Flock Caged? Select Board Pauses Surveillance Camera Use, and Makes Plans for Broader Policy
Updated: 9.23.2026, 10:25am
Last night (September 22, 2026), the Milton Select Board voted unanimously to pause Milton's use of Flock cameras for 90 days. The vote came after an outpouring of opposition, as well as a discussion between the Board and Police Chief John King. While King stated that he was not "wedded" to Flock, he did defend the town's use of the technology, stated his opposition to the related Citizens' Petition currently under consideration ahead of the October Town Meeting, and requested that the door be left open for other ALPR technologies if the Board were to discontinue the use of Flock. (This website has posted about these issues previously.)
The Select Board stated that it did not support the Citizens' Petition–which would put in the hands of Town Meeting the decision of what surveillance technologies may be used and under what circumstances–as too broad. However, after voting in favor of a 90-day moratorium, the Select Board handed immediate questions regarding ALPR policies to town counsel. After town counsel weighs in, the Board is likely to appoint a committee or task force to study not only the town's use of ALPR systems, but also digital technologies more generally. It may also decide to cancel the Flock contract entirely. The Board seemed to acknowledge that time was of the essence.
Two additional issues came up during the discussion, both disturbing, and both making it clear that Flock is simply the tip of the surveillance iceberg.
The first was that, in justifying MPD's ability to enter into contracts with surveillance companies without pre-approval (or, really, regular oversight), Chief King used as an example the possible purchase of drone technology (the example he gave was finding a missing child). The prospect should fill no one with comfort: not only is drone use a significant privacy threat; but drones also create significant security dangers (imagine your friendly neighborhood police drone being hacked by a criminal or terrorist) and raise serious national security concerns, given that many are manufactured in China. (For more, see this recent New York Times piece).
The second was Chair Daley's passing comment that, apparently, the Milton School Committee has been considering surveillance technology for residency investigations. This fact is highly disturbing. The School Committee's flirtation with surveillance technology for residency investigations should be deeply alarming to anyone who cares not only about the dangers of surveillance technology generally, but also the discriminatory ways in which the Milton Residency Policy has already been used to disproportionately surveil residents of color.
The full discussion is worth your time, although soup-to-nuts it runs about two hours. I hope to write more deeply about these issues in a future post. (Ed. note: I spoke last night against the town's use of both the existing system and similar technologies.):
