HOULTON, Maine — The controversial facial recognition surveillance cameras that rocked this Aroostook County town have come down, but residents remain in the dark about the status of the massive amounts of data the cameras collected.
Houlton town officials this week relinquished control of 55 Verkada facial recognition cameras and physically removed more than 28 installed cameras as mandated by the terms of a Town Council-approved agreement with three area residents.
The three men — Mark Lipscombe, Craig Harriman and Patrick Bruce — who for two years had tried repeatedly to obtain information from the town regarding camera use and data storage, allege that the town’s use of Verkada’s powerful “people analytics” tools violate Maine’s landmark 2021 facial surveillance law.
“Two years of unlawful facial recognition technology breaking Maine law, the cameras are finally down,” said Craig Harriman late Thursday. “But will accountability follow?”
Under state law, municipalities and their employees are barred from indiscriminately obtaining, retaining, possessing, accessing, requesting or using a facial surveillance system, or information derived from one, which would include creating and searching its own database of facial profiles.
The settlement agreement — negotiated over several months with former Town Manager Cameron Clark before his Sept.24 felony arrest on victim tampering and domestic violence assault charges — effectively rids the town of the controversial cameras and mandates the destruction of the data collected.
Prior to signing the agreement, Lipscombe, Harriman and Bruce were prepared to sue the town, seeking legal restraints on the town’s use of the technology, according to the settlement.
Lipscombe said on Thursday that he hopes this is the beginning of a new era for the town, and one where residents don’t have to sue their own town to get basic accountability. Although it remains unclear whether the data has been destroyed and if the town has hired an auditor to confirm data removal.
Houlton, one of several Maine municipalities grappling with privacy concerns related to surveillance camera systems, gained statewide notoriety after the excessive use of its facial recognition surveillance system came to light last August, following multiple Freedom of Access Act requests and several court filings.
In Saco, after five years of planning, the City Council last summer tabled a plan to install 140 additional surveillance cameras to the existing 55 currently in use by the police department, according to City Administrator Ryan Pelletier.
“To date it hasn’t been reintroduced for consideration,” he said on Thursday.
And late last year, York temporarily deactivated the town’s Flock license plate reader cameras that had been in place for a little over a year until town officials could investigate how data was being used, said Town Manager Peter Joseph.
“A dive into the data found that Flock had shared data with Homeland Security Investigations and ICE on a trial basis without public disclosure,” Joseph said. “We chose to not be a part of the national network.”
After York officials learned of the national look-up system, they quickly rolled back access for local use only, he said.
Additionally, the coastal town uses a third-party auditor to monitor access as well as doing their own access monitoring and twice a month reporting on use at selectboard meetings.
Houlton’s surveillance camera saga took root long before the system came to light in 2024, as police and town administrators tested various Verkada cameras, according to a 2021 email.
The cameras were purchased in 2022 with American Rescue Plan Act funds for $130,000, but it wasn’t until January 2024 that Houlton Police Chief Tim DeLuca told the Town Council that 50 Verkada cameras would soon be installed around the town to protect municipal buildings.
At the time, DeLuca did not share with councilors that the devices were equipped with technology that allows users to filter people on footage based on clothing, appearance and facial matches.
Harriman sued the town twice for alleged Freedom of Access Act violations after the town did not answer his questions about where the cameras were, what data they stored, privacy protections and cost.
For more than a year, town officials said the cameras were only used to protect town property and buildings. It wasn’t until last February, during testimony in Harriman’s first legal challenge, that Houlton Chief of Police Tim DeLuca said that the cameras were equipped with facial-recognition tools.
The Bangor Daily News obtained data, collected between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2024, from the cameras’ digital access logs that raised new questions about whether the town’s camera use violated Maine law. The data provided a glimpse into how the cameras were used, including more than 56,000 entries indicating that officials turned on a live video feed, allowing them to watch footage captured by the cameras in real time.
Employees also apparently used the cameras’ more advanced functions to search for specific people and vehicles, according to the access logs. There were approximately 5,266 instances of “Profile Searched” or “Profile Searched with Details,” which means employees may have been searching for records of people who had previously been captured in the surveillance system and assigned a digital profile.
Bruce, a local entrepreneur who works with Farr and Associates Security and is familiar with the Verkada cameras, accused town councilors in January 2025 of breaking Maine’s 2021 facial recognition law. After which then-Interim Town Manager Cameron Clark temporarily disconnected the cameras to give town officials time to evaluate the legality of their use.
The cameras were turned back on in July, after the council approved a new policy prohibiting the use of facial recognition technology.
In early November, town officials agreed to remove all the surveillance cameras and destroy all their data as part of the settlement agreement with Harriman, Bruce and Lipscombe.
As part of the agreement, all camera user accounts had to be removed, ending employee camera and data access. The Town Council also adopted this week, a Freedom of Access Act policy, according to the terms of the agreement,
The policy outlines how to access the town’s FOAA officer, timeframes, costs and compliance with Maine law. Officials also created a FOAA log, accessible on the town website, that details all FOAA requests.
“All user access with respect to the camera system and stored data was previously disabled. The cameras were removed earlier this week,” said Interim Town Manager Nancy Ketch. “The FOAA Policy passed unanimously Monday evening.”
While the agreement allows the town to maintain ownership of the cameras until they are sold or disposed of, the equipment must be in the physical custody of a third party, not the town. It is unclear where the cameras are currently located and officials have not disclosed that information.
By this week, all recordings, facial-recognition data, biometric identifiers and any other data collected by the system were to be deleted and the town was to secure a third-party auditor to verify data removal in a written report.
As of Friday, the town had not released information about the data deletion or third-party auditor.
“I am hopeful that the removal of these illegal cameras and agreeing to maintain a public FOAA log marks the end of this period of lawlessness by the town,” Lipscombe said. “With the complete changing of the guard in the town office, this settlement should be a wake-up call that the town needs to follow the law and be transparent with residents.”