Another police officer arrested for allegedly misusing Flock cameras

Our Take

ABC News is reporting on yet another case of a police officer allegedly misusing Flock Safety's license plate camera network — this time in Massachusetts, with possible dismissal and criminal charges on the table. Credit to their newsroom for keeping a spotlight on this. We've said it before: these stories aren't glitches in an otherwise sound system. They're the predictable result of handing thousands of officers nationwide quiet, searchable access to a database that tracks where cars (and the people driving them) go, with audit logs that only ever seem to catch problems after the fact.

Flock and police departments love to point to 'audit trails' as the safeguard that makes this technology accountable. But an audit trail is not a guardrail — it tells you who looked, not whether they should have. By the time an internal investigation flags a bad search, the plate, the person, and whatever private information got pulled has already been seen. Dismissal and charges after the damage is done is not the same as prevention, and it does nothing for the people whose movements were quietly queried without cause.

Every one of these cases is also a reminder that your own town's cameras are logging this data right now, whether or not anyone's watching the watchers. Check our map to see what's deployed near you, and if you want to push back on unchecked access in your community, our take-action page has concrete steps.