Why are Flock employees watching our children?

enaaem

From the article: Bob also has some interesting searches. On September 30th, 2025 - Bob looked at just one camera. This camera is in the gymnastics room of the JCC. I personally am curious about why a sales employee from Flock would be viewing the gymnastics room. I think this also deserves an explanation.

Bender

Why is there a flock camera indoors at a school in the first place? Are the schools supposed to be putting video and audio footage of children on 3rd party storage platforms? Are the parents aware of this? Perhaps PTA meetings should discuss. That seems like something that should be using close circuit PoE cameras to local NVR's with on-prem encrypted storage with a retention policy if there must be cameras. Encrypted CEPH perhaps? [3] Just as one example Zoneminder [1][2] can be clustered and distributed assuming a large campus. I'm sure there must be other open source NVR's that can do the same. School IT staff should try out a small deployment first and then extend it year over year. Local AI should detect and alert on fights, abuse from teachers, anyone with a weapon, someone injured, etc... Bob can be granted access to specific cameras that relate to his role to avoid Repetitive Strain Injury RSI among other issues. [1] - https://zoneminder.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us20t1gQPOE [video][48 mins][tutorial using LXC on Debian and Proxmox] [3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzLV9Agnou8 [video][24 mins][ceph tutorial on proxmox][cat included]

josefritzishere

Flock is so wantonly irresponsible. Their security focus is borderline non-existent. This sector desperately needs to be regulated.

john_strinlai

just when you thought it was bad, it gets worse. why do sales employees have access (or ability to request access) to camera feeds at all? i would like to know what other cameras adam snow, bob carter, cameran whiteman view regularly. "search him hard drive" as the kids say. (p.s. https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety , sadly the "latest news" section does not have "flock sales employees caught watching kids", just hundreds of millions in funding to realize the minority report)

therobots927

It may take time but make no mistake - this will become a bigger issue than it currently is. The fact that multiple high level Flock employees appear to be spying on children in highly suspect settings (gym, pool) is a massive, massive scandal. This just gave everyone at their city council meetings some of the most potent talking points to use against city adoption of Flock cameras. This is just the beginning.

bhandziuk

As someone who has been somewhat involved with this I'm disappointed and but not terribly surprised this goes even deeper than Dunwoody public spaces. There was a lot of community engagement on the Flock contract renewal but the vote was postponed twice. It seemed like once community engagement died down (because asking people to stay vigilant constantly is exhausting). Council seemed upset but when it came down to it they voted unanimously to continue and expand the Flock contract. I feel like it really does a lot of harm to public trust. But also most people, even people pretty engaged in the community, just don't know or care about the consequences of being surveilled constantly. It's very hard to convey to them the potential harm this is doing to them or their kids.

JohnMakin

Not super surprising an employee comfortable with what Flock does, to not bear any moral burden from profiting off of it, would have a few creeps in the mix.

hed

The council meeting alluded to in the article happened a few days ago and is on YouTube[1]. Public comment starts around 23m, the commenters bring up some of the things in the article, and the council still moves to approve around 1h20m. [1] - https://youtu.be/AqOYDNKBr3g?si=EFOTKlKIRK01mVvL

damnesian

If they are skeezing on adults at the pool and in the gym, you know they are on... everyone.