Flock Used Cameras at a Children’s Gymnastics Center for a Sales Pitch
The short version: 404 Media reports Flock accessed live camera feeds from a kids' gymnastics facility to wow prospective customers, exposing how casually surveillance footage gets repurposed.
Our Take
404 Media's Jason dug up a story that should make every parent's stomach turn: Flock reportedly pulled footage from cameras inside a children's gymnastics facility and used it as a live demo to pitch its surveillance tech to potential buyers. Not a hypothetical, not a mockup — actual camera access tied to a real business with real kids in frame, treated as a sales prop. That's the quiet part of the surveillance industry said out loud: once a camera network exists, the footage becomes a resource for whoever has the login, and "public safety" marketing can slide into something a lot more casual and unaccountable.
The episode breaks down Flock's explanation, the city council backlash that followed, and how the contract renewal fight played out anyway — a pattern we see over and over. Communities raise alarms, companies issue a statement, and the cameras stay up. That's exactly why documentation matters. If a vendor will access a gymnastics room's cameras for a pitch meeting, it's worth asking what else gets shared, with whom, and under what oversight once your town signs the contract.
Credit to 404 Media for surfacing this and for covering the protest aftermath that the mainstream outlets won't touch. If you want to see whether Flock or similar ALPR systems are already running in your area, check our camera map, and if your city council is up for a renewal vote, our take-action page has tools to help you show up and ask the hard questions before the contract gets rubber-stamped.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of 404 Media, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.