One school district ran 375 Flock camera searches on student families #EFF

Our Take

Shared Sapience's breakdown of EFF's Flock data dive lands on a point we keep hammering: these cameras don't stay in their lane. A school district running 375 searches on student families isn't chasing stolen cars — that's a record of who drove where, when, and how often, built on the backs of kids who never consented to being surveillance subjects in the first place. Once license plate data exists, it gets queried, and "public safety" quietly becomes a pretext for tracking church attendance, custody arrangements, and family routines.

This is the mission creep we've warned about since day one. Flock markets itself to police departments, but the network of readers and the appetite for that data doesn't stop at the precinct door — schools, HOAs, and other institutions get access too, often with none of the oversight or public reporting that would let families know they're being logged. Credit to Shared Sapience and EFF for digging through the raw search numbers instead of taking vendor talking points at face value; that kind of record-pulling is exactly how these systems get exposed.

If your local school, town, or neighborhood has Flock cameras, you deserve to know it — and to push back. Check our camera map to see what's already been documented near you, and hit up our take-action page if you want to start asking your district or city council the hard questions about who's searching this data and why.