6 ms·

Why are Flock employees watching our children?

271 points by enaaem 6mo ago

enaaem 6mo ago
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.
- expedition32 6mo ago
  Sounds like Bob should run for president.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- lynndotpy 6mo ago
  I think it's worth speaking plainly and specifically about this. The implied and speculated motivation is that Bob, and the other Flock employees watching people without their consent, is voyeurism. That means to look at people in otherwise-private places and in various states of undress, for sexual gratification. It is not uncommon for someone who believes nobody is looking to even adjust their clothes on their body, briefly exposing genitals, nipples, etc. This is very concerning, but even more so because this includes children.
Bender 6mo ago
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/ https://zoneminder.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us20t1gQPOE 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzLV9Agnou8 [video][24 mins][ceph tutorial on proxmox][cat included]
- cyanydeez 6mo ago
  Most likely, it's part of not dealing directly with access to guns, and associated Police state and chillun-to-prison pipeline. This seems to just be a regular progression, and offering some open source alternative to oppression is amusing.
- kube-system 6mo ago
  The main reason that organizations choose commercially managed solutions is because they don't have local expertise or staff to do things themselves. I do agree that on-prem solutions are better, but Zoneminder is probably not a great option. Besides being old and clunky, it also isn't anywhere near a complete solution, and the IP cameras people often choose to connect to them are often security nightmares. There are many good and complete commercial offerings that are secure and keep video locally.
  - Bender 6mo ago
    I totally get what you are saying and there are certainly some schools that lack IT staff, budget and experience but there are some schools that have big budgets and plenty of IT people sitting on their hands that could slowly build this out, document it in a way that schools could budget around YoY and set examples for other schools. Maybe even use it as a project to get students some college credits. If there are better options than Zoneminder please do share the tutorial videos with others here so they have greater options. I am old and clunky so ZM works for me. Some may even say old and clunky can mean reliable and low maintenance. There are probably some school IT admins reading this. ZM has great documentation and tutorial videos in my opinion. It is also used by a large number of corporations. Just my own philosophy but I am leery of expensive turn-key commercial solutions as they lead to proprietary solutions that school IT won't understand and will just lead to dead cameras and empty NVR's when law enforcement need them the most. It will be one of the first maintenance contracts that get cut from budgets.
    - kube-system 6mo ago
      Just because someone has an IT staff doesn't necessarily mean that staff really has the expertise to set up a bespoke surveillance system properly. Nor does it really make it a good idea to do so. Nor is it even a good use of time when packaged systems can fulfill most requirements with less integration risk. The software running on an NVR is only one small part of a surveillance system. I'd be much more worried about the choice IP cameras themselves, which are notoriously problematic. And if you look at the cameras which are well regarded and high quality -- typically those vendors have their own NVR solutions which are also well regarded and already tested to work well with their cameras. > I am leery of expensive turn-key commercial solutions as they lead to proprietary solutions that school IT won't understand If IT can't adequately evaluate and choose a turn-key solution, I doubt their ability to piece together their own system. > If there are better options than Zoneminder please do share the tutorial videos with others here so they have greater options. I am old and clunky so ZM works for me. Some may even say old and clunky can mean reliable and low maintenance. The last time I tried Zoneminder, the problem I had was that the detection algorithms were so bad that I found them useless. The cameras I had were all outdoors and their algorithm struggled to strike a balance between detecting legitimate motion and not falsely triggering when lighting conditions changed. I tried some other projects that had better algorithms for filtering out changes in exposure and lighting (I forget which ones), but there's also some now that have AI object detection. But ultimately I've migrated away because commercial options got better, cheaper, and more feature filled. If I picked a new system today I'd probably try something like: https://www.ui.com/us/en/camera-security https://www.ui.com/us/en/camera-security I don't have any personal experience with it but the value looks incredible.
josefritzishere 6mo ago
