiting a friend, going to a doctor’s appointment, attending a protest, or traveling through town could result in their movements being recorded and stored in a surveillance database.

There are also serious concerns about how this information is stored, who can access it, how long it is retained, and whether information can be shared with outside agencies. Even when surveillance technology is introduced with good intentions, databases can be misused, accessed improperly, or expanded beyond their original purpose.

The Fourth Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable searches and seizures, and while courts continue to determine how modern surveillance technologies fit within constitutional protections, communities have a responsibility to seriously consider privacy and civil-liberties concerns before creating systems that monitor innocent people on a massive scale.

We are not against law enforcement solving crimes. We are against treating every resident like a suspect.

Streator can pursue effective public-safety strategies without creating a system that continuously records the movements of people who have committed no crime.

By signing this petition, we are asking Streator officials to:

Remove or discontinue Flock Safety cameras within the community.
Stop expanding automated license-plate surveillance.
Conduct a transparent public review of any existing surveillance data and policies.
Establish strong limits on the collection, retention, sharing, and access of vehicle-location information.
Give Streator residents a meaningful voice before surveillance technology is introduced or expanded.
Our privacy matters. Our freedom of movement matters. Streator should be a safe community without becoming a surveillance community.

If you believe Streator residents deserve privacy and that government surveillance should have clear limits, please sign this petition and share it with your friends, family, neighbors, and fellow Streator residents.