Jason Hunyar doesn’t want his unborn son growing up in a town where he’ll be watched all the time.
But sitting next to his pregnant wife in the third row of Dunwoody City Hall, he looked on in silence Monday as city officials renewed a controversial contract with surveillance giant Flock Safety.
Hunyar had never even been to a city council meeting before this year, let alone spoken at one. After months of filing open records requests and sending countless emails to council members, the mayor and the police chief, he watched as the culmination of months of hard work came down to a final vote.
Flock, it seems, is here to stay for now.
“You are choosing the wants of corporations over the safety of our children,” Hunyar told the council minutes before the vote.
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
He is among dozens of local activists who have spoken out against the company’s expansive network of cameras and AI-enabled license plate readers in recent months.
The city was an early adopter of the Atlanta-based company’s technology, but council members postponed the Flock vote twice amid intense pushback over privacy and data concerns.
Monday night’s crowd let out a collective groan as council members unanimously approved the new contract. There were loud boos and chants of “shame” as some berated city leaders for opting to keep the “surveillance state” intact.
Dunwoody Mayor Lynn Deutsch had expressed concerns herself about the number of agencies with access to Dunwoody’s surveillance network and how that data was being used. So she said she asked the city’s attorneys to rework its contract with the company before the council’s vote.
Many in attendance urged the council to end its relationship with Flock altogether. A growing number of U.S. cities have canceled contracts with the company in recent months, but Deutsch said after the meeting the city never considered that option.
Police say Flock’s technology has transformed the way they solve crimes over the past decade, and some argue the ubiquitous cameras even act as a deterrent for would-be criminals.
“It’s reduced our crime rate,” Deutsch said. “We’ve installed a lot of these products already, many of them. And we haven’t hidden that we use Flock. It’s not been a secret.”
Still, residents like Hunyar implored city officials to reconsider their contract amid privacy concerns and questions about who might be watching them.
Supporters of the technology note that Flock’s cameras and 911 software have transformed the way law enforcement is able to track and capture violent suspects.
On Monday for instance, police in DeKalb County said Flock was instrumental in locating a suspected spree shooter accused of killing two women and wounding a homeless man overnight.
But critics have also noted numerous instances of the technology allegedly being used by law enforcement to harass or even stalk people.
There have been at least three instances in Georgia where law enforcement officials have been accused of misusing their access to Flock’s camera network for personal reasons.
In November, former Braselton Police Chief Michael Steffman was arrested following a monthslong investigation into allegations he repeatedly used data from police license plate readers to stalk people.
Earlier this year, a former secretary at the Echols County Sheriff’s Office was accused of using Flock cameras to obtain license plate data for two people she knew. Anna Altobello, 33, was charged by the GBI with misusing license plate data and stalking.
And in August, a former Sandy Springs reserve officer resigned after allegedly using the city’s camera network to help develop a surveillance product for another company, Appen Media reported at the time.
Other questions swirled around who has access to the city’s camera feeds.
Credit: Shaddi Abusaid/ shaddi.abusaid@ajc.com
Credit: Shaddi Abusaid/ shaddi.abusaid@ajc.com
Last week, Hunyar discovered through an open records request that Flock employees had viewed surveillance feeds from the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta. The sales employees apparently accessed private cameras at the center’s fitness studio, its swimming pool and the gymnastics area where children practice.
It’s a discovery the mayor said made her “concerned and perplexed.”
When she asked Flock about it, she said she was told member of the company’s sales team had accessed the private network as part of a demonstration for potential customers.
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Under the city’s new service agreement approved Monday, Flock will no longer use Dunwoody for its product demonstrations, Deutsch said. The company has also apologized to the JCC, she told the crowd.
“I’m not excusing it all. I’m very frustrated and angry,” she said. But the latest agreement, she said, is a solution designed to “keep them out of places Flock should not be.”
Dunwoody’s Flock debate originally began over whether to renew a $15,000 contract with the technology company for the use of its 911 call center software. But over the past three months, elected officials and city staff realized their various contracts with Flock had conflicting terms.
Attorney Jill Dunn, who represents the city and helped craft a new contract that applies to all Flock technology used by Dunwoody, said the new service agreement creates “a set of guardrails to govern the city’s relationship with Flock.”
“This does create a situation where the city has a great deal of control over what Flock does with the city’s data — where that data can go, where it can be disseminated, what it can be used for,” she said.
