Boston Dumps Flock Safety After Firm Shared Licence Plate Data Nationwide Without Consent
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Boston Dumps Flock Safety After Firm Shared Licence Plate Data Nationwide Without Consent
The City of Boston has terminated its contract with Flock Safety, the surveillance camera and licence plate reader company, after discovering that Flock had enabled a "nationwide lookup" feature that allowed Boston's data to be searched by law enforcement agencies across the entire United States. The problem? Boston's contract specifically required that feature to be disabled.
Key Takeaways
- Boston terminated its Flock Safety contract after the firm enabled nationwide licence plate lookups despite a contractual requirement to disable that feature
- Flock Safety operates in over 5,000 communities across the US with tens of thousands of cameras deployed as of late 2025
- Boston's data was accessible to any law enforcement agency in the Flock network, not just Boston police
- The US has no comprehensive federal framework governing cross-jurisdictional sharing of local surveillance data
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