The Flock backlash might have taken a backseat to more recent tech news — namely, whether AI development needs to slow down before superintelligence wipes us out, or, on a lighter note, Apple’s first foldable iPhone — but the anti-surveillance crusade is continuing, with Boston officials and its police department announcing the city will not be relying on the service any longer.
This follows the publishing of a 2025 report which included details on a Flock pilot the city ran in 2025. According to the report, the city discovered Flock was sharing data with external law enforcement agencies — despite Flock’s agreement with Boston saying data sharing was to be turned off, and the company confirming this was the case.
In response, city officials and Boston’s police department have committed to no longer using Flock cameras going forward. However, it’s worth noting this is not an absolute win for privacy advocates. Boston police department has already begun pilots with two of Flock’s rivals: a Motorola trial began back in February, while an Axon pilot began in June, suggesting it might merely move to a different Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) service.
And right here is where you lost any credibility.
If you can’t handle a simple boolean set to false, then I can’t trust you with anything more complicated.
Now, now
That implies they even implemented such a boolean.
They can handle it, they chose not to which is worse. This isn’t about incompetence, I really doubt it was a simple mistake.
I am going the incompetence route in these cases as embarrassment tends to be one of the best motivators for dickheads like these
The city should generate an estimated sum of judgments the city would be subjected to from civil rights violations, then sue Flock for that sum to capture the money and pay out to Bostonians.
Unfortunately cops aren’t very well known for their critical thinking abilities.