The big news from last Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting (YouTube recording here) was the council’s unanimous approval of a three-part agreement between the city and Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., which intends to construct a 75,000 square foot research and development facility within the Hamilton Canal Innovation District on the parcel that used to be the surface parking lot for the National Park’s visitor center. The agreement ratified on Tuesday – the council had already voted to support it in Executive Session but had to repeat the vote publicly – included a Tax Increment Financing Agreement (TIF) which will reduce the facility’s property taxes in exchange for creating some new jobs; an agreement by Draper to lease 100 parking spaces in the adjacent HCID Parking Garage for 25 years; and a right of first refusal by which Draper would be allowed to purchase the adjacent (now vacant) lot, should the city decided to sell it.

Having Draper located here is a big deal for Lowell. The company was founded in Cambridge in 1930 alongside MIT and has become one of the foremost developers of advanced navigation and guidance systems for aviation, space and military uses in the world. Draper, which is structured as a nonprofit, is thriving and must expand, both space and employee-wise. The company was attracted to this city by UMass Lowell which will partner with Draper and will provide a pipeline of students/future employees to the company as part of the University’s Lowell Innovation Network Corridor (LINC) project.

The intended footprint of LINC is focused on the University’s East Campus, roughly from the Tsongas Arena to LeLacheur Park, so getting Draper into the Hamilton Canal District is a major accomplishment for City Manager Tom Golden and his team.

When the Hamilton Canal District was first conceptualized nearly a quarter of a century ago, the plan was always for mixed use development that would combine residential, retail and commercial uses. However, the commercial and retail legs of that triad have mostly been missing. Other than the Justice Center and two parking garages, only housing has been constructed in the district with even more housing in the pipeline. While the city does desperately need more housing, following through with a mixture of uses is critical to the long-term success of HCID.

A handful of parcels in the District remain unspoken for. Hopefully the city will find entities comparable to Draper to occupy them.

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While municipalities across the Commonwealth continue to turn off their Flock surveillance cameras, the Lowell City Council reversed course and ratified the use of the Flock system after first voting to turn the cameras off back at the council’s September 22, 2026, meeting. That evening, the council passed a motion by Councilors Kim Scott and Vesna Nuon to suspend the use of the Flock system “while the city completes a thorough policy review of its usage, the company’s use of data and the audit process of the data.” That motion passed by a six to five vote. Supporting the suspension of Flock were Councilors Nuon, Scott, Belinda Juran, Sidney Liang, Sean McDonough and Mayor Erik Gitschier. Voting to continue using Flock without interruption were Councilors Sokhary Chau, John Descoteaux, Rita Mercier, Corey Robinson and Dan Rourke.

Just two weeks later, on October 6, 2026, the council reversed that vote, only we didn’t know about it since the second vote was taken in an Executive Session which by its nature is secret. The cameras were apparently reactivated that same evening although the public was not informed of that until the Executive Session minutes were only recently released, a month after the vote was taken. The Executive Session vote to turn the cameras back on was 8 to 1 with Councilor Sean McDonough the sole no vote and Councilor Sokhary Chau absent.

The minutes of the Flock portion of the executive session are on the city’s website and I urge you to read that document to get the full context, but there were a few sections that left me with some questions. I’ve pasted the relevant portions of the minutes below in italics with my questions/comments following each:

Dept. Supt. LeBlanc noted how the system operated and that there are many safeguards with that including regular system audits. Dept. Supt. LeBlanc noted for the over one-thousand streets in the City there are only 47 cameras with a 30-day retention period. Supt. Hudon noted that if there are any violations of the policies they are dealt with strictly.

My response: The police and some city councilors continuously misapprehend the concerns that I (and others, I believe) have about these surveillance cameras. Their idea of “misuse” is some rogue police officer using the system to spy on their former spouse. While that’s atrocious behavior and from the volume of such instances reported in the media, quite common, the “system audits” and punishments for misuse that a well-run department would utilize should curb such incidents. My concern is how the data collected by these cameras is or could be misused by entities outside of the Lowell Police Department, but more on that below. Oh, and “only” 47 cameras seems like a lot of cameras.

