For the third time in a week, police officers in Massachusetts were caught misusing Flock Safety’s license plate camera network, raising questions about the lack of oversight of the surveillance technology that quickly and quietly has sprouted up across the country.
Two officers in Lynn were placed on leave after an audit flagged a “concerning pattern” in their Flock searches, officials said Wednesday. A day earlier, Stow police said they would move to fire an officer and criminally charge him for allegedly tracking his ex-girlfriend. That followed New Bedford police placing an officer on leave who was accused of stalking her ex-girlfriend.
The misconduct was identified after a growing nationwide backlash prompted action on a number of fronts. People have been using a website, HaveIBeenFlocked.com, to learn if their license plates had been the target of a Flock search; the company rolled out a system that is supposed to flag questionable searches; and towns and police departments have started to tighten access and clamp down on misuse.
“We want to make sure that the privacy concerns are taken care of and that we still have this tool, which is really important to public safety,” said Michael Bradley, president of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association. The group has urged departments to conduct thorough audits of their Flock systems and flag suspicious searches.
But critics argue these changes don’t address the key problems with the technology, which includes the widespread sharing of personal data and potential intrusive searches without police needing a warrant, as well as the cooperation of some departments with federal agents to find immigrants targeted for deportation.
Some critics say it’s time for the state to impose some restrictions and requirements, arguing that Big Tech or law enforcement cannot be trusted to police themselves.
“We need real legal protections, not promises from surveillance technology companies that may not be binding in practice,” said Kade Crockford, director for technology and justice programs at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which is pushing for legislative action.
Last week, Flock announced changes to its platform in response to the scrutiny that includes an auditing tool designed to flag patterns of misuse for review. Flock plans to require customers to use the auditing tool by the end of the year. Before, law enforcement agencies could decide whether to use the Flock tool, or other auditing methods, if any at all.
Flock will also require officers to enter a case number for all searches and let departments limit the type of offenses that other agencies cite for searching their databases, such as prohibiting for immigration purposes.
Flock’s cameras photograph the back of each passing vehicle, noting its location, license plate, make, color, and model, as well as bumper stickers or racks. In many cases, officers can access cameras from departments with which they hold a sharing agreement — a source of concern about out-of-state agencies searching the data without oversight and possibly on behalf of federal agencies.
Both Stow and New Bedford ordered their police departments to terminate their relationships with Flock shortly after the misconduct cases surfaced. In Lynn, police have restricted access to Flock to high-ranking supervisors as the department reviews its policies.
Such reports of misuse and a slew of data privacy concerns sparked a nationwide furor against Flock, leading dozens of municipalities, including at least 13 in Massachusetts, to cancel or pause their contract with the company.
In the latest case, Hopkinton terminated its contract on Thursday after officials said a legal review found the agreement did not comply with procurement law.
“Automated license plate reader technology has proven that it can be a very valuable tool,” Hopkinton interim Police Chief Scott van Raalten said in a statement. “Even so, we recognize that our community has raised legitimate concerns, and we take those seriously.”
Wellesley also ended its pilot with Flock this week. Police Chief Scott Whittemore said the single Flock camera the department tested was not making significant contributions to their work. The pilot was initially poised to run until the end of 2027.
Some departments have proactively amended how they use the technology, rather than outright ceasing its use.
After residents raised concerns, Quincy police in June limited access to Flock’s platform to only 50 officers out of its roughly 240. Searches are audited and must be conducted within the city’s borders and associated with an investigation that has a case number, said Police Chief Michael Kennedy.
“I trust that my people do a great job, but we check and make sure that they’re using it appropriately,” Kennedy said.
Waltham started auditing its Flock data when it first contracted with the company last year, said Detective Sergeant Patrick Dean. He said the AI-powered audits would supplement the department’s human-conducted audits, not replace them.
Salem announced in July the city is ending its Flock contract due to data security concerns. Law enforcement officers seeking to assist ICE in Florida and Georgia had included Salem’s records in their searches last year, according to HaveIBeenFlocked.
Flock piloted AI-powered audits earlier this summer. The company said the tool has already helped find cases of misuse, such as five officers in Albany, Ga., who allegedly accessed the platform for non-law enforcement purposes. The Washington Post reported over 50 instances of officer misuse of Flock, some for stalking and harassment.
The company did not respond to a request for comment. In a July interview with the Globe, Flock’s chief legal officer, Dan Haley, said the growing reports of misuse are a “good outcome” of the company’s accountability tools.
“Our opponents will point to that and yell ‘Flock bad.’ We point to that and say we’re really proud of that,” he said.
But some people doubt self-auditing will be sufficient to identify misconduct and have turned to a data-aggregation website to see if their license plate was searched in the system.
One such resident is Coreen Aikens, of Marshfield, who grew curious when she saw widespread reports of police misusing Flock.
She entered her license plate number on HaveIBeenFlocked and found an officer in Abington used Flock in March of 2025 to track her driving activities over a seven-day period by searching 88 networks on the company’s system. The officer categorized the search reason as “suspicious activity.”
But Aikens, 37, said she hasn’t been in Abington in years. The officer, she discovered, graduated high school with her; she said they didn’t have any sort of relationship.
“I felt like my privacy had been violated,” she said. “I’m just an ex-classmate. Why did [he] look me up?”
Following a Globe inquiry, Abington Police Chief John Bonney said he was looking into the incident. He added the department regularly audits its officers use of Flock.
Civil liberties groups and activists took to the streets this week against Flock, which is based in Atlanta, and other surveillance companies as part of a national week of action. More than 50 protesters marched to Flock’s Boston office in the Seaport on Wednesday, flashing signs emblazoned with the camera designs and chanting “get the flock out.”
“People are finally fighting back against the surveillance state,” said Fatema Ahmad, executive director of the Muslim Justice League advocacy group and one of the protest’s organizers.
Critics say the new auditing tools are helpful, but only to a small extent, as they are essentially optional for police to act on. The Institute for Justice earlier this month released a database of license plate reader technology abuse and has identified more than 150 cases nationwide, which Michael Soyfer, an attorney with the institute, called a “massive undercount.”
The institute and other civil liberties groups have long pushed for the technology to require warrants signed by a judge.
“If a warrant requirement was implemented, you would see the number of searches plummet,” Soyfer said, “and they would only happen when there was a real reason for them, probable cause.”
Yogev Toby can be reached at yogev.toby@globe.com.