A little more than a year ago, I wrote about an independent journalist who exposed a secretive contract with Flock Safety, a surveillance company that has been all over the news in recent weeks.
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Town officials in the wealthy suburb of Scarsdale, New York, had signed a $2.1 million contract that placed the community under surveillance in the name of public safety. Protests by local activists, along with dogged reporting by Joanne Wallenstein of the digital news outlet Scarsdale 10583, led to the cancellation of the contract just months after it had gone into effect.
But you can’t keep a bad idea down. As reported in The Boston Globe last Friday, police officers in Lynn, Stow and New Bedford have been placed on leave or fired after they were caught using the streetside cameras to stalk ex-girlfriends and engage in other outrageous behavior. There’s now a database where you can enter your license plate to see if you’ve been spied on.