Part I: Flock’s Cameras Were Supposed to Watch for Criminals – Why Were Employees Watching Children?

Automated license plate readers are sold to communities as straightforward public-safety tools: cameras photograph passing vehicles, record their license plates, and alert police when they detect a car linked to a crime.

But Flock Safety is becoming much more than a network of license plate readers. As the company integrates traffic cameras, police databases, drones, and privately owned video feeds into a surveillance platform, the opportunities for abuse are multiplying.

Mary Rooke of The Daily Caller highlights a disturbing example from Dunwoody, Georgia. Local resident Jason Hunyar used public-records requests to obtain audit logs showing how Flock employees accessed cameras connected to the Dunwoody Police Department’s surveillance system. Some of those cameras were inside the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta. They showed swimming pools, fitness studios, preschool hallways, and gymnastics rooms where children practiced in their leotards.

Hunyar found that one Flock executive had accessed Dunwoody’s live and recorded footage 185 times since the beginning of 2025. On one occasion, the only camera he viewed was inside the gymnastics room. Another Flock employee clicked through several cameras at the community center before settling on a view of its main pool.

Why were employees of a surveillance vendor looking at these feeds? Why did sales and business-development personnel have such access in the first place?

We should not rule out an innocent explanation. But even if there is one, this story demonstrates the many ways these camera systems can be misused in ways to threaten Americans’ privacy.

A camera installed for one purpose can quietly become part of a much larger system. A feed intended to protect a private facility can become available to police officials, corporate employees, outside agencies, or any hacker who defeats the system’s security. License plate records can be combined with video, location histories, and other databases to produce an increasingly intimate picture of people’s lives.

Communities with Flock technology should require enforceable limits on who may access cameras and data, individualized credentials, prompt disclosure of misuse, independent security testing, and meaningful penalties for improper access. Cameras inside private facilities – especially spaces used by children – should never be swept into police surveillance networks without fully informed consent and exceptionally strong protections.
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The question is no longer simply whether these systems can help police solve crimes. It is whether any claimed benefit justifies building a surveillance network that may enable strangers to watch us and our children.

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