Wait. What are these cameras on UW-Madison Campus? 📸

UWPD has cancelled their Flock contract!

Of course, now they are trying to replace them with a different company, which will have most of the same problems as Flock if the cameras upload to a cloud.

History of the campus Flock contract

• UW-Madison Police Department released no information for many months after these cameras went up. The Flock contract started in 2023, but more cameras were added after.
• The Daily Cardinal published a story January 29, 2026, which made UWPD release a page about the cameras.
  • UWPD claims they don't use the cameras for "monitoring individuals or tracking people" or "conducting random or continuous surveillance"
  • Their FAQ at the bottom asks "Are students, staff, or visitors being tracked?" and answers "No."
  • But Flock cameras are by definition continuous surveillance, uploading images to the cloud constantly, which allows tracking of students, staff, or visitors by their vehicles. Just because nobody at UWPD is actively searching on that data does not magically make this Not Surveillance.
• On March 9, 2026, The Academic Staff Assembly passed a Resolution on Mass Surveillance at UW-Madison, strongly urging the cancellation of the Flock contract and a full civilian audit of mass surveillance technology on campus
• The City of Madison has an ordinance preventing this type of surveillance by city agencies, but UWPD gets to ignore it because they are their own jurisdiction.
• These cameras did put our community in danger:
  • ICE and other federal entities have gotten access to Flock cameras elsewhere despite Flock saying they didn't have access. (As of April 2026, UWPD removed 21 sheriff departments and a few police departments from their shares. UWPD is still sharing with Calumet, Marathon, and Sauk counties, whose sheriffs have 287(g) agreements with ICE. Even all that doesn't matter because we fundamentally cannot trust Flock.)
  • Flock is a private company, making them an accountability sink where the powers that be can just say "not our problem"
  • Many more issues are listed in our detailed research doc! (Nerds only!)