Cambridge has terminated its contract with Flock Safety, a maker of automated license plate reader cameras and data tools, after debate over the security of the system’s data.
Trust in the company crumbled Tuesday during a Public Safety Committee meeting when police commissioner Christine Elow said Flock had installed two cameras after the city ordered all Flock devices to be taken down to assess data security concerns.
The new installations were only discovered Tuesday before the meeting, Elow said.
They were to fulfill a “preexisting work order,” the company has explained. A similar “miscommunication” took place in Evanston, Ill.
“If the company can’t even manage work orders and know what’s happening within our city, how can we trust that … data is protected?” said city manager Yi-An Huang.
The City Council had voted unanimously Oct. 20 to halt use of all Flock cameras until the company addressed fears about data access and enforcement risks. The 16 cameras that were present in the city were deactivated and taken offline the next day, officials said. There are now no Flock Safety cameras in the city.
Police seek tools
The devices have raised concerns over data sharing, privacy and exposure to outside law enforcement. Civil liberties groups, including the ACLU of Massachusetts and Digital Fourth, warned that device data could be accessed by out-of-state agencies involved in abortion prosecutions, immigration enforcement or restrictions on gender-affirming care. Supporters of the cameras had argued that the devices were intended for “legitimate law enforcement purposes” – recovering stolen vehicles, finding missing people and helping complex investigations.
While recognizing concerns, Cambridge police officials said the devices could aid in investigations, and that losing access would be a setback in dealing with interstate threats.
“That technology, when properly governed, is incredibly valuable to public safety,” Elow said.
Kevin Kane, a representative from Flock, offered assurances at the meeting that “at no point in time was any data breached” when the company was working with Cambridge – no data was made available for searches, access or queries. He said the data collected is owned by customers such as the city of Cambridge, and the cameras capture only images of a vehicle and license plate, not personally identifiable information. He noted that data is deleted after 30 days.
Civil rights groups and media investigate
But Gideon Epstein, a policy counsel at the ACLU of Massachusetts’ Technology for Liberty team, said Flock promotes national data sharing by encouraging local police departments to opt into a “quid pro quo model” of sharing. “This license plate reader database on a national level, without adequate due process protections, is an exceedingly powerful tool that should not be left in the hands of just any law enforcement officer, and there’s ripe opportunity for abuse,” Epstein said.
One instance was cited in which a Texas officer searched Massachusetts data to look for a woman getting an abortion. The ACLU said reasons for searches are frequently vague, and do not necessarily indicate the reason for the search; in some cases, the organization found, reasons for searches were given as simply “investigation.” In the Texas case, reporting shows the search was part of a “death investigation” into the abortion, and it was only after an inquiry by reporters at 404 Media that police created a document suggesting it was because the woman’s “family feared she was hurt.”
Flock has also been the center of cybersecurity concerns. Epstein said there have been at least 35 cases in which Flock passwords have been stolen.
Residents divided, city fears risks
Residents remain divided over the issue, with many recognizing the data privacy concerns while worried about crime in the city.
“I don’t want Cambridge to use any technology that puts residents in jeopardy, but must clarify that violent crimes can’t be solved or prosecuted if the Cambridge Police Department doesn’t have eyewitnesses willing to testify,” said Ty Bellitti, the co-founder of MBK Cambridge, a program that focuses on addressing opportunity gaps facing boys and young men of color. “I am exhausted at the fact that violence has plagued this neighborhood for over 50 years, my entire life, year after year, residents risk their safety simply stepping outside of their homes.”
City councillors also emphasized the importance of technology in helping police investigations, but said the risks were too great.
Huang emphasized that this is especially true at a time when “there are deep tensions” between the city and the federal government “on values.” “What’s so hard now is it’s not only a tension in terms of the tradeoff between privacy in the public domain and public safety, but we’re trying to manage the challenges of data sharing with the federal government,” Huang said.
The decision, however, was clear. “We’re terminating the contract,” Huang said.
Evaluations of the devices in Cambridge will continue and the city will reengage with the council and community about the technology, staff said.
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Good riddance, we don’t need this surveillance baloney in our city. We were a safe and low-crime city before ALPRs, we’ll be safe and low-crime without them now.
Terminating the Contract was the right thing to do. Thank You.