Exclusive | HOA surveillance cameras secretly installed for neighborhood security draw massive backlash and are killing home sales
Big brother is watching your open house.Homeowners associations across the country are quietly signing up for Flock Safety’s license plate cameras, and the backlash is now strong enough to blow up home sales, kill signed contracts and land cities in court, with New York at the center of the fight.Nowhere is the backlash more raw than in the Adirondacks, where the fight has already toppled a signed contract and sparked open revolt inside a gated community. In Saranac Lake, a resident living behind a gate who protested the cameras in his own neighborhood said the issue isn’t security itself.It’s who gets to look.“The problem I have is not with security cameras.
It’s with the Flock system directly.Anyone and their mother can have easy access to this database.
The way the data is readily being shared.It is completely unconstitutional,” he told The Post.That anger boiled over at a packed Saranac Lake village board meeting earlier in the year after officials quietly signed a contract for a dozen license plate readers and security cameras using a state grant. Residents said they’d learned about the rollout only after cameras started going up on telephone poles around town.“These cameras are not going to keep us safe,” resident Sandra Kalinowski told the board, drawing applause from the crowd.Another resident, David Lynch, pushed the board to reverse course entirely.“First I believe these cameras are currently in violation of Saranac Lake Police Department policy.
Secondly, I believe the public has been misled about Flock’s access to our data.My ask of you tonight is to take these cameras down.
The village is conducting surveillance in violation of its own policy,” he said.The board caved.Trustees voted 4-1 to kill the Flock contract outright and swore off ever signing with the company again, a stunning reversal for a deal that had already been in place for months. Trustee Aurora White, who pushed the toughest language in the resolution, said...