Flock is so wantonly irresponsible. Their security focus is borderline non-existent. This sector desperately needs to be regulated.
- bpt3 6mo ago
  By whom? The regulators are the ones signing up for these services.
  - superfrank 6mo ago
    The FBI. This sounds like a CJIS violation
    - tclancy 6mo ago
      Buddy, I have some awful news. On the plus side, you can email the FBI director at his personal email to try to get him on the case.
      - superfrank 6mo ago
        You're being snide, but I have first hand experience in this area. If random Flock employees can just pull up production data on a whim without being properly vetted, agencies, states, and the FBI will take this pretty seriously. They don't take it seriously because of some moral, "We care about your privacy" stance. They take it seriously because if there's something that makes them look bad in there, they want to be able to control the narrative. If a Flock camera catches and officer doing something they shouldn't be doing, the agency/FBI doesn't want a disgruntled Flock employee to be able to sign in and grab that video and give it to the news.
        bpt3 6mo ago
        What does the FBI have to do with video streams at a JCC? And isn't flock doing the vetting? This sounds a lot like BD guys doing demos with random data from a customer that agreed to show allow access and a local citizen getting very bent out of shape about it.
john_strinlai 6mo ago
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 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)
- tclancy 6mo ago
  How else would they sell to additional customers if they couldn't demo random video feeds from all over?
  - john_strinlai 6mo ago
    perhaps by setting up a dedicated "demo feed”, rather than access the cameras of live customers, like every other product that i have sat through a demo for can you imagine sales force or dynamics poking around some random company's live data during a demo to some other company?
    - mixdup 6mo ago
      access to every camera on the system is the selling point
      - john_strinlai 6mo ago
        "our employees can watch any camera at any time" is not one of their selling points.
        mixdup 6mo ago
        "your officers can watch any camera at any time" absolutely is one of their selling points
therobots927 6mo ago
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.
- anigbrowl 6mo ago
  Also public employees. Although there are many trends of Dunwoody PD officers and staff monitoring the live view cameras on the JCC’s fitness studios, gyms, and pools [...] I doubt this aligns with any guidelines on effective crime prevention.
- goatlover 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
    - djeorkd 6mo ago
      [flagged]
- blitzar 6mo ago
  An amuse-bouche of prior art: 2016: Uber employees 'spied on ex-partners, politicians and Beyoncé' 2022: OnlyFans creator has alleged that she had sexual intercourse with multiple Meta employees and it successfully reversed the ban on her Instagram account
bhandziuk 6mo ago
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.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
Geee 6mo ago
[flagged]
- rcoveson 6mo ago
  I'm happy to say that I would be fired if I did this, thought this, or wrote this comment. EDIT: Parent used to say "it's common for salespeople to log in to customer environments to show potential customers what the product looks like with actual data in it."
  - pavel_lishin 6mo ago
    You would be fired if you had a thought?
    - rcoveson 6mo ago
      If I had the thought, in general, that this was a fine thing to do, then yes. Presumably I would do it or permit somebody else to do it and be fired.
    - dredmorbius 6mo ago
      Root-level comment has been edited as noted by respondant lynndotpy <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47785027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47785027> and original author Geee <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47785316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47785316>.
  - Geee 6mo ago
    I removed the part where I said 'it's typical for sales people to access customer environments', because I don't know how accurate that is, but probably happens more than anyone knows. Obviously it shouldn't happen without customers consent. Also, reviewing the article again, the access patterns don't seem to match with this behavior, so there seems to be something else going on.
    - mixdup 6mo ago
JohnMakin 6mo ago
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 6mo ago
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 https://youtu.be/AqOYDNKBr3g?si=EFOTKlKIRK01mVvL
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
damnesian 6mo ago
If they are skeezing on adults at the pool and in the gym, you know they are on... everyone.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
nacozarina 6mo ago
a govt run by pedos will be interested in children
throwaway21862 6mo ago
[flagged]
tomaskafka 6mo ago
This is a nation feeding their children junk prison food, so no surprise they’ll also sell their video feeds to dubiously unaudited people. It’s hard to understand though.

