Flock cameras demand a Maine-wide policy | Opinion

**Nick Murray** _is policy and communications director for [Lead Maine.](http://leadmaine.com/)_ Maine Sunday Telegram columnist Jim Fossel looks at towns participating in a nationwide police surveillance network like a local land-use decision, something to hash out at a planning board meeting ([“Leave decision on Flock cameras to Maine cities and towns,”](https://www.pressherald.com/2026/06/12/leave-decision-on-flock-cameras-to-maine-cities-and-towns-jim-fossel/) June 14). It is nothing of the sort. This is a question of the Fourth Amendment and the limits of government power. Private property rights and public surveillance are different problems, and the second one requires far more restraint, because the actor is the government and the power being exercised is the power to track you. A nationwide law enforcement surveillance network is not a local matter. Town lines cannot contain this. Fossel’s premise is that the people of Auburn can decide what is best for Auburn. But Mainers do not live inside one municipality. We drive to work in the next town, to the hospital two counties over, to a relative’s house across the state. A camera installed by Auburn PD not only watches Auburn residents. It watches everyone who passes through, and the data does not stay local. [Audit records](https://www.pressherald.com/2026/05/11/south-portland-is-considering-adding-another-flock-camera-what-are-these/) show South Portland police searched the Flock database 138 times in one month, reaching into 11 other municipalities. The “local control” Fossel praises is exactly what failed here. Auburn residents had no idea the police department had installed eight cameras last summer, with no vote and no notice. Since the system was paid for through a federal grant, the cost never reached a public budget. The cameras are coming down now only because the grant ran dry and residents spoke up. We need a statewide policy because towns that permit them impose a dragnet on everyone who drives by. Fossel says we didn’t ban cars after the first accident, and he’s right, because a car is a tool a citizen uses, regulated after harm appears. A Flock network is a tool the government uses on citizens. The Fourth Amendment exists to constrain that kind of power before it is abused, not after. Advertisement Supporters will argue these cameras help catch criminals. They sometimes do. But the Constitution does not permit the government to sacrifice the privacy of every driver on the possibility that it might catch a few criminals. We do not allow warrantless searches of every house because some may hold evidence of crime. This distinction is a critical linchpin to our constitutional freedoms. The courts are wrestling with exactly this question, and it is far from settled. In [_Carpenter v. United States (2018)_](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf), the Supreme Court held that police generally need a warrant to obtain a long record of a person’s movements, because we retain a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of our physical movements. Whether a Flock network crosses that line is being litigated right now. The most prominent case, _Schmidt v. City of Norfolk_, went against the privacy claim in January, when a federal judge found Norfolk, Virginia’s system not yet extensive enough to track the whole of someone’s movements. But that ruling is on appeal, and the judge himself warned the balance could “tip the other way” as these networks grow. That is precisely the trajectory Maine is on. The Fourth Amendment is a limit we placed on the government in advance, precisely because some powers are too easy to abuse for a wait-and-see approach. The law already caps data retention at 21 days. It’s been on the books since 2009 and did not stop any of this. But the cap means little since there’s no telling where your travel data could end up once uploaded to the national Flock database. After all, South Portland’s data was reachable by roughly 600 agencies across 44 states. That is why a statewide approach is the right one. The Maine Legislature should pass [Rep. David Boyer’s bill](https://themainemonitor.org/lawmaker-eyes-flock-license-plate-ban/) to bar municipalities and police from operating these systems when they return in January. Constitutional rights are not contingent on town borders. Copy the Story Link Tagged: [columns](https://www.pressherald.com/tag/columns/)