AZ Mirror: Andy Biggs Wants Cameras Monitoring Arizona Children, Just Like Kari Lake

New reporting from AZ Mirror highlights how Andy Biggs is reviving one of Kari Lake's most widely rejected ideas: installing government surveillance cameras in Arizona classrooms to spy on kids. When Lake proposed this scheme in 2021, former Republican governor Doug Ducey criticized the policy because it could allow predators to monitor children.

This is the latest in Biggs’ decades-long record of protecting pedophiles, sex traffickers, and abusers. From blocking bipartisan legislation to stop a corrupt pedophile cult from abusing women and children in Colorado City, casting one of only two votes against releasing the Epstein Files in committee, and voting against strengthening penalties for child prostitution, Biggs has repeatedly protected pedophiles while jeopardizing the safety of children.

Read more below about Andy Biggs' push for cameras watching Arizona's children:

AZ Mirror: Andy Biggs revives Kari Lake’s push for cameras in Arizona classrooms to spot ‘woke’ teachers 

Caitlin Sievers 

September 18, 2026

• Andy Biggs, the Republican nominee for Arizona governor, said last year that he would support putting cameras in public school classrooms so that parents can keep an eye on “woke” teachers.

  
  

• Experts say that doing so would put student safety and privacy at risk because, even if streaming camera feeds are meant for a private audience, like parents, they can be hacked.

  
  

• After a Phoenix area elementary school teacher was criticized for how she spoke to students about the shooting death of Charlie Kirk, conservative radio show host Garret Lewis asked Biggs if he would support putting cameras in classrooms so that parents could monitor them. 

  
  

• “Absolutely, I would,” Biggs said during the Oct. 15, 2025, radio show. “I mean, you’ve hit on the reasons why, but look, you wouldn’t need to do it if you didn’t have what we’re seeing with some of these woke teachers and these woke lessons that are going on, and the indoctrination that’s taking place here.”

  
  

• Biggs declined to comment for this story.

  
  

• Michael Beyer, a spokesman for the Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ reelection campaign, told the Arizona Mirror in a statement that Biggs’ plan would “fulfill the wish list of pedophiles.” 

  
  

• “Andy Biggs’ plan to put government cameras in classrooms is the latest gift to predators from a politician with a disturbing record when it comes to protecting Arizona’s children,” he said. “Biggs blocked bipartisan legislation to combat a corrupt pedophile cult that was abusing women and children in Colorado City, and now he’s pushing a classroom surveillance scheme that former Republican Governor Doug Ducey warned could allow predators to monitor children.”

  
  

• The idea of putting cameras in classrooms to monitor teachers for ideological reasons isn’t a new one. In 2021, then-gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, also a Republican, said she backed the idea. At the time, people like Lake and former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson were up in arms over untrue allegations that critical race theory, a graduate-school level concept, was being taught in public K-12 schools. 

  
  

• While Biggs said during the radio interview that he would agree to cameras in classrooms only if access was limited to parents, there would be no guarantee that parents wouldn’t share their login information or that it wouldn’t be stolen.

  
  

• In 2021, the Associated Press reported that a small hacking group accessed cloud-based live feeds of tens of thousands of Verkada security cameras, including those at schools and hospitals, and monitored them for two days. After that, Verkada said that it beefed up security. 

  
  

• “When you hook up a camera to the internet, you are making it vulnerable,” Jay Stanley, a policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in 2021. “And you are making the privacy of anybody recorded by that camera vulnerable.”

  
  

• “Digital security is difficult,” Stanley wrote. “The bottom line is that it’s simply easier to attack an online asset than to defend it. To protect it, your defenses have to be perfect, while an attacker only needs to find one way to succeed — one weak password, one unpatched vulnerability, or one gullible worker.”

  
  

• Even if classroom video stays in the hands of people who are supposed to have access to it, that doesn’t mean students are safe from predators. Last month, a former Tempe Union High School District surveillance officer was indicted for voyeurism for downloading security video of Corona del Sol High School students in a dance room where female students were changing clothes. 

  
  

• “Andy Biggs is proving yet again that he’s taking lessons from Kari Lake, dusting off her reckless proposal to put surveillance cameras in Arizona classrooms,” Nicholas Simões Machado, a spokesman for Copper State War Room, a messaging arm of a campaign to elect Democrats, told the Arizona Mirror in a statement. “Even former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey warned the plan could compromise student privacy and put children in predators’ crosshairs. Biggs continues to show he’ll put predators first and children’s safety second. Arizonans already gave Kari Lake’s extreme agenda a failing grade twice, and this November, Biggs is turning in the same failed agenda.” 

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