Why Boston Cancelled Flock Safety Surveillance
The short version: Boston reportedly killed its Flock Safety pilot after finding the company's nationwide data-sharing network broke the terms cities thought they'd agreed to.
Our Take
Credit to TechPulse Daily for surfacing this one, because it cuts to the heart of the Flock problem: cities sign a local contract, but the cameras plug into a national network that quietly hands your plate data to agencies you never voted to share it with. If Boston really found that out mid-pilot and pulled the plug, that's a rare case of a city actually reading the fine print before it was too late.
This is the pattern we keep seeing across the country — officials are sold on "local control" and "community safety," then discover their residents' movements are searchable by hundreds of departments nationwide, ICE-adjacent partners included, with little to no local oversight. Boston walking away isn't a fluke, it's a warning shot other city councils should be paying attention to before they sign, not after.
If you want to see whether your own city already has these cameras watching your commute, check our camera map, and if you'd rather your council do what Boston just did, our take-action page has the tools to push back.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of TechPulse Daily, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.