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.
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.
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. 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.
Commercially managed doesn't have to mean off-prem. There are vendors local to me who deploy turnkey on-prem video surveillance systems without remote management, if the Customer would prefer not to have it. (It means increased service call costs.) The school district I contract with had one installed last year. (I don't love the Motorola Avigilon software but the cameras were fairly nice. The vendor needed extensive management to make sure things ended up in the right place in the network, LDAP integration for the system worked, etc).
Agree re: Zoneminder being a bad choice today. I hear good stuff about Frigate[0] but I haven't had time to try it yet. Outside of the FLOSS space Milestone XProtect isn't awful.
> Are the parents aware of this? Perhaps PTA meetings should discuss.
Not everyone grows up in such an idyllic environment where there is an active and engaged PTA or concerned parents who feel like they have a voice. Moreover the perceived need for security cameras is probably inversely proportional to places with active PTA groups (though maybe not). Either way, suggesting tech solutions is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
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.
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.
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, 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)
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?
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."
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.
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.
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.
The sector is heavily regulated. I worked at a company in the same space as Flock a few years ago and production access was restricted to only those who needed it when they needed it (automated system that would give access for a defined period of time and then revoke it). It also required getting CJIS certified which was a massive pain in the ass and required things like being finger printed and sending forms to every individual state.
If Flock is just giving everyone in their company access to production data it's not that the sector needs ,more regulation, it's that someone need to audit Flock for compliance.
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.
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.
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/
[2] - 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 [video][24 mins][ceph tutorial on proxmox][cat included]
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. 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.
Agree re: Zoneminder being a bad choice today. I hear good stuff about Frigate[0] but I haven't had time to try it yet. Outside of the FLOSS space Milestone XProtect isn't awful.
[0] https://frigate.video/
Not everyone grows up in such an idyllic environment where there is an active and engaged PTA or concerned parents who feel like they have a voice. Moreover the perceived need for security cameras is probably inversely proportional to places with active PTA groups (though maybe not). Either way, suggesting tech solutions is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
This seems to just be a regular progression, and offering some open source alternative to oppression is amusing.
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.
[1] - https://youtu.be/AqOYDNKBr3g?si=EFOTKlKIRK01mVvL
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, 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)
can you imagine sales force or dynamics poking around some random company's live data during a demo to some other company?
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."
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.
oh, pools aren't your thing? how about some kids doing gymnastics, perhaps?"
This is just the beginning.
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.
If Flock is just giving everyone in their company access to production data it's not that the sector needs ,more regulation, it's that someone need to audit Flock for compliance.
Like literally every other YC company lol.
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.
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.