Descoteaux requested technical explanation regarding use of the data. Lt. Murray noted the only data available on the system is the license plate and the make of the vehicle. C. Scott noted concern with wide use of data and what policies were in place to protect that. C. McDonough noted use of public regulated databases to combat crime, the issue here is that it is a private entity who is regulating the use of data. C. McDonough noted the concerns of many big cities across the country regarding Flock. C. Juran noted the balance between privacy and public safety and that is why information is important. C. Nuon noted the need to help police do their job, but the problem is with the company running the system. C. Nuon noted concern with sharing information with ICE and that system could be used without the wide sharing of data.

My response: The police say, “the only data available on the system is the license plate and the make of the vehicle.” I assume that is how the system as set up for Lowell Police Department queries. However, the cameras record everything they see, and the resulting images are somewhere on the Flock system. While Lowell may have chosen to limit what it derives from those images to license plate numbers and vehicular information, other entities that access those same images might make broader use of them. The councilors whose comments are captured in the above section expressed similar concerns, particularly regarding Flock, the company that provides the cameras, the software, and hosts the images captured by the cameras in Lowell.

Motion by C. Scott, seconded by C. Mercier to reinstate the use of the Flock Camera System by the police without the sharing of data. Adopted per Roll Call vote, 8 yeas (C. Descoteaux, M. Gitschier, C. Juran, C. Liang, C. Mercier, C. Nuon, C. Robinson, C. Scott), 1 nay (C. McDonough), 1 absent (C. Chau). So voted. (Emphasis supplied.)

My response: It’s interesting that the motion was to turn on the cameras without the sharing of data. Is that what happened? Because as reported previously by the Lowell Sun, the city of Lowell was sharing the images captured by its Flock cameras with police departments and law enforcement agencies across the northeast including, again according to the Sun, with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service which has been, since April 2025, part of a Department of Homeland Security task force performing federal immigration enforcement and deportation operations. Has the police department complied with the council vote by revoking access to Lowell’s images by all the entities outside the city that previously had access to it, or was the system just turned back on with no modifications made? Perhaps a councilor will make a follow-up motion to confirm compliance with that council directive.

That the US government collects massive amounts of data about its citizens is not a recent revelation. Back in 2013, Edward Snowden revealed classified documents from the National Security Agency that, among other things, disclosed that the NSA was routinely collecting information about the telephone calls of millions of American citizens and that US intelligence agencies were allowed to access the servers of companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook, to collect emails and web searches.

Back then, I didn’t find that information particularly threatening since, due to the sheer volume of that data, it seemed humanly impossible for the government to fuse together information in a way that posed a threat to its citizenry. After all, in 2001, the US government was in possession of all the information it needed to stop the terrorist attacks on 9-11, but no one put the pieces together and the attacks succeeded.

Two things have changed my calculus since then. The first is artificial intelligence. Searching and combining immense quantities of data may not have been feasible for human analysts, but that is exactly what AI is designed to do. The existence of AI and its capabilities make the threat of abuse of personal data – like where you’re driving as recorded by a Flock camera – more pressing.

The second factor that has raised the risk level is that since 2025, the federal government has routinely used internal security agencies like the Department of Justice and the FBI to threaten and attack political opponents and journalists, while immigration enforcement agents trample the civil rights of anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant.

I understand that Lowell’s use of the Flock system helps solve crimes, but at what cost? In today’s environment, I’m reminded of something Benjamin Franklin once said: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

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On Tuesday, June 10, 2026, in the Hall of Flags of the Lowell Memorial Auditorium, the Lowell Bicentennial Committee and the Lowell Veterans Commission dedicated a memorial plaque to US Army PFC John F. Landry Jr., who was killed in action in Iraq by a roadside bomb on March 17, 2007.

Tuesday’s dedication event was attended by PFC Landry’s father and sister along with hundreds of others. It was a dignified and poignant ceremony.

The Lowell Memorial Auditorium was constructed in the aftermath of World War One and is dedicated to all of those who died in the service of this country during time of war. Bronze memorial tablets list the names of those from Lowell who perished in the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War One, World War Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the first Iraq War, and now the Global War on Terror.

The next time you visit the Auditorium for a show or event, please arrive early and linger in the Hall of Flags which is filled with memorials for Lowell veterans and constitutes a first-class history museum right here in the city.