Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced that the city had stopped using Flock Safety’s license plate recognition system. According to Boston’s 2025 surveillance technology report, police tested approximately 45 Automated License Plate Reader cameras from April to September. The contract stipulated that only trained Boston Police Department personnel could access the collected data and that sharing would remain disabled. However, during the first three days of the pilot program, other law enforcement agencies were able to access license plate and vehicle information because Flock mistakenly activated the “nationwide lookup” feature.
After the Boston Police Department became aware of the situation, it had the feature disabled immediately. Direct access to the data was blocked for the remainder of the pilot, and outside agencies were required to submit written requests. The report did not state how many agencies accessed the data.
Despite dropping Flock, Boston continued testing license plate recognition technologies. Police launched new pilot programs with Motorola in February 2026 and with Axon in June 2026. The city requires vendors not to share the data and to delete records after 30 days unless police request their retention for legal or investigative purposes.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation reported that search logs in the Flock system showed police officers accessing sensitive location data using reasons such as “LOL,” “LMAO,” “sexy,” and “idk.” According to the organization, although selecting a crime type from a list has been mandatory since late 2025, no evidence is required to show that the selection matches the actual purpose of the search.
Wu said license plate cameras could be used if there were a publicly approved policy protecting privacy and civil liberties. Flock, meanwhile, said that in 2026, new city partnerships outnumbered agreements that were not renewed by approximately 10 to 1.
Background
Flock is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we published 2 articles in the last 90 days in which the name appeared; the most recent was dated September 1, 2026.