{"id":274561,"date":"2026-06-16T11:28:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T15:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/16\/controversial-flock-cameras-to-be-removed-from-south-portland-amid-privacy-concerns-and-republican-push-to-ban-them-statewide\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T12:05:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T16:05:09","slug":"controversial-flock-cameras-to-be-removed-from-south-portland-amid-privacy-concerns-and-republican-push-to-ban-them-statewide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/16\/controversial-flock-cameras-to-be-removed-from-south-portland-amid-privacy-concerns-and-republican-push-to-ban-them-statewide\/","title":{"rendered":"Controversial Flock Cameras to be Removed from South Portland Amid Privacy Concerns and Republican Push to Ban Them Statewide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Controversial Flock Cameras to be Removed from South Portland Amid Privacy Concerns and Republican Push to Ban Them Statewide<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.themainewire.com\/2026\/06\/controversial-flock-cameras-to-be-removed-from-south-portland-amid-privacy-concerns-and-republican-push-to-ban-them-statewide\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-06-16 11:28:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.themainewire.com<\/a><\/p>\n

The South Portland City Council voted Thursday to immediately terminate the city\u2019s contract with Flock Safety, a controversial surveillance company best known for its AI-enabled Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) cameras that collect and store information on passing vehicles.<\/p>\n

[RELATED: Maine Gets Flocked With New Camera Rollout Despite No Citizen Input\u2026]<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is with Flock itself. Flock retains the data. It may anonymize it; however, it is for AI education, and it is also shared. It is a big debate at the federal level right now,\u201d said Councilor Rachel Coleman.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, it\u2019s a matter of the ends do not justify the means. This is an excellent tool the way our police force is using it and it is, like, state of the art, however, they\u2019re also collecting data that causes harm to everyone, to each one of us,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

The council ultimately voted 4-2 to end the city\u2019s contract with Flock. It has immediately ceased use of its existing cameras and has submitted a work order for their removal.<\/p>\n

The city first approved the Flock contract last year using a federal Justice Assistance Grant (JAG). Though the AI-powered surveillance cameras are marketed as a tool for public safety, they have drawn nationwide privacy concerns about the possibility of unprecedented government or corporate knowledge of individual habits and whereabouts.<\/p>\n

The South Portland Police Department has advocated for their continued use, and has been waging a social media campaign in their favor, by posting about how they have been used recently to apprehend criminals, and even to rescue an abducted 12-year-old girl.<\/p>\n

Councilors expressed their trust for the police but maintained concerns over how the data is used by Flock itself or other parties with access to the data it gathers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have real control of this data, so we don\u2019t know actually what is going to happen with it in the future. We\u2019ve heard folks say that there\u2019s a…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Controversial Flock Cameras to be Removed from South Portland Amid Privacy Concerns and Republican Push…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":274562,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.themainewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/16102347\/hero-controversial-flock-cameras-to-be-removed-from-south-portland-am-1024x576.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274561"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":274564,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274561\/revisions\/274564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}