At a glance
A New Bedford police officer is accused of using Flock automated license plate readers to track and follow an ex-romantic partner. The case illustrates how law enforcement tools can be weaponized for personal vendettas.
A New Bedford police officer is accused of using Flock automated license plate readers to track the location of an ex-romantic partner. Flock cameras, installed throughout cities to catch traffic violators and fugitives, became a tool for personal surveillance.
This is the specific threat of law enforcement surveillance tools: they're designed to track people for legitimate reasons, but once deployed, they're available for illegitimate ones too. An officer with access can query the system to find where someone is, when they go places, who they meet. The ex-partner had no way to know they were being tracked. The case shows that oversight of who accesses these databases is weak or absent — the officer could query the system without generating alerts.
Citation trail
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