A College Told Flock to Remove Its Cameras. The Company Refused. (suntimes.com) 97
The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
When Elgin Community College hired Flock Safety to install six surveillance cameras in April 2025, President Peggy Heinrich thought they would "enhance the safety and security of students...." They were supposed to help locate stolen cars and missing people. But Heinrich started to wonder if the cameras were actually making students less safe after seeing news reports that data captured by Flock cameras in Illinois had been shared with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Then in September 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained an Elgin Community College student in a campus parking lot. More than half of students at the far west suburban Chicago campus identify as Latino. Heinrich said enrollment dipped. Students were afraid to come to class. College officials decided the cameras had to go...
College officials asked Flock to remove the surveillance cameras "out of an abundance of caution for our students," Heinrich said. But getting the cameras taken down was not as simple as it sounds, especially because Flock retains ownership of the company's equipment.... Surveillance experts say the company is financially incentivized to have as many cameras gathering data as possible even in places that no longer want them, because potential clients are looking for the surveillance network with the greatest reach.... Elgin Community College staff notified Flock in October 2025 that they wanted to cancel their contract and have the cameras taken down. Within a day, Heinrich said, Flock rejected the request and refused to uninstall the equipment on the basis that the company had not breached their agreement.
College officials reached out again in December 2025 and said they would pay for the remaining five months of the contract — they just wanted the cameras taken down. "We never received a response back from Flock," Heinrich said.
That's when things got weird. Heinrich said Elgin Community College staff began to cover the cameras using black trash bags and zip ties so that they would not be able to capture footage. But workers in an unmarked vehicle, which Heinrich assumed belonged to Flock, repeatedly removed the coverings... This strange dance continued, Heinrich said, until Elgin Community College's contract with Flock expired in April this year and the company uninstalled the cameras for good.
College officials asked Flock to remove the surveillance cameras "out of an abundance of caution for our students," Heinrich said. But getting the cameras taken down was not as simple as it sounds, especially because Flock retains ownership of the company's equipment.... Surveillance experts say the company is financially incentivized to have as many cameras gathering data as possible even in places that no longer want them, because potential clients are looking for the surveillance network with the greatest reach.... Elgin Community College staff notified Flock in October 2025 that they wanted to cancel their contract and have the cameras taken down. Within a day, Heinrich said, Flock rejected the request and refused to uninstall the equipment on the basis that the company had not breached their agreement.
College officials reached out again in December 2025 and said they would pay for the remaining five months of the contract — they just wanted the cameras taken down. "We never received a response back from Flock," Heinrich said.
That's when things got weird. Heinrich said Elgin Community College staff began to cover the cameras using black trash bags and zip ties so that they would not be able to capture footage. But workers in an unmarked vehicle, which Heinrich assumed belonged to Flock, repeatedly removed the coverings... This strange dance continued, Heinrich said, until Elgin Community College's contract with Flock expired in April this year and the company uninstalled the cameras for good.
Flock is so popular for many reasons (Score:1)
The company refused?! (Score:5, Insightful)
The college can take them down and charge Flock for the labor. Or the college is run by a bunch of fucking wimps!
This is our biggest problem. Nobody will stand up to bad people.
Re: The company refused?! (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re: The company refused?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Covering them with bags is simpler, cheaper and mildly embarrassing to the company.
What they should have done is film and charge the unidentified unmarked van crew for trespassing
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Just...no.
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You wrap them in plastic carefully first. The cameras are perfectly safe in the protective concrete packaging.
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Covering them with bags is simpler, cheaper and mildly embarrassing to the company.
Is that in direct response to
This is our biggest problem. Nobody will stand up to bad people.
As in, (to paraphrase Weird Al) "drag[] [them] by [their] ankles to the middle of the forest and stuff[] [them] in a big plastic bag!"
Careful (Score:2)
The NSA takes it badly when their people are identified, let alone charged.
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Did you forget high school? The wimps went to college and the stupid assholes went into policing. Now you expect a bunch of wimps at a college to pull some shit? These are 'pen is mightier than the sword' types, knucklehead.
Jocks also go to college and are more prone to "pull some shit".
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A consequence of the femininisation of society. Women are conflict-avoiding.
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I remember listening in on a great phone call to a network provider about sending someone to pick up their expensive Cisco router. It ended with "in 30 days, it's going in the dumpster.
I personally 'uninstalled' another router by disconnecting the fiber cables...with side cutters. 2 months later, they actually tried to bill us for bandwidth we supposedly used from the completely disconnected router. We sent them a picture.