271 points by enaaem 6mo ago

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.

expedition32 6mo ago
Sounds like Bob should run for president.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
lynndotpy 6mo ago
I think it's worth speaking plainly and specifically about this. The implied and speculated motivation is that Bob, and the other Flock employees watching people without their consent, is voyeurism. That means to look at people in otherwise-private places and in various states of undress, for sexual gratification. It is not uncommon for someone who believes nobody is looking to even adjust their clothes on their body, briefly exposing genitals, nipples, etc. This is very concerning, but even more so because this includes children.

Bender 6mo ago

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/ https://zoneminder.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us20t1gQPOE 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzLV9Agnou8 [video][24 mins][ceph tutorial on proxmox][cat included]

cyanydeez 6mo ago
Most likely, it's part of not dealing directly with access to guns, and associated Police state and chillun-to-prison pipeline. This seems to just be a regular progression, and offering some open source alternative to oppression is amusing.
kube-system 6mo ago
The main reason that organizations choose commercially managed solutions is because they don't have local expertise or staff to do things themselves. I do agree that on-prem solutions are better, but Zoneminder is probably not a great option. Besides being old and clunky, it also isn't anywhere near a complete solution, and the IP cameras people often choose to connect to them are often security nightmares. There are many good and complete commercial offerings that are secure and keep video locally.
- Bender 6mo ago
  I totally get what you are saying and there are certainly some schools that lack IT staff, budget and experience but there are some schools that have big budgets and plenty of IT people sitting on their hands that could slowly build this out, document it in a way that schools could budget around YoY and set examples for other schools. Maybe even use it as a project to get students some college credits. If there are better options than Zoneminder please do share the tutorial videos with others here so they have greater options. I am old and clunky so ZM works for me. Some may even say old and clunky can mean reliable and low maintenance. There are probably some school IT admins reading this. ZM has great documentation and tutorial videos in my opinion. It is also used by a large number of corporations. Just my own philosophy but I am leery of expensive turn-key commercial solutions as they lead to proprietary solutions that school IT won't understand and will just lead to dead cameras and empty NVR's when law enforcement need them the most. It will be one of the first maintenance contracts that get cut from budgets.
  - kube-system 6mo ago
    Just because someone has an IT staff doesn't necessarily mean that staff really has the expertise to set up a bespoke surveillance system properly. Nor does it really make it a good idea to do so. Nor is it even a good use of time when packaged systems can fulfill most requirements with less integration risk. The software running on an NVR is only one small part of a surveillance system. I'd be much more worried about the choice IP cameras themselves, which are notoriously problematic. And if you look at the cameras which are well regarded and high quality -- typically those vendors have their own NVR solutions which are also well regarded and already tested to work well with their cameras. > I am leery of expensive turn-key commercial solutions as they lead to proprietary solutions that school IT won't understand If IT can't adequately evaluate and choose a turn-key solution, I doubt their ability to piece together their own system. > If there are better options than Zoneminder please do share the tutorial videos with others here so they have greater options. I am old and clunky so ZM works for me. Some may even say old and clunky can mean reliable and low maintenance. The last time I tried Zoneminder, the problem I had was that the detection algorithms were so bad that I found them useless. The cameras I had were all outdoors and their algorithm struggled to strike a balance between detecting legitimate motion and not falsely triggering when lighting conditions changed. I tried some other projects that had better algorithms for filtering out changes in exposure and lighting (I forget which ones), but there's also some now that have AI object detection. But ultimately I've migrated away because commercial options got better, cheaper, and more feature filled. If I picked a new system today I'd probably try something like: https://www.ui.com/us/en/camera-security https://www.ui.com/us/en/camera-security I don't have any personal experience with it but the value looks incredible.

