We really need your help this week opposing the rollout of more surveillance tech and your voice deserves to be heard!
Surveillance company Flock wants to put up surveillance cameras enabled with Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) technology around Cambridge, as we reported previously. Police have used such data to identify women who sought an out-of-state abortion and to record who goes to protests. Flock shares this data with ICE and recently announced a partnership with Amazon’s Ring to make easier for Flock customers to request recordings from Ring cameras.
Cambridge PD says the data won’t be shared outside of Cambridge and people’s rights will be protected, but Flock hasn’t agreed to this limitation. We know that Flock shares the data widely. Once the ALPR records and video are in Flock’s system, they are as good in ICE’s hands or the hands of any other police department who wants to track people.
At this Monday’s Cambridge City Council on Oct. 20th at 5:30pm, Cambridge PD will defend the rollout of these cameras. City Councilors Patty Nolan, Sumbul Siddiqui and Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler have called for reconsidering introducing more cameras to Cambridge. Sign up to speak against the rollout of Flock cameras. All you need to do is choose the meeting and fill out the form. You can present your comment in person or remotely and you will have between one and three minutes to speak, depending on the number of people asking to comment. Be sure to mention if you are a Cambridge resident. Also, election day is November 4th.
It is vital that we get the City Council to oppose this effort. Once they have these cameras up, they will call for more. However, if the Cambridge City Council does not reconsider the rollout of Flock cameras, then this Thursday, Oct. 23rd, at 9am, the Cambridge Pole and Conduit Commission will likely review and possibly approve Flock’s effort to put up to sixteen surveillance cameras enabled with Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) technology. Our friends at Digital 4th have mapped their locations:

The proposed camera locations are near public housing at Newtowne Court, Washington Elms and Roosevelt Towers and could be used to identify people who drive into the Cambridge Health Alliance’s Windsor Street Care Center, which offers reproductive healthcare services. There are even better maps with the property considered to be within 150 feet of the cameras at Digital 4th’s post.
We encourage Cambridge residents, especially those near the proposed camera sites to attend the Pole and Conduit Commission meeting. The registration link is up.
If you need ideas for what to include in your 1-3 minute comment for either meeting, checkout our previous blog post or Digital 4th’s post.
We are not alone in opposing this effort. Digital 4th, the ACLU, Cambridge DSA and others are turning people out. We need to lend our voice and get this surveillance expansion stopped!
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