Chants of “Get the Flock off our campus!” echoed through San José State University on November 9 as Students for a Democratic Society led a march past several sites where Flock surveillance cameras had been installed around campus. The demonstration capped a campaign in which the group says it is pressuring university administrators to act on Flock’s presence.
The protest, first detailed by Fight Back! News, drew support from students and passersby, many of whom the outlet reported were unaware the cameras existed on campus until the action brought attention to them. Demonstrators also chanted “Flock, you can’t hide, you’re supporting ICE’s crimes!” — a reference to concerns the group has raised about the company’s law-enforcement partnerships.
SDS member Malik Shim told the crowd that Flock cameras show up in neighborhoods as well as on campus. Shim also framed the cameras as a tool of institutional racism and asked whether the university sides with what he called mass surveillance or with students.
What SDS Says Is Driving the Fight
The protest article also raised concerns that law enforcement officers have used Flock cameras to stalk former partners, tying the technology to broader worries about women’s safety and privacy. Another FRSO member, Ethan Maruyama, told the crowd that Flock is a symptom of what he described as national oppression under monopoly capitalism, and said the technology is used to attack neighbors and immigrants while police use it against women and Black residents. Maruyama urged people to join Freedom Road to organize against what he characterized as capitalism’s broader reach.
Flock’s presence on campus became a target of SDS SJSU’s campaign specifically because of its collaboration with ICE, according to the group, which says it has also pushed to remove from campus companies it links to Israel, the U.S. military and the Trump administration — including Northrop, Lockheed, Nvidia and OpenAI. SDS is now pressuring SJSU administration to do something about Flock’s presence, though no response or commitment from the university has been reported.
How Many Cameras Are Actually There
The exact camera count on campus remains murky, and competing figures illustrate why. San José State University’s own information technology materials list a steady-state target inventory of 20 FLOCK and license-plate-reader cameras, according to the university’s IT department — a target figure, not a confirmed current count. Separately, San José State University Police Department Captain Jermaine Thomas told Spartan Media Group there are between seven and 10 Flock cameras set up on streets surrounding campus, a count concerning the surrounding streets rather than campus property itself.
Stanford’s replacement Genetec system stores data on internal servers for 30 days.
A Wider Campus Backlash to Flock
SJSU’s protest is not an isolated flashpoint. Since April, at least ten university campuses across seven states have scrapped contracts with Flock, according to The Guardian, which also reports that dozens of cities nationwide have deactivated, canceled or rejected Flock contracts this year. Stanford cut ties with the company this summer and is installing replacement license-plate readers made by Genetec, while the University of Buffalo announced an indefinite pause on a planned 60-day Flock pilot program.
Cornell said all seven Flock Safety cameras on its campus would be removed as expeditiously as possible after its contract expired on October 14, the Cornell Daily Sun reported. Emory University removed a dozen license-plate-reading cameras from its Atlanta campus in September and declined to renew its contract, and Pennsylvania State University officials announced plans to end their own Flock agreement, according to Inside Higher Ed, which cited a study finding at least 150 colleges and universities using Flock technology as of May. At Elgin Community College, staff covered the cameras with black plastic trash bags out of what they called an abundance of caution until the company removed them after the contract lapsed in April.
Locally, Los Altos Hills and Mountain View have terminated their Flock Safety contracts, while Santa Clara County has also taken policy action to ban or restrict Flock use. The San José City Council has not issued a moratorium against the establishment of Flock cameras citywide.
Separately, the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported that between June 2024 and October 2025, police performed hundreds of searches of the Flock network using terms including “roma” and derogatory slurs for Romani people, often without citing any suspected crime. The organization said more than 80 U.S. law-enforcement agencies had used language it described as perpetuating harmful stereotypes against Romani people in those searches. For SJSU’s SDS chapter, that national backdrop is part of the case for getting Flock off campus — though for now, the cameras remain, and the university has yet to say publicly how it plans to respond.
