Politics
Lowell Council Quietly Reverses Itself, Restores Flock License Plate Cameras 8-1
Newly released minutes show the Lowell City Council voted 8-1 in a closed executive session on Oct. 6 to let police resume using Flock automated license plate readers without data sharing â less than two weeks after suspending the program. Councilor Sean McDonough cast the lone no vote and objected that the decision should have been made in public.
LOWELL â Less than two weeks after voting to suspend the Police Department's use of Flock automated license plate readers, the City Council reversed course in a closed session, voting 8-1 to let officers resume using the cameras under a no-data-sharing condition, according to minutes released this week.
The decision came during the council's Oct. 6 meeting, when members entered an executive session to discuss the Flock program along with other matters. Councilor Sean McDonough was the sole dissenter and, according to the minutes, "stressed that [the] vote should have been in public session."
The reversal was not announced at the time and became public only with the release of the executive session minutes. The earlier suspension vote had followed months of mounting scrutiny of Flock Safety, whose cameras photograph passing vehicles and log their license plates, locations and timestamps in a searchable database.
The technology has become one of the most contested public safety tools in Massachusetts and across the country. Critics â including civil liberties advocates and some residents â argue the systems amount to warrantless mass surveillance, pointing to documented cases of officers misusing plate-reader data to track people for personal reasons. Supporters, including many police chiefs, say the cameras help recover stolen vehicles and solve violent crimes.
The council's condition that Lowell police not share data with outside agencies appears aimed at addressing some of those concerns, limiting how far information collected on city streets can travel. It is not clear from the minutes how that restriction will be enforced or audited, or whether the public will receive regular reporting on how the cameras are used.
McDonough's objection highlights a broader transparency question: the decision to restart a surveillance program was made behind closed doors, with the public learning of the outcome only after the fact. Executive sessions are permitted under state law for certain topics, but the restart of a program that had just been publicly paused is likely to renew debate over how much of that deliberation residents are entitled to see.
For Lowell residents, the practical effect is that the cameras are back on, with a data-sharing limit attached. Whether that limit holds â and whether the council revisits the program in open session â will determine how the city balances crime-fighting tools against privacy in the months ahead.