Fears of federal surveillance had city councillors asking in September that Cambridge’s adoption of license-plate readers be reassessed before the technology was deployed. The readers, however, are installed and active.
Upon confirming that Monday with police, councillors asked unanimously that they be turned off until the council “votes to reinstate or revoke” the tech after a hearing in the Public Safety Committee. Councillors had received a report from the police commissioner promising that Cambridge’s data remained locked to outside sources. Councillors did not have rebukes for the city going ahead with installation. They had previously approved the readers by a 6-3 vote in February, along with phone-hacking devices, before the more extreme actions of the current presidential administration.
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/26191027-251021-license-plate-readers/?embed=1
At the Sept. 8 meeting, staff said the city would install 15 to 20 of the solar-powered devices, which cost about $3,000 annually. Those costs would be “in part or entirely” picked up the federal Urban Area Security Initiative grant program. On Monday, police revealed the grant paid half: $24,000 for eight cameras, with the city opting to do the same for 16 cameras total.
At the start of the year Cambridge officials expected the federal grant to pay for the plate-reader equipment and software subscriptions. That funding was taken away by president Donald Trump in revenge for Metro Boston’s support for immigrant rights, said Alex Marthews, a representative of the civil liberties group Digital Fourth.
Police commissioner Christine Elow told the council “this is always what we expected,” despite suggesting a month earlier that the readers might be fully funded.
Police and some councillors still believed in the technology’s ability to help solve crimes, such as the fatal shooting of a 21-year-old in North Cambridge on Jan. 14, and that the technology could work even in a sanctuary city, with laws that prohibit police and other officials from doing the work of federal immigration enforcement. “I do understand how the landscape over the past year has shifted,” Elow said. But for her, the question was: “How do we move this conversation forward?”
Meet the Flockers
Councillors felt the best way was to bring in representatives of Flock Safety, which makes the license plate readers, and have them address concerns that the data might be used in ways that violate Cambridge’s values. But assurances of trustworthiness by the Cambridge police did not convince Gideon Epstein of the ACLU of Massachusetts, who said its “response memo regarding Flock raises more questions than it does answers.” He added that the ACLU did not think Flock was trustworthy.
“If it’s really about whether we have trust and faith in Flock, I’d rather that we have that conversation and give the police department and our solicitor’s office some time to investigate the accusations,” councillor Paul Toner said.
Vice mayor Marc McGovern said it shouldn’t be just Flock executives coming to a committee hearing and explaining themselves. He also wanted city staff to go through a process similar to the creation of Cambridge’s 2018 antisurveillance law, bringing back civil liberties groups such as the ACLU and Digital Fourth to draft something strong around the readers. The “technology can be very useful, but I also agree that at this time it can be misused and terribly dangerous,” McGovern said.
The experts, council and general public should also be able to see the city’s full contract with Flock, councillor Patty Nolan said. “The contract should be a matter of public record,” Nolan said. “I’ve certainly asked for it and have not yet seen it.”
Trust but verify
Nolan had been one of the votes against the readers in February, along with councillors Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler and Sumbul Siddiqui.
“If we as Cambridge don’t support the militarized actions of the Trump administration and the federal overreach we’re seeing in cities across the country, we have to be sure that we aren’t using technologies that are facilitating those kinds of actions,” Sobrinho-Wheeler said. He called the readers “a canary for other sorts of technologies that we’re considering and that we’re currently using.”
Referring to news this year in which an Illinois audit discovered Flock violating state laws, councillor Cathie Zusy asked how Cambridge could trust the company to turn off its tech when told to.
Elow said that conversation with Flock began Monday before the council meeting. “There have been enough questions brought up over this last year that we need to examine the relationship,” Elow acknowledged. “I do trust when we tell them to shut their cameras off that that will happen – and we will be able to verify that.”
A stronger
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