HOULTON, Maine — The Houlton Town Council agreed in a special meeting Wednesday night to relinquish control of the town’s facial recognition cameras and physically remove them within 60 days.
The settlement agreement, which effectively rids the town of the controversial cameras and destroys the data collected, was not finalized when the council approved it on Oct. 27 because of last-minute executive session changes.
The agreement between the town and Mark Lipscombe, Craig Harriman and Patrick Bruce, area residents who have challenged the cameras’ legality, was the result of months of negotiating between the men and town officials. In exchange for getting rid of the cameras and the data, the men will not sue the town.
When councilors amended the Oct. 27 agreement to say Houlton would maintain ownership of the cameras forever, the three men objected and would not sign the agreement.
They did not want the town “to possess the facial recognition system in perpetuity” until they decided whether and how to sell or dispose of it, Lipscombe said.
“I’m just not prepared to sign an agreement that purports to allow them to continue violating the law,” he said.
Lipscombe, Harriman and Bruce each alleged Houlton unlawfully possessed and used facial-recognition technology in violation of Maine law. They were prepared to sue the town, seeking legal restraints on the town’s use of the technology, according to the settlement.
Additionally, each filed multiple Freedom of Access Act requests related to the cameras, Harriman had twice sued the town for not releasing the requested data, and Bruce in January told the Town Council that the use of facial recognition technology violated Maine’s strict facial surveillance law.
Wednesday’s language change allows the town to maintain ownership of the cameras pending their sale or disposal, but the equipment must be in the physical custody of a third party, not the town itself. A third party has not yet been named.
“This is an enormous win for both the rule of law and local government transparency,” Lipscombe said. “This settlement vindicates Maine’s well considered prohibition on governmental use of facial-recognition technology, and serves as an important reminder that no one is above the law.”
The town’s plan to install 50 surveillance cameras throughout Houlton first came to light in January 2024. Since then, documents obtained through dozens of FOAA requests by the Bangor Daily News and Lipscombe, Harriman and Bruce revealed an ongoing pattern of use by staff from various town departments.
For more than a year, town officials said the cameras were only used to protect town property and buildings. It wasn’t until 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 BDN 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 a Maine law that sharply limits the use of facial surveillance technology.
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 obtained by the BDN. The logs showed 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.
Allegedly frustrated with the BDN’s investigation into the town employee use of the cameras, Town Manager Cameron Clark, who is currently on administrative leave following his felony arrest in September, told a reporter that the controversy over the cameras was ruining his reputation and hurting the town.
Clark had called out the recent litigation and FOAA requests by the three men as the reason the town had depleted its legal budget for the year.
Lipscombe, Harriman and Bruce drafted the proposed settlement agreement that was later approved by the town legal counsel and the councilors.
According to the terms of the agreement, the town will remove the cameras within 60 days and delete all recordings, facial-recognition data, biometric identifiers and any other data collected by the system within 90 days, with the exception of data that can’t be deleted because it might be needed for Freedom of Access Act requests, litigation or other legal obligations.
The town will pay a third-party auditor to verify that all of the data has been removed and prepare a written report of the findings.
Within five days all camera user accounts will be removed and employees will no longer be able to access cameras or stored data.
As part of the settlement, the town will produce any remaining FOAA requests for public documents by the three men within 30 days. Additionally, the town will create and maintain a publicly accessible FOAA log on the town’s website updating the log within five business days of any FOAA response.
