Boston will stop using Flock Safety's license-plate cameras after the city found the company enabled "nationwide lookup" despite a contract requiring it to be disabled, Ars Technica reported.

The EFF analyzed ALPR search logs and found officers across the country spying on drivers for nonsensical "reasons" like "LOL," "LMAO," "sexy," and "idk." Flock claims a new dropdown system since late 2025 requires officers to select a crime, but the EFF says it doesn't verify the reason matches the search's true purpose.

Mayor Michelle Wu said Boston will keep using license-plate cameras if there's a publicly approved policy guaranteeing privacy and civil liberties. "It can really help with safety in a lot of ways, but it has to be used responsibly," Wu said. "When the toggles or the access controls either are not able to be restricted in the ways that conform with that policy, or are set but then can be unset or reset in ways that violate that policy, we would not use that platform."

Boston's annual report requires vendors not to share license-plate-reader data and to erase recordings after 30 days unless police request retention. Cities have been dropping Flock at an accelerating pace over surveillance, data-sharing, cost, and abuse concerns. Flock told Ars that in 2026, new partnerships have outpaced nonrenewals by approximately 10 to 1.