the original method was using a saw or destroying the camera.
I was going to suggest covering them up, as a legal way to turn them off without physically dismantling, since they’re technically not college property. But that’s exactly what the campus staff did and Flock kept coming to uncover them? Lol wtf
I’d bet if this was a larger college/university, they wouldn’t have pulled something like this.
Something good did come out of this. It is a concrete example of how the company will behave if you sign a contract with them. Public officials and administrators will be more likely to care if they risk losing their power like this. It also makes it clear that you’re not paying Flock to “help” your own region, you’re doing it to help people in other regions.
Elgin Community College staff notified Flock in October 2025 that they wanted to cancel their contract and have the cameras taken down. Within a day, Heinrich said, Flock rejected the request and refused to uninstall the equipment on the basis that the company had not breached their agreement.
College officials reached out again in December 2025 and said they would pay for the remaining five months of the contract — they just wanted the cameras taken down.
“We never received a response back from Flock,” Heinrich said.
That’s when things got weird. Heinrich said Elgin Community College staff began to cover the cameras using black trash bags and zip ties so that they would not be able to capture footage. But workers in an unmarked vehicle, which Heinrich assumed belonged to Flock, repeatedly removed the coverings.
This strange dance continued, Heinrich said, until Elgin Community College’s contract with Flock expired in April this year and the company uninstalled the cameras for good.
The simple solution to this is for the college to physically remove the cameras from their mountings. The poles our buildings that the cameras are mounted to are owned by the university. They should then inform Flock that they can pick the cameras up at the school’s lost at found.
And then “oops”…they fall to the ground broken.
So…. Shut them down then. It seems American laws are optional nowadays??
It seems American laws are optional nowadays??
Depends who your friends are and how much you can pay.
That’s because the data from the cameras is the product. The fact they can get people to pay to install them is just a side hustle.
Sounds like Elgin go their cameras taken down so that college’s problem is solved. If the cameras were still up I can think if a few things the college could do. The college has a welding instruction department. I can think of no better coursework than constructing steel welded boxes the wrap around cameras. That would have prevented the flock workers from taking the bags off.
Alternatively, the school could have erected signage directly in front of the cameras obscuring the view, and if the flock workers moved the signs they could criminally charge them vandalism and sue the Flock for paying for it to happen.
