Flock’s Story Doesn’t Add Up

Our Take

Business Reform's sit-down with Jason Hunyar in Dunwoody, Georgia is the kind of local digging that national outlets rarely bother with, and it matters. Hunyar says open records requests show Flock Safety employees accessed camera feeds tied to a private community center's pool and gymnastics facility, then pressed the city council for answers. When the company's explanation didn't line up with what the city could actually document — including an agreement Flock referenced that officials apparently can't produce — you've got more than a paperwork snafu. You've got a surveillance vendor operating with less oversight than a vending machine contract.

What's striking is how familiar the pattern is: a quiet "Safe City" sales pitch, a security assessment process that allegedly gets its rubric altered after the fact, murky language around who owns the data these cameras generate, whether it's used to train AI, and how "derived data" gets shared with unnamed third parties. These are the same structural questions we raise about Flock deployments nationwide — the contracts are opaque, the oversight is thin, and local councils are often expected to take a vendor's word for it rather than demand documentation before cameras go up.

Credit to Hunyar and Business Reform for doing the unglamorous work of filing records requests and sitting through council meetings instead of just taking a press release at face value. If you want to see whether a Flock camera is already watching your street, check our map, and if your city is being pitched the same "Safe City" line Dunwoody got, our take-action guide walks through what to demand before anyone signs a contract.