New Bedford police officer accused of using Flock cameras to track ex-girlfriend
The short version: A New Bedford officer allegedly abused department Flock camera access to stalk an ex-girlfriend, proving these networks are only as trustworthy as the people who run them.
Our Take
CBS Boston is reporting on something we've been warning about since we started this project: give someone a badge and a login to a mass-surveillance network, and eventually somebody uses it for reasons that have nothing to do with public safety. A New Bedford officer is now accused of tapping into the department's Flock camera system to track an ex-girlfriend's movements. That's not a hypothetical "what if" civil liberties groups dreamed up — it's the exact scenario departments swore couldn't happen because of "audit logs" and "policy."
Flock markets itself on trust: trust the vendor, trust the department, trust the officer behind the login screen. But audit trails only catch misuse after the fact, and only if anyone bothers to look. For every case that surfaces publicly, there's no telling how many quietly get buried in an internal affairs file or never get flagged at all. A camera network built to watch an entire community's comings and goings is a tool that will get misused by someone with access — it's not a matter of if, it's when.
This is exactly why we track where these cameras are going up in the first place. Check the map to see if Flock has quietly moved into your town, and if you want to push back on unchecked ALPR deployment where you live, our take action page has concrete steps to get started.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of CBS Boston, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.