Boston ends pilot with surveillance camera vendor Flock Safety over data-sharing breach

The city of Boston has terminated its relationship with Flock Safety after discovering the license-plate camera vendor shared Boston data across its national network in violation of the city’s contract terms, according to city officials.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu confirmed the decision during her monthly “Ask the Mayor” segment on GBH News, saying the city had “abandoned Flock.” Her remarks came just days before the city published its 2025 annual surveillance technology report, which attributed the unauthorized sharing to what it called a “vendor error.”

According to the report, the Boston Police Department had been running a trial of roughly 45 Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) cameras supplied by Flock between April and September of last year. The report states that the improper nationwide data sharing took place in the opening days of the pilot program, before contractual data-handling restrictions had been fully configured.

The episode underscores a broader tension for municipalities adopting cloud-connected surveillance technology: ALPR vendors typically operate nationwide networks that pool plate-read data across jurisdictions, while city contracts often impose strict geographic limits on how local data may be used. Boston’s contract reportedly contained such a provision, which the vendor’s configuration failed to enforce.

Flock Safety is a privately held company and does not trade on public markets. Investors watching the broader surveillance and data-infrastructure software landscape, however, have exposure through public firms such as PDF Solutions, Inc. (PDFS), an application-software provider serving technology customers in the United States, Japan, China, and internationally. PDFS shares were recently trading at $47.15, down 1.44% from a previous close of $47.84, giving the company a market capitalization of roughly $1.99 billion.

For city officials, the decision reflects heightened scrutiny of data governance in municipal technology procurement. Boston’s annual surveillance report, mandated by the city’s oversight framework, is one of the mechanisms through which departments must disclose how surveillance tools perform against contractual and legal constraints — a process that in this case surfaced the breach publicly.

Privacy advocates have long argued that ALPR networks can effectively recreate location-tracking capabilities across state lines, and Boston’s experience may prompt other cities to revisit the contractual guardrails they place on similar vendors.

What to watch

• Details in Boston’s full 2025 surveillance technology report, including any remediation steps or data-retention disclosures related to the pilot.
• Whether Boston issues a new request for proposals for license-plate reader technology with revised data-sharing terms.
• Responses from other municipalities using ALPR vendors, and any policy changes in how cities contractually restrict network-wide data pooling.

Source: original release