Students are rising up against Flock cameras: What we do is constantly surveilled

First privacy hawks and motorists were outraged over Flock cameras.Now, students are up in arms over the AI-powered surveillance, which has been rolled out in at least 100 school districts across the country, according to an analysis of government procurement records by nonprofit news organization The74.“It seems like the government’s trying to watch you more and more,” Gabe Sayer, a 17-year-old high school senior from Loveland, Colorado, told The Post.

“It makes me feel a little unsafe.”After five Flock cameras were installed in schools across his district, Sayer organized a petition against them and launched DeFlock Loveland, a high-schooler-led initiative urging the school board and city council to take down cameras.“I was just so disgusted,” said Sayer, who believes the Flock cams violate the Fourth Amendment rights of students and community members by subjecting them to unreasonable levels of surveillance.“I decided that we had to at least try and get rid of them in Loveland.” His Change.org petition — one of several launched by students across the US — has thus far, garnered 719 signatures.

“An America where companies like Flock are allowed to conduct widespread surveillance of American citizens is an America where our liberties are dangerously in question,” it asserts.Flock markets directly to schools on its company website, where they boast about giving “peace of mind” to institutions from “K-12 schools to major universities” by building a “virtual perimeter” around campuses with license plate readers, video cameras, mobile units, gunshot detectors, and a mobile app for staff.Its cameras are more controversial than standard surveillance equipment because they use AI to generate databases of information about people’s movements.“What are you doing to a whole generation of students that basically have to be resigned to the fact that what they do is constantly surveilled? There’s sort of a democratic, philosophical ...