AI incident ·
Stow, Massachusetts, Police Officer Allegedly Used Flock License-Plate Reader System to Track Former Romantic Partner
In brief
An AI system built by Surveillance technology developers, Flock Safety and 1 other and deployed by Stow Police Department (Massachusetts), Stalkers and 3 others allegedly harmed Women and girls, Women and 2 others.
- Risk domain
- Not classified
- Occurred
- Coverage
- 1 report
What happened
A Stow, Massachusetts, police officer allegedly used Flock Safety’s automated license plate reader system and other law-enforcement databases to obtain information about a former romantic partner and track her movements. The woman said she had fled an abusive relationship and later obtained a restraining order. An internal investigation found repeated searches without legitimate law-enforcement reasons, and the department ended its Flock contract.
Laws that address this harm
No recorded instrument yet addresses this use case where it happened. See the open queue.
Matched from the record's risk domain and country to the instruments recorded here. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).
News reports (1)
Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Stow Police Department (Massachusetts) Stalkers Police departments in the United States Law enforcement Jason Rogers
- Alleged developer
- Surveillance technology developers Flock Safety Automated license plate reader (ALPR) developers
- Alleged harmed party
- Women and girls Women Victims of stalking Privacy
AI systems implicated
Surveillance technologyMassachusetts Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS)Law enforcement databasesFlock Safety automated license plate reader systemAutomated license plate readers (ALPR)
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
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- Risk subdomain
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- Causal entity
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- Intent
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- Timing
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- Harm level
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Related incidents
Linked by editors or by text similarity in the source dataset.
Source record: incident #1720 on the AI Incident Database · all 1 report