Elgin College Could Not Get Flock to Remove Its License-Plate Cameras
Elgin Community College asked Flock to remove six automated license plate recognition cameras from its campus in October 2025, and the cameras stayed up until the contract expired in April 2026. The Verge
The six cameras were installed in April 2025. The college said they were meant to improve safety and security for students.
By September 2025, administrators had three specific concerns. They worried Flock was sharing data with Customs and Border Protection, that the camera feeds were not properly secured, and that police officers and company employees could misuse access to the data.
Staff told Flock in October 2025 that the college wanted to cancel the contract and have the cameras removed. WBEZ Flock refused, saying it had not broken the contract. Peggy Heinrich is president of Elgin Community College.
In December 2025, college officials contacted Flock again. They offered to pay for the remaining five months of the contract and asked for the hardware to be removed. Flock did not reply to that second request. Chicago Sun-Times
Without a way to end the contract or shut the system down through software, staff covered the cameras with black trash bags held on with zip ties to block recording. Workers in an unmarked vehicle repeatedly removed the covers. Heinrich said she assumed the vehicle belonged to Flock.
The contract expired in April 2026, and Flock then removed the cameras. The dispute became public on October 9, 2026, when WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times reported that the college had told Flock to remove the cameras to protect immigrant students and the company had refused.
The cameras in question read license plate numbers automatically, a technology called automated license plate recognition, and record the time and other identifying details. That information is uploaded to a cloud server, meaning storage computers run by the vendor and reached over the internet. The 74 In separate October 3, 2026 reporting on Customs and Border Protection access to Flock data, Fortune stated that about 21 days of logs held roughly 50,200 vehicles and 1.6 million images, and noted that the Flock software detected people and bicycles. Fortune
The broader context here is about purchasing and control. The customer could not stop collection with a software switch, cancel sharing to outside parties, or require early removal of the hardware. The bags stopped new capture at the lens. They did nothing about stored data, past searches, or access rules.
In my view, this failure should look familiar to anyone who has followed enterprise tech. When cameras store footage in a vendor cloud, having the hardware on campus does not mean controlling the data flow. When ending service needs vendor agreement and the vendor says no rules were broken, the customer is left with self-help. Elgin tried physical blocking, and then lost even that to whoever held maintenance access.
The lesson for buyers going forward is practical and, I think, hopeful. The important negotiation happens before installation. Contracts need clear removal timelines, data deletion rules, and the right to pause collection if downstream sharing is suspected. Logs should show who searched for which plate, when, and under what approval, with the customer able to review them. I have watched my own kids grow up with cameras everywhere, and the expectation is usually simple. When an institution says stop, stopping should work. This case gives colleges, cities, and companies a concrete checklist, and a reason to treat removal as seriously as uptime or accuracy.
