SOMEONE KEEPS PUTTING 'FLOCK' CAMERAS IN ADIRONDACK PARK, MOST HEAVILY PROTECTED WILDERNESS IN NATION
STATE AGENCIES RESPONSIBLE FOR PROTECTING THE PARK SAY THERE’S NOTHING THEY CAN DO TO STOP MASS-SURVEILLANCE OF VISITORS AND RESIDENTS BY A GROWING NETWORK OF SECRETIVE LICENSE PLATE TRACKING CAMERAS
FLOCK license plate tracking camera on County Road 115 inside Adirondack Park in Clare, New York, placed by the St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department. Sept. 15, 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
MALONE, NEW YORK SEPT. 24, 2026
PART 5 OF A SERIES
License plate tracking cameras are popping up all over Adirondack Park in upstate New York and more are on the way; no government agency, federal, state, county or town, wants to own up to putting them there, or says they don't know who put them there; and the two state agencies charged with protecting the historic 6 million acre, 134-year-old Park tell The Free Lance News there's nothing they can do about it.
Meanwhile, Gov. Kathy Hochul continues to ignore repeated requests to reveal who’s putting the same kind of surveillance cameras up all over northern New York.
SOMEONE PUT A FLOCK CAMERA AT THE END OF THIS MAN'S DRIVEWAY
Eric Collins lives in a place most people would consider the middle of nowhere. Even people who live in the middle of nowhere, would consider the area of New York's Adirondack mountain region where Collins lives the middle of nowhere. That's how remote his neck of the woods is.
I drove to Clare, New York (pop. 91) to see it for myself in early September.
It was a bright, warm day. The county road Collins lives on was freshly-paved. The tarmac glistened. The FLOCK camera there sits atop a 10-foot tall flat black pole. A small flat black solar panel sits on top of it. The North Branch Grass River flowed lazily beneath a nearby bridge when I visited. Wild fish slurped at bugs floating on the surface of the brown, hemlock-stained water.
The forest all around had just begun to lighten. A few colored leaves had fallen on the black road. Collins was in the overgrown farm field across the road from his house. He was driving a tractor with a brush cutter behind it, leveling the waist-high weeds. When he neared the roadside, I stepped into the field. He kindly stopped the tractor to answer my questions.
Collins said he had no idea who put the powerful surveillance device between his driveway, his field and the river—whether it was a local, county, state or federal government agency. Or some combination of them, or even all of them, working together. The camera doesn't have an owner's tag or other identifying information on it. No public hearing was ever held. No public notice given. He came home from work one day and there it was.
"It just showed up," Collins told me. "Its been a little more than a week or two I think."
I asked him how long it had been there.
"A couple days now County Works has been paving the road," Collins said. "But I don't know who actually put the camera up."
I asked him how he felt about the camera.
"I'm not a big fan," Collins answered. "I don't want them spying on everything we do.”
Eric Collins mowing his field across from a FLOCK camera in Clare, NY, Sept. 15, 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
TRUMP, HOCHUL AND COUNTY GOVERNMENTS ARE ANONYMOUSLY ERECTING A MASS-SURVEILLANCE NETWORK INSIDE HISTORIC ADIRONDACK PARK
The largest wilderness east of the Mississippi is the latest battleground in the war against mass surveillance of Americans.
Not only is there a FLOCK camera at the end of Collins' driveway, there are at least 10 more license plate tracking cameras inside Adirondack Park at five additional locations, The Free Lance News now reveals.
Pairs of Motorola-branded cameras are on: State Route 30 in Tupper Lake; State Route 30 in Paul Smith's; State Route 185 in Crown Point; and State Route 9 in Warrensburg, on the north side of the Schroon River bridge.
These Motorola cameras are part of a joint federal and state network of at least 72 license plate tracking cameras in at least 36 locations throughout northern New York, the Free Lance News previously reported. The network has cameras in Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Franklin, Clinton, Essex and Warren counties.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and Pres. Donald Trump teamed up to put that network in place.
