An Illinois college tried to cancel its Flock contract — and the cameras stayed

In April 2025, Elgin Community College in Illinois had six Flock Safety surveillance cameras installed — officially to "enhance the safety and security of students." By September, however, the administration had grown uneasy: it believed Flock was sharing data with Customs and Border Protection, that the camera feeds were not properly secured, and that both law enforcement and the company's own employees were abusing their access to the data.

In October 2025 the college asked Flock to remove the cameras. According to college president Peggy Heinrich, Flock refused, insisting it had not violated the contract. As the Chicago Sun-Times reports, officials reached out again in December, offering to pay out the remaining five months of the deal in exchange for taking the equipment down. They got silence in response.

Trash bags versus cameras

That is where things took a strange and faintly sinister turn. College staff began covering the cameras with black trash bags and zip ties so the lenses could capture nothing. But workers in an unmarked vehicle — which Heinrich assumed belonged to Flock — repeatedly removed the coverings.

"We were kind of in a back and forth for a bit where we'd cover, and then when they'd come to service, they'd remove," Heinrich said. "Then we'd cover and then they'd remove."

The standoff dragged on until April of this year, when the contract finally expired — and only then did Flock come and take its cameras away.

The Elgin saga is a vivid illustration of how hard it can be to walk away from an installed surveillance system when the fine print of a contract outweighs the customer's wishes. The client wanted to stop being a client, and the watching infrastructure simply refused to disappear.

Source: The Verge