South Portland ends license plate reader contract amid growing privacy concerns

Our Take

Credit to CBS 13 News for covering this one, because South Portland just did something we wish more city councils had the spine to do: they looked at the privacy tradeoffs of a Flock Safety contract and said no thanks, effective immediately. Not a study, not a task force, not a "pause pending review" — an actual termination. That's a rare outcome in a landscape where most municipalities sign these contracts quietly and never revisit them.

What makes this notable is the reasoning. Council members and residents pushed back on the idea that a private, out-of-state company should be running a always-on tracking network on public roads, logging where every car goes, tied to a database that can be queried by other agencies with zero local accountability. That's the core problem with Flock everywhere it operates, not just South Portland: the cameras don't just watch for stolen cars, they build a permanent movement history on every driver, and that data doesn't respect city limits or department policies once it's shared across networks.

South Portland joins a growing list of towns pushing back once residents actually learn how these systems work and how little oversight typically comes attached. If you want to see whether Flock or similar ALPR cameras are already logging your plate, check our camera map, and if your town hasn't had this conversation yet, our take-action page has what you need to start it.