Mass. State Police must disclose location of Flock surveillance cameras, judge rules

Our Take

Credit to NBC10 Boston for covering this ruling, because it cuts right to the core problem with how Flock Safety and the agencies that deploy its cameras have operated for years: in the dark, with no real public accounting of where these things are pointed. A judge ordering Massachusetts State Police to disclose camera locations isn't a technicality — it's a basic acknowledgment that if the state is going to log every passing license plate, the public has a right to know where that dragnet is cast.

This matters because ALPR secrecy isn't an accident. Agencies and vendors have leaned on vague "law enforcement sensitive" arguments to keep camera maps hidden, even as the data behind them gets shared across hundreds of departments and sometimes federal agencies with zero public input. When courts start pushing back and forcing disclosure, it's a sign that transparency law is catching up to a surveillance system that's been expanding faster than any oversight could track.

Massachusetts residents, and anyone else living under a growing lattice of these cameras, deserve to know exactly where they are. That's the whole reason we built our camera map — crowdsourced accountability in the absence of official candor. If you want to push back on secrecy in your own town, our take-action page has tools to start.