The State Police also have a set of license plate tracking cameras on the Adirondack Northway in Pottersville, a State Police spokesman told The Free Lance News last week.
The pair of federal and state Motorola cameras in Paul Smith's were cut down and stolen a few weeks ago, The Free Lance News also previously reported.
The closest town to that camera is Saranac Lake. Last March, the Saranac Lake Village Board voted 4-1 to ban all FLOCK and FLOCK-style license plate tracking surveillance cameras from the village.
"It's really interesting that people in the park are cutting these things down," Eleni Manis, Research Director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, told The Free Lance News. "This is another sign of the expansion of surveillance tech, from the middle of New York City to the middle of Adirondack Park."
The FLOCK camera in front of Collins' house was put there by the St. Lawrence County sheriff, The Free Lance News reported Wednesday. Sheriff Patrick R. Engle bypassed the county legislature by using Federal funds.
Sheriff Engle also appears to have side-stepped the two state agencies charged with protecting Adirondack Park: the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the Adirondack Park Agency. The former is known as DEC, the later APA.
The boundary of Adirondack Park is marked with these rustic signs, the size, shape and content of which are prescribed by state regulations. The same officials who regulate these signs say they don’t have the legal power to regulate surveillance cameras on public roads. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
NEW YORK IS SUPPOSED TO SPECIALLY PROTECT THE PARK
What makes Collins and the government spy camera at the end of his driveway unique is that they are located inside what New York State calls Adirondack Park.
The Park is a living Victorian Age miracle. It was established by the New York State legislature in 1892. It was Pres. Teddy Roosevelt's inspiration when he designated the first National Park in 1901. The Park protects a total of six million acres of land. It includes New York's highest mountains, 46 jagged peaks above 4,000 feet, 3,000 lakes and ponds, 30,000 miles of rivers and streams, globally unique wetlands and old growth forests.
Its bigger than America's greatest national parks—Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon and Everglades—combined.
Unlike most parks, Adirondack Park protects not just public land but private land too. Every single acre of it is supposed to be specially protected by a web of strict environmental protection rules. These strict rules come from not one, not two but three sources: the State Constitution, state statutes and state regulations.
These rules start with a special provision of the State Constitution that protects the 2.6 million acres of public land in Adirondack Park that belong to the New York State Forest Preserve. The "Forever Wild Clause" requires the State keep the Forest Preserve "forever wild."
To enforce the Clause and protect the Forest Preserve, the state legislature passed a number of laws that specify exactly what can and cannot be done inside Adirondack Park. The Forest Commission and, later, after it was re-organized and re-named in 1970, the DEC was charged with enforcing those laws and protecting the Park.
In 1972, environmentally-conscious state lawmakers went even further and created the APA. Its sole mission: protect the Park.
As specified in the law that created the state agency, the Adirondack Park Act, the APA is supposed to protect the Park's "open space character." When the APA formulates and enforces its regulations, APA is supposed to take account of "advancing technology." The agency is also mandated to regulate "in the light of changing needs and conditions."
All these laws are intended to protect not just the physical wilderness within the Park, but travelers' and residents' subjective experience of visiting or living within it. This includes things like the timeless feeling of being alone in the mountains, or on a lake surrounded by forest. Like being detached from the contemporary world—no matter what the year.
One of the statutes enacted by the legislature to protect the intangible yet priceless experience of visiting the wild places inside Adirondack Park is § 9-0305 of New York's Environmental Conservation Law. Enacted in 1924, the law says "no person shall erect or maintain within the boundaries thereof any advertising sign, advertising structure or device of any kind, except under written permit from the department."
