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Boston Dumps Flock, Says It Shared Data Nationwide in Violation of Contract
The Boston city government abandoned Flock Safety’s license-plate reader cameras after the company shared data nationwide in violation of a contract provision, according to city officials.
“We have actually abandoned Flock,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said in her monthly “Ask the Mayor” segment on GBH News last week. Wu made the comment a few days before the release of Boston’s annual surveillance technology report, which said a Flock “vendor error” resulted in nationwide data sharing.
The report, which covers 2025, describes how the Boston Police Department deployed about 45 Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) cameras in a trial with Flock from April to September last year.
Meta Is Using Instagram Users’ Photos to Build a Universal Facial Recognition System for Its Hated Smart Glasses, Class Action Lawsuit Claims
The public messaging surrounding Meta’s flashy smart glasses hasn’t exactly gone in the company’s favor. The camera-equipped devices have garnered a reputation for allowing shady individuals to record strangers without their consent, garnering them the memorable pejorative of “pervert glasses.”
So when Wired revealed in June that Meta had silently added facial recognition code to the smart glasses — stoking fears that the creepy glasses could be used to identify people on the street based on biometric data — that simmering distaste grew into a major PR disaster for the company.
Meta has ever since vehemently denied that it was planning on ever releasing the tech, a feature dubbed “NameTag.” That’s despite its CTO Andrew Bosworth happily describing those plans in excruciating detail in public and arguing it would be a “great feature” — mere days after calling Wired‘s bombshell reporting “absolutely dishonest.”
Now, the company is facing a proposed class action lawsuit over the ordeal, as Wired reports, with a set of families in Illinois and California accusing the company of illegally scraping their Facebook and Instagram photos to build a massive facial recognition system for “NameTag.”
Forget Data Privacy, AI Chatbots Already Know More Than Your Own Mother
We’re freaked out by how tailored our advertisements on Instagram are, or how much Pinterest seems to anticipate our interior design taste — and yet we continue to spoon-feed AI chatbots heaping piles of intensely personal information.
AI companies are now in possession of heaps of personal information that social media giants could only dream of. We aren’t just setting ourselves up for hyper-targeted ads. We’re also making ourselves vulnerable to hacks and even blackmail. ChatGPT alone receives 3 billion messages from users daily. Every time we ask a bot for advice, vent to it, or emote at it, we’re contributing to a treasure trove of hyper-personal information, even though we should know better.
Considerable proportions of Americans who use AI say they turn to it for frighteningly personal tasks: 20% for medical advice, 20% for diet information, 10% for emotional support, and 4% for companionship. Those are just self-reported numbers; data from OpenAI itself is even more revealing.
How the American Revolt Against Flock Cameras Mirrors the Boston Tea Party of 1773
A grassroots revolt against automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, has gained momentum across the United States. ALPRs are AI-powered cameras that capture images of all passing vehicles. The camera systems turn details into datapoints searchable by anyone with access to the information.
Today, there are more than 130,000 ALPRs on U.S. streets. And more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use cameras produced by a single manufacturer, Flock Safety, which says its cameras have helped law enforcement agencies identify and arrest criminals and reduce crime. But some members of those police departments have abused the data gathered by ALPRs.
A police officer in Kansas was sentenced to 18 months probabtion in April 2023 for using Flock camera to stalk his estranged wife. A Florida police officer was fired and arrested in March 2026 for using data gathered by ALPRs to stalk a woman he had previously harassed on a TV set. And activists filed a lawsuit against California police departments in October 2021 for illegally sharing information collected from ALPRs with out-of-state and federal agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
‘Privacy Becomes a Luxury’ as Companies Sell Your Data Unless You Pay More
Paying extra to remove ads may no longer be just about convenience. For many digital services, it can also mean paying to limit how much of your personal information gets harvested, analyzed, and sold. In an Instagram post, Ayana Gray (@ayana.g123) of the Center for Democratic AI broke down what she dubbed the “new era of inescapable surveillance.”
As Gray explained, there are now new mechanisms that make users have to pay to reject cookies on websites. In the past, those cookies could be rejected so that users could avoid having their usage and visit history tracked. Gray then showed an image of a site that requires users to either accept ads and cookies, or pay to remove them and view the site. If that pattern is replicated, it could alter the dynamics of internet surveillance.
“We are now living in an era where it is so normal, expected, accepted for companies to collect your data, that surveillance becomes the default, and privacy becomes a luxury,” she wrote in the caption.
