HOULTON, Maine — For nearly seven months a Houlton man has been trying to get public documents from town officials related to a 2022 surveillance camera purchase that he said may have violated federal funding guidelines.
Craig Harriman, who has twice sued the town under Freedom of Access Act law, shared with the Town Council on Monday night the details of his continuing saga to obtain emails he knows exist, despite town officials claiming otherwise.
The Verkada cameras, equipped with facial recognition technology, were purchased in 2022 using $143,227.58 in American Rescue Plan Act funds. Harriman is seeking all 2021 correspondence related to the prepurchase planning of the surveillance system to show who knew about the technology and who made the purchase decision.
“This situation is especially serious because the town of Houlton used federal ARPA funds to purchase and deploy the very Verkada surveillance system whose facial recognition and people analytics features are expressly prohibited by Maine state law,” Harriman said.
Maine’s ban on municipalities possessing or using facial surveillance technology is one of the strongest in the country and far stronger than any federal law on the books, said Anahita Sotoohi, a staff attorney for Maine’s ACLU in an Instagram post related to the Houlton cameras.
Data obtained last summer by the Bangor Daily News and Harriman included more than 56,000 camera access log entries from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2024 and thousands of entries indicating that town employees used the technology to identify and track people.
Still, town officials did not admit the cameras were equipped with facial recognition tools until the following year during a hearing in Aroostook County Superior Court.
It is Harriman’s contention that the cameras were purchased five months after Maine passed its strict facial surveillance law in 2021, making it an ineligible ARPA purchase. He is seeking the public documents leading up to the camera purchase to confirm his belief, he said.
If a town used federal ARPA funds to purchase surveillance cameras that violate state or local laws such as a ban on facial recognition technology, they are likely in violation of federal grant compliance rules, according to The National League of Cities.
So far, the town has not officially released the requested correspondence despite multiple attempts. Nonetheless, Harriman is aware such emails exist because the former Town Manager Cameron Clark gave him a 22-page PDF containing prepurchase emails three days before his Sept. 25 arrest, he said.
Based on that information received from Clark, Harriman submitted a formal Freedom of Access Act request to the town manager, the police chief and the town clerk seeking all correspondence between by town officials regarding activities leading to the purchase of the cameras. Although town officials were not aware that Harriman had copies of the documents from Clark when responding to his FOAA request, he said.
A side-by-side comparison of records provided by the police chief in October with the 22-page PDF indicated missing records, according to Harriman.
“It omitted key communications related to the planning, February 2022 purchase and deployment of the surveillance system,” Harriman said on Monday night.
His follow-up requests for the remaining documents went unanswered for months, forcing him to present his dilemma to the Town Council two weeks ago.
Since then, Interim Town Manager Nancy Ketch told Harriman his request had been fulfilled and attributed any missing items to inadvertent omissions and that the records had been reviewed in good faith, he said.
The town’s response contained no statutory exemption explanation and no confirmation of a thorough search as required by FOAA law, Harriman said, adding that he contacted Ketch again, but the emails are still missing.
He asked the council if a town used federal ARPA funds to purchase and deploy a facial surveillance system that is prohibited by state law, “[wouldn’t the town] be forced to repay every dollar spent?”
“Given the Treasury’s own rules and its proven track record of recouping misused funds nationwide,” Harriman said. “Isn’t the real question not whether the town of Houlton could be held liable for the ARPA funds, but when will the federal government demand the money back?”
