Flock cameras remained active in two cities where officials had asked for them to be turned off

Two cities that recently asked a controversial automated license plate reader (ALPR) company to deactivate their cameras say they have discovered that some devices remained operative long after officials directed the firm to stop recording.

On Tuesday, officials in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced they have terminated a contract with Flock Safety after company staff installed two new cameras a few weeks after the City Council ordered 16 existing ALPR cameras to be deactivated.

Police officials in Eugene, Oregon, terminated the department’s contract with Flock on December 5, and the police auditor there said he has launched a probe after learning that at least one camera was still activated weeks after officials ordered Flock to turn off the city’s 57 cameras in October.

Online data on Monday showed nearly 8,500 vehicles’ plates captured in Eugene in the preceding 30 days. 

“What’s being called into question here is the vendor,” Eugene Police Chief Chris Skinner said at a press conference Monday, emphasizing that he is still a proponent of ALPR cameras as a crime-fighting tool.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the city of Cambridge said that “concerns about Flock were substantiated when they notified the City that two cameras were installed by their technicians in late November -- without the City’s awareness -- following an outstanding work order that should have been canceled when the City originally deactivated the cameras and account.”

“Due to this material breach of our trust and the agreement, the City is terminating its contract with Flock Safety,” the spokesperson added in a statement.

Flock did not respond to a request for comment. At a Cambridge City Council hearing on Tuesday, Flock lobbyist Kevin Kane reportedly said that the cameras have now been uninstalled there and no data had been accessed.

Cambridge entered into a contract with Flock in February, but city councilors became concerned about using the system after recent news reports revealed that a centralized Flock database was queried by immigration authorities and police searching for a woman who self-administered an abortion, Cambridge City Councilor Patty Nolan told Recorded Future News in October.

At the time, the city had asked the company to pause the cameras while officials there researched risks and potential guardrails.

Flock has a network of some 90,000 cameras nationwide. Data gathered by the cameras is entered into a single database, allowing myriad individual law enforcement agencies to search for plates traveling anywhere in the country.

Eugene resident Ky Fireside, who has led community members in opposing the use of Flock cameras there, said he noticed the cameras were still collecting data last week when he searched an online portal. He alerted officials on Dec. 3.

Fireside said it is troubling that Flock apparently disregarded the city’s direction to deactivate all of the cameras.

“The city doesn’t have a mechanism for controlling when the devices are on — that functionality just isn’t built into the Flock system,” Fireside told Recorded Future News in a text message. “We cannot entrust such sensitive data to a corporation which values profits over all else.”

Flock has been caught keeping cameras running in cities that have asked for them to be deactivated in the past.

Officials in Evanston, Illinois, asked Flock to turn off cameras there in August after a state audit revealed the company had given citizens’ license plate data to federal authorities, which is against state law.

The company reportedly later reinstalled cameras in Evanston. Officials ultimately encased them in plastic bags to ensure they were no longer collecting data.