Twenty-five Massachusetts communities have cancelled their Flock Safety contracts or killed pilot programs in the last eighteen months. Beacon Hill has a bill that would regulate the cameras. The bill got a unanimous committee endorsement in March and then sat in Ways and Means until the Legislature ran out of time.
That is the whole story, and it is not the one being told. Coverage this week framed the Legislature as starting to eye guardrails. The more accurate framing is that the guardrails were drafted, endorsed, and then left on a shelf while the clock expired.
What H.3755 would do
The bill is H.3755, “An Act establishing driver privacy protections,” filed by Representative Steven Owens of Watertown and Representative Lindsay Sabadosa.
It is short, and every operative piece of it answers a documented failure. The provisions that matter:
- A warrant requirement for cross-agency access. Persons acting under color of state law may not access ALPR data held by other governmental or non-governmental entities except pursuant to a valid search warrant. This is aimed squarely at the national lookup network, where an out-of-state agency reaches into Massachusetts cameras.
- A 14-day retention cap. Data may not be kept longer than fourteen days except in connection with a specific criminal investigation. Flock’s standard retention is thirty days, set by the customer agency.
- Emergency access with paperwork. Where law enforcement accesses data without a warrant under an emergency exception, it must file written notice describing the grounds with particularity within 48 hours.
- Separate treatment of tolling data, which must be permanently erased or destroyed no later than 120 days after creation.
- A private right of action with teeth. Violations expose the violator to treble damages, or exemplary damages of not less than one hundred and not more than one thousand dollars per violation, together with costs and reasonable attorney’s fees.
That last item is the one to watch, and it is the reason the bill would change behavior rather than just policy manuals. Massachusetts currently has no ALPR statute at all, which means there is no penalty attached to misuse beyond whatever internal discipline a department chooses to impose on itself. A per-violation damages provision with fee-shifting creates the first real enforcement mechanism, because it does not depend on a police department investigating its own officer.
Why the enforcement provision matters here specifically
Consider the case that made this concrete in Massachusetts. A Revere police officer, Michael Tiso, ran a woman he had a personal relationship with through the plate camera network roughly a dozen times. His department reviewed the conduct and cleared him, and the search logs only became public through a records fight. We covered that in detail in our account of the Tiso searches and the public records case that produced the logs.
Under current law, what remedy did that produce? None. There is no statute to sue under. Under H.3755, the same conduct would carry exemplary damages per lookup plus attorney’s fees, which changes the calculation for both the officer and the department.
Representative Owens made the same point less formally. Speaking about why the bill exists, he said: “Every few days we get an article about how some police officer used it to stalk a, you know, ex-partner or somebody inappropriately.”
The timeline, which is the actual news
The bill’s history is public, and it reads as a slow-motion expiration:
- February 27, 2025: Referred to the Joint Committee on Transportation.
- October 7, 2025: Committee hearing.
- December 24, 2025: Reporting deadline extended to March 18, 2026.
- March 23, 2026: Reported favorably by the Transportation Committee, on a unanimous 11 to 0 vote, and referred to House Ways and Means.
- July 31, 2026: Formal sessions of the 194th General Court adjourned.
The bill never left Ways and Means. It sat there for four months and the session ended around it.
This matters more than it sounds. Massachusetts holds informal sessions after formal sessions adjourn, but a single member’s objection is enough to stop a contested matter in an informal session. A surveillance bill that police departments oppose is exactly the kind of measure that draws that objection. As a practical matter, H.3755 is finished for this session, and anyone who wants it has to refile in the next General Court and start the committee process again from the beginning.
Owens himself was not optimistic about a vote before the session ended, saying “I don’t know that the rules really favor that right now.”
Meanwhile, the cities are not waiting
The more interesting development is that municipalities have been doing on their own what the Legislature did not do.
Twenty-five Massachusetts municipalities cancelled Flock contracts or discontinued pilot programs over the past eighteen months. Watertown, the representative’s own community, cancelled in January. Nationally the trend is the same, with the Los Angeles Police Department declining to renew in June 2026 and more than fifty cities and counties ending Flock relationships during 2026.
Cancellation is a blunt instrument compared to regulation. A town that cancels loses the AMBER Alert and stolen vehicle functions along with the surveillance, and a neighboring town that keeps its cameras still photographs the first town’s residents as they drive through. That is the argument for a statewide rule rather than 351 separate decisions, and it is the argument that did not get a floor vote.
What governs Massachusetts in the meantime
Nothing statutory. Until the Legislature acts, ALPR use in Massachusetts is governed by department policy, contract terms, and one Supreme Judicial Court decision.
That decision is Commonwealth v. McCarthy, SJC-12750, decided April 16, 2020, which considered state police cameras on both sides of the Bourne and Sagamore bridges. The court held that “while the defendant has a constitutionally protected expectation of privacy in the whole of his public movements, an interest which potentially could be implicated by the widespread use of ALPRs, that interest is not invaded by the limited extent and use of ALPR data in this case.”
Read the reservation in that sentence. The SJC recognized the privacy interest, declined to find it invaded by four cameras at two bridges, and expressly flagged widespread use as the scenario that could change the answer. A network exceeding 100,000 cameras nationally, searchable across state lines, is not the system the court examined in 2020. No Massachusetts appellate court has yet ruled on the current one.
We go through what the cameras record and who can search them in our guide to whether Flock cameras are legal, and the company itself in what Flock Safety is and who owns it.
What to ask your own town
With no statute coming this session, the leverage is local and it sits at the contract renewal:
- Do we share lookups outside Massachusetts, and with which agencies? This is a settable option and it is the single most consequential term.
- What is our retention period? The bill proposed 14 days. Flock’s default is 30.
- Who audits the search logs, how often, and has any audit ever been performed?
- What justification must an officer enter, and is it ever verified against the case file?
- How many searches did we run last year, and how many produced a charge?
You can also find out where the cameras are. A volunteer mapping project collects reported locations nationwide, and we covered it and the trademark fight Flock lost against it in our piece on DeFlock.
Common questions
Is there a Massachusetts law regulating license plate readers?
No. There is no ALPR statute. Use is governed by individual department policies, the contract a municipality signed, and constitutional limits under Commonwealth v. McCarthy.
What is H.3755?
“An Act establishing driver privacy protections,” filed by Representatives Steven Owens and Lindsay Sabadosa. It would require a warrant for cross-agency access to ALPR data, cap retention at 14 days, and create damages of $100 to $1,000 per violation plus attorney’s fees.
Did the bill pass?
No. The Transportation Committee reported it favorably 11 to 0 on March 23, 2026, and referred it to House Ways and Means, where it remained when formal sessions adjourned on July 31, 2026. It would need to be refiled in the next General Court.
How long do Massachusetts police keep plate reader data now?
There is no statutory limit. Retention is set by the customer agency, and Flock’s standard default is 30 days. H.3755 would have capped it at 14.
Can I sue if an officer looked up my plate improperly?
Under current Massachusetts law there is no statute creating that claim, which is why the Revere matter produced no damages remedy. H.3755 would have created one with fee-shifting.
How many Massachusetts towns have dropped Flock?
Twenty-five cancelled contracts or discontinued pilot programs over the last eighteen months, including Watertown in January.
Bill number, sponsors, text and complete action history verified against the Massachusetts Legislature’s record for H.3755, 194th General Court. Formal session adjournment date of July 31, 2026 per the legislative calendar. Municipal cancellation counts and legislator quotations as reported by NBC10 Boston, September 2026. Commonwealth v. McCarthy, SJC-12750 (April 16, 2020), quoted from the slip opinion. General information about Massachusetts law, not legal advice.