What the Flock?

Dear Editor,

You’ve probably heard about the latest “automatic license plate readers (ALPRs),” Flock, in the news nationwide lately as they have been getting some much-deserved bad press over their invasive privacy practices. What you might not have heard is that there are already a handful operating in Revere. They are constantly gathering data and building a profile of the residents and their movements.

While they have been installed under the guise of ALPRs, to improve public safety, they are so much more insidious than that. Across the nation, we’ve seen these systems misused, and the police cannot guarantee our data isn’t being accessed by individuals outside of our community. Furthermore, recent municipal studies show these cameras are incredibly fallible, with some cities reporting an alarming 71% misread and failure rate on license plate alerts. This makes the system far too unreliable and untrustworthy to be operated in our community.

The police chief will be appearing at the Revere City Council meeting on Aug. 24 at 6 p.m. to answer questions about the Flock cameras. I highly encourage the public to attend and voice their concerns.

Kane DiMasso-Scott

UPDATE:

After press time, we received word that Chief LaVita will not be able to attend the Aug. 24 council meeting. She is planning to attend the following Council meeting in September to answer questions from the public regarding the Flock ALPR cameras in Revere.