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The college can take them down and charge Flock for the labor.
They can? The legally binding contract the college signed says they can do that? How about next time the college is a little more careful about what contractual agreements they enter into, and make sure they have exit clauses that suit them.
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You'd better believe Flock is adding a new rider about covering their cameras since so many communities started doing just that when they want them removed.
However under the current contracts you can likely have someone arrested for doing unauthorized work, to remove the coverings. Also, built into any future contract, people should be making sure the companies need PERMISSION to access the camera. When as
Get out a backhoe (Score:5, Interesting)
... and dig the base out of the ground, and carefully transport base, pole, and cameras for each installation into room without windows that can be locked. Most importantly, do not damage Flock's property. Leave the cameras operational and running.
Then, send Flock a letter letting them know their property is intact and undamaged, but is now safely stored away to prevent vandalism against their equipment. Further let them know that they are welcome to come collect their property, but they are not welcome to re-install the cameras anywhere on Campus due to safety issues.
Unless there's some sort of penalty against removing the cameras in the contract they signed with Flock? (Probably is, come to think of it...)
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Duct tape might be considered damaging the property. They can bag or obstruct them. Better yet stream things in front of the cameras to cause them to constantly be alerted, most wanted profiles, etc. So many out of the box options available.
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Better yet stream things in front of the cameras to cause them to constantly be alerted, most wanted profiles, etc. So many out of the box options available.
Cardboard cutouts of the vehicles of Flock board members, the board members themselves, and of course plenty of celebrities, AI generated heads, QR codes etc to waste their processing time and poison their dataset.
Re:Get out a backhoe (Score:5, Insightful)
If the cameras are the property of Flock and Flock won't retrieve them, declare them abandoned property. Remove them and charge a storage fee like any abandoned vehicle.
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That doesn't work if you are contractually obligated to provide the easement for their installation. You can't just breach your end of the contract willy nilly.
Re:Get out a backhoe (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm actually surprised this played out as long as it did - Had the same battle taken place at my alma mater, I can promise you I'd personally have cheerfully harvested them for parts the same day, and I'm by no stretch unusual in that regard.
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Simply make it known nobody's going to investigate their disappearance, and they'll be gone by morning.
How can you declare someone else's property won't be investigated by someone else? It's not the college campus's call to make. The cameras disappear Flock can still go after you.
I can promise you I'd personally have cheerfully harvested them for parts the same day, and I'm by no stretch unusual in that regard.
Will you be so cheerful in telling that to the police or the courts after flock comes after you?
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Flock is selling data to the police, the police are buying it, and law enforcement tends to have a, if not hostile, at least not a good relationship with universities. if flock presses charges for the destruction of their property, property that benefits police, the police will probably side with flock.
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Maybe not, but this is a college campus. Simply make it known nobody's going to investigate their disappearance, and they'll be gone by morning. I'm actually surprised this played out as long as it did - Had the same battle taken place at my alma mater, I can promise you I'd personally have cheerfully harvested them for parts the same day, and I'm by no stretch unusual in that regard.
My mod points expired but this is correct. Make it an unofficial challenge, all sorts of wild and crazy things will happen to those cameras.
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I'm actually surprised this played out as long as it did - Had the same battle taken place at my alma mater, I can promise you I'd personally have cheerfully harvested them for parts the same day, and I'm by no stretch unusual in that regard.
I'm surprised too. I graduated a long time ago but "free camera and weatherproof enclosure" still sounds tempting.
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That doesn't work if you are contractually obligated to provide the easement for their installation. You can't just breach your end of the contract willy nilly.
Then arrest the fuckers who removed the bags for trespassing and theft of college property (the bags).
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I suspect that Flock's contract allows them access to the cameras for maintenance (or any) purposes.
Re:Get out a backhoe (Score:4, Informative)
If the cameras are the property of Flock and Flock won't retrieve them, declare them abandoned property.
That's not how abandoned property works. It's not abandoned, the cameras are there under contract and in active use.
Remove them and charge a storage fee like any abandoned vehicle.
The same applies to vehicles. You can't declare a vehicle abandoned until a parking contract ends.
Re: Get out a backhoe (Score:1)
The college still had an in-effect contact with Flock, they can't just declare it 'abandoned' and do as they like with it.
Tampering with the cameras would make the college responsible for the damage.
