Crowdsourced Map Flags What Could Be N.B.'s First Flock Camera Near Elsipogtog School

A Reddit post circulating this morning claims the first Flock Safety camera in New Brunswick has been spotted at a school in the eastern part of the province. The evidence behind it is thinner than the headline: the post's image is a screenshot of a crowdsourced automated licence-plate reader (ALPR) map, not a photograph of a camera in place.

The map pin sits on Autumn Street in Elsipogtog First Nation, roughly 150 metres from Elsipogtog School at 13 Autumn Drive, in Kent County. The underlying OpenStreetMap entry — added July 14 — tags the device as a Flock Safety ALPR covering the traffic zone, aimed east along the road with a bearing of 91 degrees. On those coordinates the camera is not pointed at the school, which lies to the northeast; the tag describes it watching traffic on Autumn Street.

The school is not the only thing close to the pin. The RCMP's Elsipogtog First Nation detachment, at 206 Big Cove Road, sits about 175 metres from the same spot — roughly the same distance as the school, in the opposite direction. Elsipogtog is policed by the RCMP, whose Richibucto detachment about 13 kilometres away is the centralized base for members serving Elsipogtog and Rogersville.

Unconfirmed, and logged through an anti-surveillance app

What the post does not say: the OpenStreetMap node was created using DeFlock 2.10.2, the app from the U.S. anti-ALPR activist group DeFlock, by an account registered the same day with a single edit. The map is community-built — anyone can add a camera — and the entry has not been confirmed by the RCMP, Elsipogtog First Nation, the school district, or Flock Safety. NB Tech News could not independently verify that a camera is physically installed at the location.

A comment on the thread makes the same point: "this is crowd sourced data it seems … is there any additional confirmation or could it just be someone randomly added it or misidentified another cctv?" Other commenters reacted with anger and calls to vandalize the device — a response that echoes the U.S. backlash described below, and one that police would likely treat as a crime regardless of how the controversy plays out.

Still, the entry is notable. A query of live OpenStreetMap data run by NB Tech News on Aug. 12 found it is the only ALPR camera of any brand mapped anywhere inside New Brunswick — the other 14 nodes in the surrounding area, Flock and otherwise, all sit in Maine, clustered around Bangor. Canada-wide the mapped Flock footprint is small — most Canadian ALPR programs use a mix of vendors, with Montreal-based Genetec prominent among them.

Why Flock cameras are controversial

Flock Safety, an Atlanta company, sells solar-powered licence-plate readers that log every plate that passes — along with vehicle make, model and colour — into a shared database. The company says it has more than 120,000 cameras across 49 U.S. states, used by more than 5,000 law-enforcement agencies and about 1,000 businesses.

The controversy has escalated sharply this summer:

• Contract cancellations. At least 23 U.S. jurisdictions have voted to cancel or reject Flock contracts amid privacy concerns, according to NewsNation reporting from Aug. 5.
• Vandalism and sabotage. Cameras have been vandalized, stolen and disabled across the country, with activists — including the DeFlock movement behind the app used to log the Elsipogtog entry — encouraging local pushback. Politico reported the backlash is becoming bipartisan.
• Police misuse. CNN documented dozens of cases of officers using the system to look up people they knew personally — including three Fayetteville officers fired after an audit flagged searches on themselves, family and acquaintances with no law-enforcement purpose. Separately, a Texas investigation reportedly searched imagery from more than 83,000 Flock cameras to track a woman who had an abortion — including in states where abortion is legal.
• Data concentration. A lawsuit by the Institute for Justice alleges Flock "maintains a centralized database with over one billion license plate reads every month" and argues warrantless plate tracking violates constitutional privacy.

The schools angle

Flock has been pushing into K-12 schools through a partnership with Raptor Technologies, pitching "safe corridors for student travel" by monitoring walking routes, bus stops and nearby roads. Privacy advocates have objected. "Schools are meant to be places of learning, not expansion points for police surveillance," Kristin Woelfel of the Center for Democracy and Technology told The Record.

New Brunswick has its own recent precedent for school-adjacent cameras, though of a different kind: in June 2025, the Fredericton Police Force installed four municipal security cameras at Fredericton High School and Leo Hayes High School, with Anglophone West School District covering the $28,000 bill. Those are fixed video cameras, not plate readers — but they show the appetite among police and districts for camera coverage of school grounds.

What happens next

If a Flock camera is genuinely on Autumn Street, it raises questions nobody has answered yet: who installed it, who pays for it, who can query its data, and what the retention policy is. Canadian courts have seen ALPR evidence in a handful of cases, but as defence lawyer Clayton Rice has written, the defendants in those cases did not challenge the search and seizure itself — leaving the constitutional question of warrantless plate scanning largely untested in Canada.

If the map entry is a false positive — a misidentified CCTV camera or an activist's wishful pin — it will quietly stay a single node on a crowdsourced map. NB Tech News will seek comment from the RCMP and Elsipogtog First Nation on whether a Flock device is installed in the area, and will update this story if they respond.

Sources

• Reddit: "First flock camera spotted at an eastern school in New Brunswick" — r/newbrunswickcanada — the post, the map screenshot, and community reaction
• OpenStreetMap node 14015608501 — Elsipogtog ALPR entry — tags, creator, DeFlock 2.10.2 changeset metadata, verified against the OpenStreetMap API and a live Overpass query on Aug. 12, 2026
• panopti.ca — ALPR Camera Map for Canada — the crowdsourced map used in the post; Genetec/Flock vendor context
• NewsNation — Flock camera contracts canceled in 23 localities (Aug. 5, 2026) — cancellation wave
• USA Today — Flock cameras prompt controversy and sabotage (Aug. 8, 2026) — 120,000 cameras, network scale
• Politico — 'Work boots and Subarus': backlash becomes bipartisan (Aug. 9, 2026) — DeFlock founder Will Freeman, local pushback
• The Record — Schools are next for Flock Safety's ALPR cameras — Raptor partnership, "safe corridors" pitch, billion-read database lawsuit, CDT quote
• CNN — Inside the growing police use and misuse of Flock's licence-plate reader cameras (July 26, 2026) — documented misuse by officers
• RCMP — New Brunswick detachment locations — Elsipogtog First Nation and Richibucto detachments
• CBC — Fredericton police to add more security cameras, including at 2 high schools (June 2025) — N.B. school-adjacent camera precedent
• Clayton Rice — Automated Licence Plate Readers (Canadian case law) — Canadian ALPR legal context