A college in Illinois tried to cancel its Flock contact and it refused
The timeline is the most telling detail here. Six months between installation and buyer's remorse is fast for any college procurement process, which usually moves at a glacial pace. That suggests the concerns weren't theoretical hand-wringing; something concrete surfaced once the cameras were live and the data flows became visible to the administration.
What I'd want to know is what Flock's refusal actually looks like. Is it a buyout clause, a termination fee, or an outright refusal to disconnect the hardware? The answer matters because it determines whether Elgin is stuck paying for a service it no longer trusts, or whether it's fighting a vendor that won't take its property back. Other municipalities have found themselves in similar spots with Flock, and the leverage usually sits with whoever wrote the contract.
The CBP data-sharing angle is the part that should worry people beyond Elgin. Flock has been open about working with federal agencies, but a community college signing up for "student safety" probably didn't expect its camera feeds to become a federal pipeline. That gap between the sales pitch and the actual data flows is where trust breaks down, and it's a pattern worth watching at other schools considering the same hardware.