josefritzishere 6mo ago

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

bpt3 6mo ago
By whom? The regulators are the ones signing up for these services.
- superfrank 6mo ago
  The FBI. This sounds like a CJIS violation
  - tclancy 6mo ago
    Buddy, I have some awful news. On the plus side, you can email the FBI director at his personal email to try to get him on the case.
    - superfrank 6mo ago
      You're being snide, but I have first hand experience in this area. If random Flock employees can just pull up production data on a whim without being properly vetted, agencies, states, and the FBI will take this pretty seriously. They don't take it seriously because of some moral, "We care about your privacy" stance. They take it seriously because if there's something that makes them look bad in there, they want to be able to control the narrative. If a Flock camera catches and officer doing something they shouldn't be doing, the agency/FBI doesn't want a disgruntled Flock employee to be able to sign in and grab that video and give it to the news.
      - bpt3 6mo ago
        What does the FBI have to do with video streams at a JCC? And isn't flock doing the vetting? This sounds a lot like BD guys doing demos with random data from a customer that agreed to show allow access and a local citizen getting very bent out of shape about it.

john_strinlai 6mo ago

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 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)

tclancy 6mo ago
How else would they sell to additional customers if they couldn't demo random video feeds from all over?
- john_strinlai 6mo ago
  perhaps by setting up a dedicated "demo feed”, rather than access the cameras of live customers, like every other product that i have sat through a demo for can you imagine sales force or dynamics poking around some random company's live data during a demo to some other company?
  - mixdup 6mo ago
    access to every camera on the system is the selling point
    - john_strinlai 6mo ago
      "our employees can watch any camera at any time" is not one of their selling points.
      - mixdup 6mo ago
        "your officers can watch any camera at any time" absolutely is one of their selling points

therobots927 6mo ago

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.

anigbrowl 6mo ago
Also public employees. Although there are many trends of Dunwoody PD officers and staff monitoring the live view cameras on the JCC’s fitness studios, gyms, and pools [...] I doubt this aligns with any guidelines on effective crime prevention.
goatlover 6mo ago
[flagged]
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
  - djeorkd 6mo ago
    [flagged]
blitzar 6mo ago
An amuse-bouche of prior art: 2016: Uber employees 'spied on ex-partners, politicians and Beyoncé' 2022: OnlyFans creator has alleged that she had sexual intercourse with multiple Meta employees and it successfully reversed the ban on her Instagram account

bhandziuk 6mo ago

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.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

Geee 6mo ago

[flagged]

rcoveson 6mo ago
I'm happy to say that I would be fired if I did this, thought this, or wrote this comment. EDIT: Parent used to say "it's common for salespeople to log in to customer environments to show potential customers what the product looks like with actual data in it."
- pavel_lishin 6mo ago
  You would be fired if you had a thought?
  - rcoveson 6mo ago
    If I had the thought, in general, that this was a fine thing to do, then yes. Presumably I would do it or permit somebody else to do it and be fired.
  - dredmorbius 6mo ago
    Root-level comment has been edited as noted by respondant lynndotpy <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47785027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47785027> and original author Geee <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47785316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47785316>.
- Geee 6mo ago
  I removed the part where I said 'it's typical for sales people to access customer environments', because I don't know how accurate that is, but probably happens more than anyone knows. Obviously it shouldn't happen without customers consent. Also, reviewing the article again, the access patterns don't seem to match with this behavior, so there seems to be something else going on.
  - mixdup 6mo ago

JohnMakin 6mo ago

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 6mo ago

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 https://youtu.be/AqOYDNKBr3g?si=EFOTKlKIRK01mVvL

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

damnesian 6mo ago

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

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

nacozarina 6mo ago

a govt run by pedos will be interested in children

throwaway21862 6mo ago

[flagged]

tomaskafka 6mo ago

This is a nation feeding their children junk prison food, so no surprise they’ll also sell their video feeds to dubiously unaudited people. It’s hard to understand though.