Flock Is Watching Your Kids. Now It Wants the Map Gone.

Our Take

Dr. Josh C. Simmons lays out something that should stop anyone cold: Flock hardware reportedly showing up near children's gymnastics rooms, elementary school restrooms, jail showers, courtrooms, and a family violence center. If accurate, that's not "public safety camera" territory — that's surveillance infrastructure creeping into spaces where people have every reasonable expectation of privacy, including kids and survivors of abuse. The fact that a company pitching itself as a crime-fighting tool is reportedly okay with cameras pointed into these settings tells you how little oversight actually exists once the hardware goes up.

The second half of the story is the more telling one: Flock allegedly wants mapping efforts that track where this gear lives taken offline. That's the oldest move in the surveillance playbook — expand quietly, then get angry when the public builds a mirror. Transparency isn't a threat to safety; it's the only check ordinary people have against networks they never voted for and can't see. If a company is more worried about a map than about cameras near a jail shower, that's a signal about priorities, not privacy.

This is exactly why independent tracking matters. Take a look at our camera map and see what's logged near you, and if you want to push back on unchecked deployment in your community, our take-action page has concrete next steps.