{"slug": "south-portland-is-pulling-the-plug-on-flock-cameras", "title": "South Portland Is Pulling the Plug on Flock Cameras", "summary": "The South Portland City Council voted 5-2 to immediately terminate its contract with Flock Safety's AI-powered license plate cameras, despite the system's role in solving serious crimes including child predator cases and bank robberies. The decision came after a city audit revealed that Flock's network processed roughly 1,800 immigration-related searches, including over 1,450 by the Department of Homeland Security, while the city could not determine if any searches accessed local data. The council chose to eliminate the seven cameras rather than risk losing control over resident data once it entered the private company's cloud platform.", "body_md": "When you can’t track where your data goes, the safest choice is not to collect it at all. South Portland’s [City Council](https://www.southportland.gov/DocumentCenter/View/4610) just proved this point, voting **5-2** to immediately terminate their contract with [Flock Safety’s AI-powered](https://www.flocksafety.com/) license plate [cameras](https://www.gadgetreview.com/best-cameras-you-can-buy-for-every-budget)—despite the system helping catch child predators and solve bank robberies.\n\nThe decision dumps **seven cameras** that had been logging every vehicle passing through key intersections since installation. Flock’s AI captures more than license plates: vehicle models, colors, even bumper stickers get stored in a network that claims local control but operates with disputed transparency. [Police Chief Daniel Ahern](https://www.pressherald.com/2026/05/20/south-portland-still-undecided-about-future-of-flock-cameras/) called the technology “one of a kind” and credited it with cracking serious cases, including identifying an online child predator and locating shooting suspects.\n\nBut residents organized under the banner “[ No Flock for SoPo](https://www.pressherald.com/2026/06/11/south-portland-will-stop-using-flock-cameras/)” weren’t buying the trade-off. More than\n\n**75 people** rallied outside City Hall, while a petition against the cameras collected\n\n**590 signatures** statewide. Their concern wasn’t the local police—it was everyone else with potential access to South Portland’s data through Flock’s cloud platform.\n\nA city audit revealed the scope of that access. [Nationwide](https://jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/2025/10/21/leaving-the-door-wide-open/#:~:text=%5B45%5D%20All%20the%20Flock%20Network,described%20in%20further%20detail%20below.), Flock’s network processed roughly **1,800 immigration-related searches**, with the Department of Homeland Security conducting over **1,450 of them** since February 2025. Two unnamed federal agencies ran searches using terms related to immigration and reproductive health enforcement.\n\nThe kicker? South Portland couldn’t determine whether any of these searches actually accessed their cameras’ data.\n\n“We don’t know enough about this stuff. We don’t know where the data is going to go,” [Councilor Misha Pride](https://www.pressherald.com/2026/06/11/south-portland-will-stop-using-flock-cameras/) explained, summarizing the majority’s reasoning. Like deleting TikTok over Chinese data concerns, the council chose elimination over mitigation.\n\nCity staff had recommended keeping the cameras with additional safeguards, but residents in the chambers cheered when councilors rejected that middle ground. The contract runs until **2027**, but [City Manager Scott Morelli](https://www.pressherald.com/2026/06/11/south-portland-will-stop-using-flock-cameras/) promised to remove the hardware “as soon as possible” and confirmed South Portland’s system no longer shares data with other agencies.\n\nSouth Portland’s move sends a message to other municipalities weighing similar contracts: citizens can successfully push back against [surveillance](https://www.gadgetreview.com/us-operatives-built-a-surveillance-app-to-target-alberta-separatists) [infrastructure](https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-massachusetts-and-updates), even when it works exactly as advertised. The question isn’t whether these cameras solve crimes—they do. It’s whether local communities can maintain meaningful control over their data once it enters a private company’s network.\n\nThe answer, apparently, is no.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/south-portland-is-pulling-the-plug-on-flock-cameras", "canonical_source": "https://www.gadgetreview.com/south-portland-is-pulling-the-plug-on-flock-cameras", "published_at": "2026-06-12 15:02:25+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-12 15:28:05.393225+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy", "ai-ethics", "computer-vision", "ai-safety"], "entities": ["South Portland City Council", "Flock Safety", "Police Chief Daniel Ahern", "No Flock for SoPo"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/south-portland-is-pulling-the-plug-on-flock-cameras", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/south-portland-is-pulling-the-plug-on-flock-cameras.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/south-portland-is-pulling-the-plug-on-flock-cameras.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/south-portland-is-pulling-the-plug-on-flock-cameras.jsonld"}}