Why Woodbury Can't Stop These Surveillance Cameras
They're on private property—and that's the problem
I want you to take a moment and listen to part two of the interview I did with Stevie Glaberson, Director of Research & Advocacy for the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law.
You can listen to the interview here.
I’m flagging the second part of my interview with Stevie because we talk about the Flock Safety cameras on Route 32, all located at Simon Property’s Woodbury Common.
You know Simon, right? The largest owner of shopping malls in America. Woodbury Common is a major tourist attraction for Orange County and one of the biggest attractions in the state.
Very slowly, people are starting to speak up about these Flock Safety cameras. Even people you wouldn’t expect, like former New York State Assembly candidate and noted COVID-19 vaccination skeptic Tom Lapolla.
You can see that happen at the July 21, 2026 Village Board meeting at 36:51 below:
By the way, it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that, at the same time a scandal is brewing involving Alex Melchiorrie and whether or not he’s letting a certain Satmar real estate developer sit in on meetings, one of the first things he did as mayor was instituted a strict three-minute time limit on public comment. This three-minute limit did not exist in the nearly eight years under Mayor Neil Dwyer.
But there’s an interesting problem here.
The Flock cameras are not on public property. They are on private property, but facing a major state route (32) and an exit off of what will eventually be a federal interstate. (Any day now, right guys?)
So, the Town of Woodbury and the Village of Woodbury, not to mention the Village of Harriman and Town of Monroe, could say to Simon Property, "We'd like you to remove those cameras," but to our knowledge, there's no way to make Simon remove those cameras. Or at least replace them with ones from a company with significantly fewer problems like this:
Unless …
Unless someone sues.
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More on this story very soon.