Resident urges pause on Flock Safety camera spending amid security and privacy questions
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Summary
A Milford resident urged the Board of Finance to reconsider the city's $65,000 annual spending on 31 Flock Safety cameras, citing data-retention practices, vehicle- and image-capture concerns, and recent reports of unauthorized access to Flock back-end systems in other municipalities.
A Milford resident told the board that the city's contract for Flock Safety cameras should be reexamined because of privacy and security concerns.
Tristan Hallock said Milford pays about $65,000 a year for 31 Flock Safety cameras and described how the system indexes video by license plate and retains vehicle images on Flock servers for 30 days. "They're designed to capture your license plates and Flock's cameras capture your image and your vehicle," Hallock said, adding that Flock's vehicle-fingerprinting technology records identifying characteristics such as make, color and accessories.
Hallock said he had corresponded with aldermen and with Chief Mello about how the department uses the system and that he found some entries missing from a public transparency portal. He also cited recent press reporting that municipalities have discovered unauthorized users in Flock back-end systems and that some jurisdictions have moved to disable or remove cameras.
Hallock encouraged the board to consider pausing spending on the cameras "until the Flock back end" security issues are addressed. No departmental or city official statement responding to Hallock's concerns is recorded in the public comment portion of the meeting.
The board recessed and will continue hearings on Feb. 17; any decision on the camera contract or line-item funding was not made at this meeting.