Boston's Flock Pilot Shows How Easily Data Sharing Leaks
Surveillance control · 14.09.2026

Boston police signed a free pilot contract with Flock for license plate recognition: 156 days, from April 1 to September 4, 2025. The agreement stated in black and white: data sharing with other agencies — disabled. Flock confirmed: the settings were turned off.

Three days later it turned out that other law enforcement agencies had been quietly reading other people's plate data the whole time. The cause — a "glitch" on Flock's end. Just a glitch, nothing personal, merely outside agencies gaining access to data on the movements of city residents.

During the pilot, Boston received 77 requests for data access from outside agencies. An internal audit found 11,004 search queries in the database — and in almost half the cases, officers didn't specify the case number the investigation was tied to. In other words, they searched for reasons unknown and reported to no one why.

Which agencies exactly gained access and how many drivers were exposed remains unclear from the report. All that's known is that "thousands of agencies" are connected to Flock's national network. Convenient: the system leaks, but who exactly drank from that leak is, apparently, a trade secret.

Against this backdrop, Mayor Michelle Wu announced that the city is dropping Flock. The wording is bureaucratic, but the point is clear — if access settings can't be reliably restricted, the platform won't be used.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts is building up a collection of stories about surveillance being put to unintended uses. In Stow, an officer resigned after using Flock cameras to track an acquaintance — the department removed all the cameras. In New Bedford, an employee was placed on leave on suspicion of tracking an ex-girlfriend.

Bellingham, Auburn, and Stow are terminating their Flock contracts one after another. On Beacon Hill, lawmakers are discussing rules for license plate recognition systems: who can get access and when data can be shared with others. While regulators deliberate, the system has already shown one thing: turning data sharing on is far easier than reliably turning it off.

Source: https://www.govtech.com/public-safety/boston-drops-flock-after-outside-agencies-access-data