Who’s Tracking Your Car? MA State Police Ordered to Release Camera Records | ATS News
The short version: A Massachusetts judge ordered State Police to release ALPR records, a small but real win for transparency that Flock and its allies would rather avoid.
Our Take
Credit to Across The Streets for tracking this one closely. A Suffolk Superior Court judge telling the Massachusetts State Police to cough up their camera records isn't just a local procedural story — it's a crack in the wall that police agencies and vendors like Flock Safety have built around how ALPR data gets collected, shared, and used. Departments love to talk about "transparency" in press releases, but when someone actually files to see the receipts, the instinct is almost always to stall, redact, or claim exemptions until a court forces their hand.
That's the pattern worth paying attention to. Every one of these rulings sets precedent that residents, journalists, and civil liberties groups in other states can point to when their own state police or local PD stonewall records requests about camera networks. It also underscores something we say constantly: these systems weren't built with public input, and agencies fight to keep it that way once they're installed. Court orders like this one are often the only real accountability mechanism left when city councils rubber-stamp Flock contracts without debate.
If you want to see how far this surveillance web already reaches near you, check out our camera map, and if you're ready to push back on unchecked ALPR deployment in your own town, 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 Across The Streets, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.