Exposed: Flock Cameras Caught Spying on Little Girls in Gymnastics

Our Take

Credit to Maj Toure for pointing his camera at a question that too many city councils never ask before signing a Flock contract: what exactly are these cameras capturing, and who decides where that line gets drawn? The premise here — that ALPR hardware marketed strictly as a plate-reading tool might be sweeping in far more than plates, including images of children — is the kind of claim that deserves scrutiny rather than dismissal, because it cuts to the core problem with this technology: once a camera network is installed, communities are largely trusting the vendor's word about what it does and doesn't record.

That trust gap is exactly why we built our map in the first place. Flock cameras have spread into neighborhoods, school zones, and gym parking lots across the country, often with minimal public debate about retention policies, data sharing, or who gets access to the footage. Parents dropping kids off at gymnastics practice rarely think to ask whether a nearby pole camera is logging their vehicle, let alone anything else in frame. Whether or not every detail in this video holds up to further reporting, the underlying unease it taps into is legitimate: surveillance infrastructure installed for one narrow purpose has a way of quietly expanding its reach.

If you want to know whether Flock hardware is already watching your street, school, or gym, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for someone else to raise the alarm, our take-action page has steps for pushing back at the local level before these systems become permanent fixtures nobody remembers approving.