As for the student "arrested in the parking lot" - so what? It obviously wasn't ICE (that would have been mentioned) and we have no idea why the student was arrested - cops could have followed him into the parking lot for a moving violation, they could have had a warrant and pinged his cellphone, he could have b
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As for the student "arrested in the parking lot" - so what? It obviously wasn't ICE (that would have been mentioned) and we have no idea why the student was arrested - cops could have followed him into the parking lot for a moving violation, they could have had a warrant and pinged his cellphone, he could have been breaking into cars in the parking lot, selling drugs in the parking, etc... I didn't realize that community college parking lots were 'sanctuaries' for criminals.
It was ICE, you absolute fucking knob. It literally says so in the third sentence.
Then in September 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained an Elgin Community College student in a campus parking lot.
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Works if you have money for a backhoe, and crew.
Don't forget you also have to tape off the work area and manage vehicle & pedestrian traffic.
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More importantly, a simple hacksaw will go through them like butter.
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Put a sign in front of the campus "No unmarked vehicles" and get the people removing the covers for trespassing. In general, can't you put a black bag over the camera with a label "Removing forbidden" and then persecute people who remove it? The camera is theirs, but how they are covered is not their decision.
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At the colleges I've been at most vehicals are unmarked. The exception is student parking which has a pass.
Re: Get out a backhoe (Score:3)
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Charge them a monthly to store and keep their property safe.
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... and dig the base out of the ground, and carefully transport base, pole, and cameras for each installation into room without windows that can be locked. Most importantly, do not damage Flock's property. Leave the cameras operational and running.
Better to extend the black plastic bag idea. The think about those bags is that they're generally recognized as trash, so there's not much legal recourse you can take for vandalism if Flock's people destroy your black plastic bags. What if, instead, you get a metal enclosure to put around the camera and lock it in place with a padlock? Mark it with "property of Elgin college" Then they can't clear the camera without very clearly destroying your property. When they come to do it film them and call the polic
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Incompetence running wild (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't just about flock either. I just don't understand how we've come to such a large number of people demonstrating startliing levels of incompetence in the performance of their assigned duties.
Re:Incompetence running wild (Score:4, Interesting)
Easy - they wanted monitoring for say, a car park. Flock offers them a contract for free cameras and installation on their property and a discount rate for the service (say, $1000/year. Yes, Flock service can be that cheap per year).
Flock then goes and installs cameras everywhere beyond the car park, offers access to the car park cameras and there you go. The contract says Flock is to deploy, install and maintain cameras on the entire property (the entire college, not just the car park).
That's usually how it goes.
Meanwhile, if you try to get ALPRs from Axon/Taser, Motorola, etc., you'll probably be charged $10,000 per camera and $1000/month for service. Flock can deeply subsidize it in order to keep their network alive, while the others need to recoup the cost from the sale because it isn't subsidized.
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What question do you think was being answered by that wall of text? Because it wasn't a question the GP was asking.
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and it should be a fireable offense for whoever is responsible at that college.
Who is going to fire them? That kind of contract is almost certainly approved by a rector or some board.
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And you don't understand what he was saying. He was saying that the people who would decide that someone was incompetent were involved in, and approved of, the decision.
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Well, don't expect the board to support your policy. And most people that support the board have other criteria that they apply than "did they sign that stupid contract" (unless it's likely to bankrupt the institution).
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The AC appears to be a nutbar, or, at the very least conflating this college with some other one. I can't find any record of any mass casualty event at Elgin college.
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That is how phone companies, power companies, and many other utilities have been working for a long time.
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Let me tell you a tale about the parking meters in Chicago.
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How are colleges and municipalities finding themselves in situations where they've signed contracts for someone else's equipment to be installed on their property, sometimes literally on a piece of infrastructure they they own/control and legally unable to physically remove the equipment?
This has a really obvious answer which has been thoroughly explored here but I would like to explore why that answer is bad even though it's true, and pointing out it's true is not bad.
First some postulates:
Government should not be allowed to contract anyone to manage our data.
Government should not hire contractors to work on systems which will be used to manage our data.
Government should never be sending our data out to anyone else or allowing it to be stored on systems not under their control.
Obviously I
We spent decades letting democracy get undermined (Score:2)
It turns out democracy is All or nothing. You don't get to allow voter suppression and gerrymandering and all sorts of other nasty stuff just to get what you want. And we know who's been allowing all of that we don't need to pretend.
So yeah you're going to have 24/
Seems like after their black bags were vandalized (Score:2)
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I like that idea.
Alternately, I suspect one of those "rescue chainsaws" would make short work of the pole. Just sayin'...
In any case, be sure to record video of the people repairing the cameras. They don't like that.
