Notes ·
Littleton Says Flock Reactivated Cameras the Town Had Shut Down
The Lowell Sun reports that Littleton, Massachusetts says Flock Safety reactivated license plate cameras without notifying the town.
Littleton had explicitly deactivated the cameras on May 12 while its Select Board reviewed privacy, governance, data retention and whether the system should continue operating at all. The town's own website still describes the cameras as temporarily deactivated pending that review.
That makes this different from the other Flock cases we have been following.
We have seen officers abuse legitimate access to stalk people. We have seen cities discover that outside agencies could search their data. Now Littleton says cameras it intentionally shut down were turned back on without its knowledge.
And it is not the first time something like this has happened.
Cambridge, Massachusetts terminated its Flock contract after the company installed two new cameras after the city had ordered its system deactivated. Eugene, Oregon discovered that a camera remained active after police ordered the network shut down.
At some point this stops being merely a debate about whether automated license plate readers are useful police tools.
It becomes a question of whether municipalities actually control the surveillance infrastructure they are paying for.
If a town says stop collecting data, that should mean stop.
Immediately.
No hidden setting, vendor mistake, delayed work order or unexplained reactivation should be capable of overriding that decision.
The recurring problem with Flock is increasingly one of trust.