Privacy bleeds away as Big Brother constantly watches with eye toward security, profit

It’s easy to think the future will never come, that tomorrow stays tomorrow, better to live in today—or at least that’s what our parents thought. When the internet was still young and enticing, creating limits and rules wasn't a priority; the digital world was too wild to fence in. While the strange and free ‘net’ was fun for screen-happy millennials, the next generation has inherited a dangerous and treacherous realm, and now we’re left wondering whether we will ever be truly safe and secure again. In the immortal words of Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park, “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

In the so-called “digital age,” it can be easy to feel like there’s always someone watching over your shoulder, and that’s because there probably is. Flock cameras have not only become a mainstay of American politics, but also a feature of youth meme culture. As videos of people cutting or swinging on the surveillance devices amass millions of views across digital platforms, it’s clear that young people are fed up with technological overreach and are taking matters into their own hands. 

In a survey of 250 West students across all grades, over 87% of respondents said that they would not be in support of Flock cameras being incorporated in Oshkosh or nearby areas. 

“I hate them. Sure, they’re supposed to be used for catching dangerous people, but now they’re just how the government spies on us,” one respondent said.

Junior Oliver VanThiel agrees. 

“I hate Flock cameras,” they said. “I don’t think that mass surveillance is good for anything. I think that it is getting rid of our privacy.” 

Invasion of privacy was a commonly touted reason respondents rejected Flock cameras, although privacy is already a mercurial concept when everyone has a supercomputer with a camera in their pocket. Senior Astrid Larson thinks that Flock cameras are the tip of a much larger iceberg. 

“They are completely terrible and they are a symptom of a larger societal ill of constant surveillance within the police state that we live in, and they should be completely dismantled,” she said.

Larson believes that mass surveillance has been and will continue to be a major concern.

“It’s a continuation of a lot of patterns that have been happening recently in America,” she said. “I saw it as an evolution of what was going on with Ring Cameras. Mass surveillance; it’s not good.”

The situation Astrid is referring to is the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC’s) declaration that Ring was unable to protect their technology from hacking, and the subsequent hijacking of cameras. Ring also was alleged to have shared data with law enforcement, eerily similar to the Flock cameras which have come after. 

While there are plenty of deadset opinions against Flock, some, like senior Shelby Brandenstein, see the situation as more nuanced.

“I feel like it’s definitely not a black and white issue, I feel like there is a way to have Flock cameras but have the access limited,” she said. “Whether it’s just not having as many of them, only having certain people have access to them, or having better security to make sure it’s only those people accessing them.”

Brandenstein believes that Flock cameras, in principle, can be positive.

“My opinion is that the idea of Flock cameras isn’t terrible, and I do think that they help for finding people that need to be found,” she said. 

VanThiel conceded that the surveillance tools can be helpful, but believes the harm outweighs any potential increase in safety. 

“There can be good uses, like preventing crimes, but I don’t think that’s worth all the damage [Flock] is causing and is going to cause,” they said.

Larson has a more absolutist stance.

“I don’t think there is a world where these could exist and I am okay with it,” she said. 

If the private actions of individual citizens in public aren’t sacred, and Flock has proven they aren’t, then it’s hard to say what is. Of surveyed students, 88% said that mass surveillance has gone too far, while nearly the same percentage said their data does not feel safe online.

“Pretty much every aspect of our lives is constantly tracked, whether that be social media selling our data to advertisers or security cameras everywhere,” Larson said. “My phone is always listening to me, there are cameras in every room of this building.”

She’s not wrong. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, recently settled a lawsuit regarding addictive practices targeted at youth and the mishandling of children's data for $17.1 billion over the next few years. With all this surveillance it’s more important than ever to have a space where students can be safe from the prying eyes of would-be marketers, and Principal Rebecca Montour assures that school can be that place. 

“We do have a district Cybersecurity and Tech Security Specialist, Isaac Kloh, so he monitors if there are ever any attacks or people trying to infiltrate our data, and we are all required to do data breach training monthly,” she said.

While student records are kept, sometimes including sensitive health or financial information, access is extremely selective, according to Montour.

“There are only one or two people in the district who have the clearance to see all of it,” she said. 

by Isaac Considine-Buelow

Published October 5, 2026

Oshkosh West Index Volume 123 issue1