A College Told Flock to Remove Its Cameras. The Company Refused. (suntimes.com)
- Reference: 0186086004
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/10/09/2340244/a-college-told-flock-to-remove-its-cameras-the-company-refused
- Source link: https://chicago.suntimes.com/education/2026/10/09/to-protect-immigrant-students-a-chicago-area-college-told-flock-to-remove-its-cameras-the-company-refused
> 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 [2]shared with U.S. Customs and Border Protection . Then in September 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement [3]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...
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
[1] https://chicago.suntimes.com/education/2026/10/09/to-protect-immigrant-students-a-chicago-area-college-told-flock-to-remove-its-cameras-the-company-refused
[2] https://www.nprillinois.org/illinois/2025-08-27/hundreds-of-police-departments-use-camera-company-accused-of-breaking-state-law
[3] https://elgin.edu/news/ecc-in-the-news/2025/reported-ice-activity-on-campus.php
The company refused?! (Score:3, 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:2)
It's easier to shoot them in the middle of the night.
Re: The company refused?! (Score:2)
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
Get out a backhoe (Score:4, 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...)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
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.
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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.
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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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You realize you don't have the power to "press charges", right? Whether or not Flock is happy with the situation, they have zero ability to compel the police to do a damned thing about it. Now... Sure, nobody can promise the feds won't investigate (though they wouldn't even have jurisdiction without abusing something like interstate commerce), but most colleges "are" their containing town, including the local PD. Remember why Cornell is currently in the spotlight for how poorly a particular investigation w
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If the campus PD don't care maybe they can get the state authorities to step in but I doubt they will go out of their way if it is not politically popular, and Flock is not very right now.
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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.
Re: (Score:1)
> 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).
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: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
If there is, go back to covering them up, setup motion triggers near the cameras with a hose that activates a nice water spray with that stuff they stick on money that explodes and leaves a nice permanent mark and also alerts campus police. Have police take the people uncovering the cameras for vandalism. Should be easy to identify them. They are the ones that are purple.
Re: (Score:3)
The poles are 20lbs of high-quality aluminum - Ironically, jokes about letting tweakers know about the gold in the e-waste Flock keeps leaving on the side of the road aside, the poles themselves are the single most valuable part of an installation (as scrap).
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.
Re: Get out a backhoe (Score:2)
Simply install 6 new campus signs. Directly in front of the cameras. Image of a hand. Middle finger extended.
Re: (Score:2)
Charge them a monthly to store and keep their property safe.
Incompetence running wild (Score:5, Insightful)
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? I woud consider signing that contract to be gross incompetence and negligence if I were a resident of a municipality like that, and it should be a fireable offense for whoever is responsible at that college.
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: (Score:3)
> 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? I woud consider signing that contract to be gross incompetence and negligence if I were a resident of a municipality like that, and it should be a fireable offense for whoever is responsible at that college.
Easy - they wan
Re: (Score:1)
You've badly missed the point of my post, and instead decided to exaplain how a contract containing the problematic clauses I've called out works.
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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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Do you not understand that what I'm saying is the people who are responsible should be held responsible? Or are you just trying to say it's impossible to hold anyone accountable anymore? Because that's simply not true unless they are billionaires.
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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.
We spent decades letting democracy get undermined (Score:1)
We had a variety of reasons for it but for most of the people allowing it it came down to the fact that they thought that they would be able to have democracy and a say in government and the country but people they disagree with would not.
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)
After a few tries to cover them with bags they should have switched to roofing tar. It will still clean off but takes a bit longer.
Re: (Score:2)
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...
More permanent fix (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
I remember an episode of NCIS where McGee used a paint gun to cover the lenses of some surveillance cameras so that DiNozo could get into a junk yard and retrieve some evidence they needed.
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)
Cover them up with a thick black (contractor) trash bags, zip tie or duct tape to keep it there. Repeat as many times as necessary until they take them out.
Guns? (Score:2)
Don't Americans shoot everything they dont like?
Re: (Score:2)
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:2)
That all the Flock cameras are open season to be taken or destroyed
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:2)
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)
Unless it violates the contract specifically, have campus security monitor the covered cameras and trespass anyone trying to uncover them. This is private company, not the secret policy. Ban the employees and contractors from campus (again, unless their contract won't allow it), then have them arrested when they ignore it.
Flock is so popular for many reasons (Score:2)
That is sarcasm.