Stoughton town officials quietly dropped a packet and photos online Thursday announcing that the police department will start using Flock Safety license plate cameras, and the move immediately kicked up questions about privacy, oversight and how far the system will go. The town manager’s post says the cameras will power real-time “hotlist” alerts and allow retroactive searches to help recover stolen vehicles, locate missing people and investigate crimes. Town Manager Thomas J. Calter also asked the police chief and deputy chief to go back before the finance committee to answer follow-up questions, and the post listed Deputy Chief James O’Connor as the contact point for residents with concerns, as per Flock Safety.
The town manager attached a “Flock & Stoughton police data packet” that walks through how the vendor and department say the system will run: it detects license plates and vehicle attributes, supports hotlist alerts (including NCIC and NCMEC types) and, the packet says, requires human verification before any enforcement action is taken. The packet also spells out cloud storage, encryption and a default 30-day hard-delete policy for plate reads and vehicle images. Those specifics were included in the town manager’s Facebook post and mirror language in Flock Safety’s public documentation. According to Flock Safety, the company’s default retention period is 30 days.
What the Town Packet Says
The packet, signed by Calter, pitches the Flock rollout as a public safety tool meant “to capture objective evidence without compromising individual privacy” and lays out the local rules that are supposed to govern its use. It lists operating requirements the town says will be enforced: searches must be logged with an associated offense type, users have to be trained, any query must include a valid call or case number and every use of the system must create an audit trail. Calter’s letter also formally asks police leadership to brief the finance committee again to tackle concerns raised during the rollout, and it directs residents with questions to Deputy Chief O’Connor.
What Flock Says About Data, Access and Limits
In its public materials, Flock says its automated license plate reader cameras capture plates and vehicle characteristics, not faces, and that its platform is built with access controls and auditing tools. The company’s policies say data are uploaded to cloud storage (Flock documents reference AWS hosting), encrypted both at rest and in transit, and purged on a rolling 30-day schedule by default. Customers can require longer retention only through formal approvals. Flock also promotes permission-based sharing and auditing tools that are supposed to let local agencies control which outside organizations can request or receive data, according to Flock Safety and the vendor’s legal policies…