Proving once again the old adage... (Score:3)
...Be careful what you wish for...
Its only a start. (Score:2)
Even if there are zero Flock areas where you live, the faulty AI might mis-identify some other car or person in a different area as you.
Flock anywhere means false arrests everywhere.
More permanent fix (Score:4, Interesting)
All they had to do was use black spray paint over the lens. Come up from behind the camera so no face can be seen and have plausible deniability.
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Vandalism. Almost certainly violation of the contract. And if one Flock camera is covering another, there will be evidence. If the college is involved it could get expensive. A lot more than if some greasy hippy* is seen doing it.
*Employment opportunity for all you greasy hippies.
After the first bag removal... (Score:3)
The first time Flock removed the bags covering the cameras, the college should have covered them with cloth bags along with a warning sign that tampering with the bags would be considered vandalism (and theft, if the bags were stolen) and that anyone doing so would be prosecuted.
Gotcha Covered (Score:1)
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This is what they did according to TFA.
Guns? (Score:2, Funny)
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College campus. I'm sure they've got signs posted that it's a "gun free zone". Plus Flock would likely just come out and install new ones, per the contract the college signed.
The person(s) that decided to let Flock on campus in the first place are the ones to blame. They are also probably on a board of people that decide when and who to fire, so essentially untouchable anyway.
Let this be a warning to any and all who haven't yet decided installing cameras everywhere was at all going to help.
P.S. If my car g
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It's not a nothing-burger. Once the college covered the cameras, the action by Flock to uncover them was vandalism.
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The college signed a contract allowing Flock to install the cameras, Some of these officials later regretted it -- but regret doesn't get you of a contract.
True, regret doesn't get you out of a contract, but all contracts are breakable. There may be penalties to breaking the contract (usually at a minimum it's a buyout of the rest of the contract) but they are all breakable, and no one side can force the other side to not break it. The college offered to payoff the rest of the contract early if they removed the cameras. Flock's refusal to even entertain Elgin means that Elgin should have stopped paying with a message of "We'll pay the rest of the money owed to
Then I would tell the students (Score:3)
good. (Score:2)
as much bad publicity as possible for Flock's business model. altho we'll likely still end up with just half measures.
plastic bags? (Score:2)
They should have used 55-gallon drums and concrete around those plastic bags, leaving the Flock property perfectly unharmed (assuming they could take the heat) but totally unaccessible.
Take them down yourselves (Score:3)
The college owns the land. The college gets to make the rules. If they don't want the cameras anymore, they can take them down themselves and tell Flock to come pick their shit up before it all gets sold for scrap. If Flock tries to go any further onto the property to reinstall the cameras, have them arrested for trespassing. I don't care what the contract states, they do not have free pass onto the property to touch anything or do work of any kind.
Trespass the "Unmarked van". (Score:1)
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By "unmarked" they mean it doesn't have a corporate logo. It'll have plates and shit. Who's required to have what markings on what vehicles varies from location to location, I'm not looking that up for this case, are you?
As far as the contract, it certainly gives them permission to access the campus in order to maintain the cameras, including removing foreign objects which obscure the view blah blah blah, why else would they have a contract? It'll also indemnify them from acts of god like lightning striking
Flock's bad behavior (Score:3)
How to deal with Flock (Score:2)
The way you deal with Flock and their cameras is that you tell them you are terminating your contract with them and will be remitting payment for the remainder of the contract term. They have 30 days to remove the cameras from your property or arrange for removal. If the cameras aren't removed, you will remove them and store them at Flock's expense until Flock comes to pick them up or makes arrangements for pick-up.
Then you send them their money and, if the cameras are still there after 30 days, take 'em do
Put something in front of the camera (Score:1)
If you place a sign or other opaque object in front of it in a way that they must break it to remove it then you can charge them for vandalism.
milk cartons (Score:2)
if a student is missing.
put their face on a milk carton.
they will turn up.
but the the chuckling will take awhile to disappear
"Safe" (Score:2)
>"But Heinrich started to wonder if the cameras were actually making students less safe after seeing news reports that data captured by Flock cameras in Illinois had been shared with U.S. Customs and Border Protection."
Um, that *does* make them more safe. You might be ideologically at odds with enforcement of immigration law. But you certainly didn't seem to care about privacy when you had them installed, did you?
>"More than half of students at the far west suburban Chicago campus identify as Latino
Gym membership (Score:2)
I wonder which is easier: having flock cameras removed or canceling gym membership.
College officials virtue signaling only (Score:2)
Burying the lead here (Score:2)