Conservative podcaster Katie Miller expressed support for Flock camera installations “to protect OUR community and OUR kids” in an X post Monday night as lawmakers and citizens alike raise concerns about surveillance and police abuse.

Miller, who is married to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, has four children and suggested that motherhood is already intertwined with surveillance technology like Nanit cameras, Owlet baby monitors, video doorbells and AirTags. She argued that Flock, which sells automated cameras that record license plate numbers, is a natural extension of these tools.

“We live in an age of unprecedented technological advancement that can restore freedom to parents in the name of safety and security,” she wrote.

Critics have argued that Flock cameras are contributing to mass surveillance after law enforcement officers across several states were found misusing the technology for personal reasons. And while Flock claims that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not have direct access to Flock systems or data unless a local agency allows it, two civil rights groups accused local police in New York of using Flock “on behalf of ICE.”

The Trump administration has recently doubled down on its support for this automated monitoring. During an FBI oversight hearing on Tuesday morning, FBI Director Kash Patel defended Flock cameras as an important tool for fighting crime. He claimed Flock had helped the FBI locate the Brown University shooter in January and recover child exploitation victims. President Donald Trump similarly said he supports the company, telling reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday that he backs Flock “because of law enforcement.”

Yet child development expert Deborah Heitner, the author of “Growing Up in Public,” argues that equating public surveillance grids with routine home safety tools relies on a misconception of what qualifies as child safety. Neither Miller nor Flock immediately responded to HuffPost’s request for comment.

AirTags and Ring doorbells are in fact similar to Flock in that they also come with myriad privacy threats.

Heitner called Miller’s support of Flock cameras a “Trojan horse.”

“There’s no argument for Flock cameras being there to support children and growing up — we need to create healthy third spaces for kids,” Heitner told HuffPost. “We need to rethink all of these over-surveilled moments in society and these spaces where we’re making these arguments to surveil people.”

While having a recording of a particular moment could be helpful, there are significant downsides, Heitner said. Teaching kids to fully rely on automated monitoring can cause them to underdevelop their own safety instincts.

“You can’t over-rely on technology,” she said. She drew a comparison to how parents increasingly use smartwatches to monitor their children since they offer real-time GPS tracking. “If we rely on the little watch [to] keep our third grader safe, they have no skills to know not to talk to strangers, what kind of behavior is out of line, or when to start yelling in the mall, ‘Mommy, mommy!’”

Parents are already feeling more tech-induced anxiety. In 2025, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning against “unauthorized infant monitors for measuring and monitoring vital signs,” like Owlet and Nanit, because they can lead to panic and unnecessary medical care rather than genuine safety.

Living under constant observation and cameras also gives children less of a sense that “you are seen” and more of a sense that “you are being watched,” which can carry lasting consequences.

“Growing up in public can make kids feel overly self-conscious and overly edit themselves, and it can potentially lead them to feel more worried about getting canceled, getting judged in ways that are very limiting,” Heitner said.

“We’ve become a very surveilled society,” Heitner said, arguing that parents shouldn’t equate adding more cameras with protecting their children.

Civil liberties advocates agree that comparing public camera networks to home parenting devices is a dangerous false equivalency.

“AirTags and Ring doorbells are in fact similar to Flock in that they also come with myriad privacy threats,” Will Owen, communications director for the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, told HuffPost. “AirTags and Flock have both become widespread stalking tools, and Ring’s partnerships with local police have brought surveillance deeper into communities across the country. But Flock’s massive, nationwide dragnet is on an entirely different scale from these tools — let alone a baby monitor harmlessly used within the home.”

Owen added that Flock’s system enables warrantless, cross-state tracking, which makes it a threat to vulnerable populations, including immigrant communities.

“The irony is that Katie Miller wasn’t wrong to compare AirTags and Ring, specifically, with Flock, but she did so in bad faith,” Owen said. “Americans across the political spectrum are seeing right through this rhetoric and are making it clear we’re fed up with Flock.”

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