Boston Mayor Michelle Wu confirmed the city has ended its use of Flock Safety's automated license-plate reader cameras after a vendor error let outside law enforcement agencies access BPD-collected vehicle data nationwide, despite a contract requiring the sharing feature be disabled. The city's 2025 surveillance report says the breach occurred within days of launching a pilot with about 45 cameras and was corrected once discovered, but Boston has since moved on to trials with Motorola and Axon instead.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-15
An Electronic Frontier Foundation review of Flock Safety's license plate reader logs found police officers across the U.S. entering flippant or nonsensical justifications—like 'LMAO', 'LOL', 'idk' and random keystrokes—for searches spanning thousands of cameras. One Lake County, Indiana officer searched over 19,000 cameras across 1,558 cities with the stated reason 'LMAO', while more than 6,300 searches from over 30 agencies simply listed 'TBD'.
techtimes.co.uk
· 2026-09-15
Public records reveal that law enforcement officers across multiple agencies searched Flock Safety's nationwide license-plate camera network using vague or joke-like reasons such as 'LMAO,' 'IDK,' 'hehe,' and 'asdfg' instead of legitimate case justifications. Flock's system requires officers to enter a reason before running a search, but the logs show many entries that appear to be careless or unauthorized lookups rather than tied to actual investigations.
yro.slashdot.org
· 2026-09-15
Waymo's in-cabin sensors flagged two juvenile passengers handling a loaded AR-style firearm in San Francisco's Outer Richmond neighborhood, prompting the company to notify police. Officers conducted a high-risk stop early on September 3, arresting the pair and also finding suspected marijuana and mace spray in the vehicle.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-13
Florida's Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles confirmed the ShinyHunters extortion group breached its DAVID driver database on September 4, 2026, after the gang claimed to have stolen over 200,000 driver records. FLHSMV said the intruder used login credentials from a single Plant City Police Department account that had been improperly saved on the employee's personal device, contradicting ShinyHunters' claim that it exploited a password-reset flaw across multiple accounts.
bleepingcomputer.com
· 2026-09-11
On 10 September 1897, London cab driver George Smith crashed his Bersey electric taxi into a building on New Bond Street after it swerved and mounted the pavement while he was drunk. He was arrested, examined by a police surgeon, and the next day pleaded guilty at Marlborough Street Police Court to being drunk in charge of a vehicle, receiving a 20-shilling fine.
ianvisits.co.uk
· 2026-09-10
Grass Valley Police Department ended its contract with Flock Safety and removed the company's license plate cameras, but Flock reinstalled at least two of them without authorization weeks later. Flock says its automated maintenance system misread the city's early camera removal as an equipment failure, triggering repair crews to dispatch and replace units. GVPD says it continues to monitor for and remove any cameras Flock puts back up.
techspot.com
· 2026-09-08
A Tesla Model 3 ran a stop sign in Buena Vista Township, New Jersey on July 6, 2025, striking a Honda Civic and killing its 82-year-old driver, Stephen Field. Local police described it as an ordinary failure-to-stop crash, but Tesla's own federal safety filing shows its driver-assist system was 'Verified Engaged' at the time, a detail Tesla redacted key details about, including the crash narrative and software version.
electrek.co
· 2026-09-07
President Trump imposed a 100 percent tariff on large foreign-made drones, particularly targeting Chinese models used widely by American police departments. Officials like Lake County Drone Unit chief Scott Mlakar say the tariffs will make it financially difficult for many communities to buy or replace drones used for tasks like locating suspects and missing children. The FCC is also weighing classifying some drone technologies, such as lidar, as military-grade, further restricting access.
futurism.com
· 2026-09-06
Following Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's move to remove Flock license plate readers from state roads, sheriff's offices in several Florida counties followed suit. Dallas police shut down over 300 Flock cameras after Governor Greg Abbott cut state funding, while a dozen Wisconsin agencies suspended their contracts, joining cities like Appleton, Oshkosh and Kenosha that had already dropped Flock.
yro.slashdot.org
· 2026-09-05
The Verge's editorial team, including news editor Dom Preston and smart home reviewer Jen Tuohy, spent the week at IFA in Berlin testing new products firsthand. They opened a subscriber-only Q&A session to field reader questions about the devices they tried, with answers rolling out live starting at 12PM ET.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-04
WIRED obtained and analyzed Flock Safety's police surveillance software, revealing tools that let officers set up automated, ongoing searches across camera networks for people matching a written description, not just vehicle plates. The company added safeguards in August—shorter data retention, mandatory case codes, and automated audits—after facing canceled contracts, congressional scrutiny, and a finding that Illinois camera data reached federal immigration agents in violation of state law.
wired.com
· 2026-09-03
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