ASU has 20 Flock cameras. Here’s what we know about the data

Our Take

Credit to Arizona's Family (3TV/CBS 5) for pulling back the curtain on something a lot of universities would rather you not think about: campuses are becoming their own little surveillance fiefdoms. Twenty Flock cameras scanning plates since 2022, on a campus with tens of thousands of students, staff, and visitors passing through every day, is not a minor footnote — it's a years-long, continuously logged record of who drives where and when, built without the kind of public debate that should accompany any mass data collection program.

The pattern here is familiar: a university, a city, or a police department adopts ALPR tech quietly, citing safety or parking enforcement, and only years later does a reporter have to drag out basic facts about retention, access, and sharing. Students who think of their campus as a relatively contained, trusted space may be surprised to learn their movements are being logged by the same surveillance infrastructure cropping up in neighborhoods and shopping centers nationwide. Once that data exists, it can be queried, shared with other agencies, or retained far longer than anyone initially promised.

If you want to see whether there's a Flock camera near your dorm, workplace, or daily commute, check our camera map, and if this story bothers you, our take-action page has concrete steps for pushing back at the campus, city, or state level.