The company says its services are used by more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies across 49 states.
One of Hunyar’s records requests showed Dunwoody was sharing its license plate reader data with more than 1,800 other agencies, fewer than 500 of which were sharing back, according to information he shared with the council and city.
In response, city leaders said they drastically reduced that number ahead of the vote, but that seemed to do little to ease residents’ worries.
The mayor also acknowledged the city should control its data and how it’s retained and accessed.
While she’s a fan of Flock’s technology, Deutsch said she no longer wants Dunwoody’s data being used to train the company’s software or AI.
“There are a bazillion communities using this technology,” she told Flock officials previously. “You can test it somewhere else.”
In neighboring Chamblee, city officials recently rolled out their own state-of-the-art real time crime center using Flock’s technology. The center inside the police station is full of screens, allowing officers to keep tabs on surveillance and traffic cameras across the 7 square-mile municipality.
Chamblee Police Chief Michael Dieppa said the technology helps his department solve crimes quicker.
The goal is to capture dangerous suspects and bring closure to crime victims, he said, not to surveil residents on a mass scale.
Credit: Shaddi Abusaid/ shaddi.abusaid@ajc.com
Credit: Shaddi Abusaid/ shaddi.abusaid@ajc.com
In recent years, Dieppa said Chamblee’s surveillance cameras and LPRs have been used to locate an abducted child and two murder suspects.
“It’s proven, and it’s definitely a worthwhile investment for our community,” he said.
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Dunwoody Police Chief Mike Carlson said the technology has been a game-changer in terms of his own department’s ability to respond to crimes and quickly track down suspects. Dunwoody also contracts with Flock for its 911 call system and gunshot detection software. And council members also approved a second Flock drone used by police to get to scenes quickly.
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
“Every surrounding jurisdiction around here has it,” Carlson said of the LPR technology that can help police track a vehicle across county and state lines.
The police department said Flock’s cameras and software are integral to its Real Time Crime Center. Located in police headquarters and opened in 2024, the center allows officers to monitor city-owned cameras and integrated surveillance cameras owned by private businesses and HOAs across the city.
Dunwoody has about 80 license plate readers and another 30 live cameras that can zoom in, according to Maj. Patrick Krieg, who heads the crime center. The city also has approximately 130 traffic cameras and hundreds of private cameras that have been integrated into the crime center. Police also have access to data from gunshot detection devices, police body cameras, dashboard cameras, portable trailer cameras and call geolocation software, he said.
After Monday’s vote, speakers took turns blasting Dunwoody’s council members for approving the Flock contracts.
“Our very own liberal city council just unanimously approved the expansion of this mass surveillance state against the wishes of their constituents,” said Aaron Miller, who called the widespread camera networks “part and parcel to authoritarianism.”
Josh Thomas, Flock’s chief communications officer, said conversations about the company’s technology shouldn’t center on safety-versus-privacy.
“I think there’s opportunity for us to do both those things really, really well,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
As for Flock’s camera network acting as a crime-deterrent, Thomas said people are far less likely to commit crimes if they know they can be easily identified.
“The certainty of being caught changes you psychologically,” he said.
But Flock has come under fire in recent months after 404 Media, a digital news site that focuses on technology, reported it was able to access live surveillance feeds from some of Flock’s camera networks. Dunwoody City Council member Catherine Lautenbacher said she saw one stream showing people on the Peachtree Creek Greenway in nearby Brookhaven.
Thomas said that was the result of five dozen live cameras that came with “misconfigured sim cards,” allowing people access to those feeds.
“We fixed it immediately,” he said.
Another concern is that vehicle information could end up being used by federal agencies to track and arrest undocumented immigrants.
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Flock’s representatives said the company does not directly contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and does not sell or share data collected from its license plate readers.
But local police departments can choose who they share their surveillance feeds with. That means if Dunwoody voluntarily shares its information with a nearby department that partners with ICE — Marietta, for instance — then it’s possible federal officials could access its data.
As for the instances of Flock’s technology being abused by law enforcement, Thomas said the company has a built-in audit log that tracks those who use the system for nefarious purposes. It’s a feature that’s been in place since the beginning, even though it wasn’t required, he said.
“There are thousands of officers in the state of Georgia and a few of them have broken the law,” he said. “And they should be held accountable.”
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