A pair of Motorola license plate tracking cameras on State Route 30 in front of the State Police sub-station in Tupper Lake, New York. Sept. 14, 2026. Despite the cameras being in front of its police station, the State Police say the cameras don’t belong to them and won’t say who put them there or who controls the data they collect. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
DEC AND APA SAY THERE'S NOTHING THEY CAN DO TO STOP THE MASS-SURVEILLANCE OF PARK VISITORS AND RESIDENTS
Both the DEC and APA say there's nothing they can do about the license plate tracking cameras being anonymously placed all over Adirondack Park to spy on residents and visitors.
Both are state agencies controlled by Gov. Hochul.
DEC regulations task the agency's regional foresters with enforcing § 9-0305 and issuing the written permits the law requires. Regulations strictly prescribe the size, shape and content of signs that would be approvable. The regulations don't define the kind of "devices" covered by § 9-0305.
"DEC doesn't have jurisdiction over these," Rob Ripp, DEC's Region 6 Forester, told The Free Lance News on Tuesday when asked about the cameras anonymously placed on public roads in the Park.
DEC considers them "traffic control" cameras, Ripp explained.
Region 6 covers the western part of Adirondack Park, where Collins lives. Region 5 covers the east side of the Park.
A DEC worker who answered the telephone for Rob Daley, DEC's Region 5 Forester, said basically the same thing.
"We don't issue permits for cameras," they said.
A spokesman for DEC explained why: "the cameras are not advertising signs, structures, or devices. ECL 9-0305 relates to advertising in the Adirondack and Catskill Parks."
DEC's interpretation reads "of any kind" out of the law. If the legislature intended § 9-0305 to only apply to advertising devices, it would not have described the devices that require DEC permission as "of any kind."
Like DEC, APA too says it's powerless to stop the spying—or even to just regulate it.
APA's jurisdiction includes roadside utility poles and whatever is attached to them—like the Motorola license plate tracking cameras are.
But APA spokeswoma Mary Fox-Newman told The Free Lance News "APA's jurisdiction over roadside utility infrastructure depends on the specifics of a project and its location. The use of a surveillance camera itself is not regulated by the Agency."
All this means that if a private corporation like FLOCK partnered with National Grid to put a FLOCK camera on every National Grid utility pole in Adirondack Park, both the DEC and APA would be powerless to do anything about it.
The governor's press shop once again ignored an invitation to comment.
The FLOCK license plate tracking camera in front of Eric Collins’ house, looking in the other direction toward the North Branch Grass River, which flows nearby, Sept. 15, 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
STATE LEGISLATURE NEEDS TO ACT, ADVOCACY GROUPS SAY
Federal, state and local governments are intentionally keeping the public in the dark about who is installing these cameras, not just in New York but the rest of the Nation, according to Daniel Schwarz, a Senior Privacy and Technology Strategist for the New York Civil Liberties Union.
"Citizens don't know where to push back," Schwarz said. "They don't know who to reach out to. Is it the local town? Is it the sheriff's office? Is it the state police?"
Government officials and police agencies "do what they want because we lack any limits on the technology," Schwarz explained. "There are no laws on the books. There's no transparency or accountability for LPRs"—license plate readers.
"We strongly urge state lawmakers to pass the necessary guardrails to reign this in," Schwarz added.
"There needs to be more transparency about this process before more of these pop up in the Park," Claudia Braymer, Protect the Adirondacks!'s executive director, agreed in an emailed statement.
Protect the Adirondacks! is one of the area's leading environmental protection groups. The group, Braymer said, wants to know "whether any of these cameras are located on utility poles that are on Forest Preserve lands."
The cameras on State Route 30 in Paul Smith's are particularly troubling, Braymer explained, because its "located on or very close to land designated Resource Management, which is the most protective private land classification in the Park."
Eleni, of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, thought one of the reasons people are turning into privacy vigilantes and smashing all kinds of 'FLOCK' cameras was precisely because they're secretly installed with no public hearing process or oversight.
"I think that's one of the reasons why people are smashing these cameras," she said.
Suddenly they appear in a place and when the public objects elected or appointed officials "line up with the police." That's when, she added, "you see residents going after the cameras."
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