Boston Mayor Michelle Wu confirmed the city has abandoned Flock Safety license-plate reader cameras after the company enabled a nationwide lookup feature during a pilot program that allowed other law enforcement agencies to access data collected by Boston Police Department cameras, violating a contract that explicitly required data sharing to be disabled.
The Boston Police Department deployed approximately 45 ALPR cameras in a trial with Flock from April to September 2025. Within three days of launch, BPD discovered that agencies across the country could look up license plate and vehicle information from Boston cameras using a nationwide lookup function that was enabled by the vendor in error.
We have actually abandoned Flock, Wu said during her monthly Ask the Mayor segment on GBH News. The disclosure came days before Boston annual surveillance technology report was released.
The report noted that once the issue was discovered, the function was immediately disabled, and no further direct access was available for the remainder of the pilot. However, it did not say how many agencies accessed the data during those initial days.
The incident comes amid growing scrutiny of Flock Safety nationwide ALPR network. An Electronic Frontier Foundation report released the same day revealed that officers across the country routinely search the Flock database with minimal justification, logging reasons like LOL, LMAO, sexy, and idk to access sensitive location data. While Flock has since added a dropdown menu requiring officers to select a crime category, the EFF noted the system does not require proof that the dropdown reason actually matches the true purpose of the search.
Boston continues to use license-plate camera technology. It launched a second pilot with Motorola in February 2026 and a third with Axon in June 2026. Wu said the city needs a publicly approved and authorized policy that guarantees privacy and civil liberties protections before deploying such technology.
Multiple cities have dropped Flock at an accelerating pace over the past year, citing concerns about uncontrolled surveillance, unwanted data sharing, high costs, and reports of police abusing the tool. Flock maintains that new city partnerships have outpaced nonrenewals by approximately 10 to 1 so far in 2026.