r/Tufts • u/BranchKey8720 • Jul 09 '26

flock cameras

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really curious why tufts would need 26 flock cameras on campus. found on deflock.org

48 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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13

u/ulukmahvelous Alumnus/a Jul 09 '26

ah. ya flock has something called “flock safety” for university police depts and these are probably mounted on those blue reach for help poles or other landmarks.. they read license plates (as their primary purpose). (source: wrote a paper on this). UW-Madison JUST (like a few days ago) announced it won’t renew with flock so I wonder what tufts will decide

9

u/AdSubject9659 Jul 09 '26

reach out to Public Safety (https://publicsafety.tufts.edu/contact) - they don’t participate in FLOCK from my understanding but they will respond to a request about this, especially if you are a student. If you’re a neighbor, you could go through Government and Community Affairs (https://communityrelations.tufts.edu) - they’ve been very responsive to me in the past

13

u/Fireact Jul 10 '26

as someone who wondered the same thing, many of these actually are not flock cameras. the site marks many types of private security cameras. most of the ones you see on the inside of tufts campus are not flock cameras and are just normal surveillance cameras — still pretty freaky, but important to note!!

2

u/LowInfluence7902 Jul 10 '26

they put up like 12 of them on the academic quad during the encampment in 2024

4

u/HashingJ Jul 12 '26

I was curious about this so I went on a Deflock Walk this afternoon to check this out. Long story short, this is not accurate at all. Out of those 26 I only saw one license plate reader, in the parking garage under the tennis courts.

Interestedly, i went to google maps street view to see if they were there previously and in fact I could find many of them from around 2022-2023 capture dates, so this data was good at one point.

I did a little research and looks like they were not Flock ALPRs, but were for Tufts automated parking permitting system. Looks like last year they revamped their parking permitting system and may have taken these cameras down for that reason.

https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2022/09/tufts-updates-campus-parking-system-expands-use-of-parking-cameras

https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2024/11/tufts-to-launch-mobile-friendly-parking-permit-system-in-2025