SerpApi.Org
The simple act of filing a public records request led to a disturbing discovery of how a private community center's children's gymnastics room became an unwitting stage for corporate voyeurism.
Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based company behind a rapidly expanding network of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) and integrated cameras, markets its technology as a tool for public safety. But the system has enabled company employees to peer into spaces where children play, swim, and exercise, according to open records requests filed by Jason Hunyar.
Hunyar is a Dunwoody, Georgia, resident who began investigating Flock Safety after growing alarmed by his city's embrace of the surveillance technology. Hunyar has filed dozens of open records requests with the city and police department. These requests targeted audit logs, contracts, data-sharing agreements, and access records for the Flock system, according to his Substack, where he documents his findings.
While Flock Safety's surveillance system has become a part of our national discourse surrounding personal privacy, Hunyar claims it's much worse than just tracking our every move. The system allegedly allowed Bob Carter, Flock's vice president of strategic relations and business development, access to the local police department's network where he viewed feed from Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta (MJCCA)'s children's gymnastic center, according to Hunyar. Carter allegedly accessed the gymnastics area and only that area 185 times in 2025, the records showed.
It's hard to imagine what public safety explanation would be sufficient for someone to access just one camera focused on children practicing in leotards every time they logged into the system. (Sign up for Mary Rooke's weekly newsletter here!)
But it wasn't just Carter and the gymnastics area. Hunyar found several instances of Flock Safety employees accessing Dunwoody's MJCCA system. Randy Gluck, Flock Safety's manager of business development for 911/emergency, viewed gym and pool cameras at the MJCCA, according to records. Other logs showed sales staff rapidly clicking through public traffic cameras before lingering on the community center's facilities, including gymnastics rooms from multiple angles, pools, fitness studios, preschool hallways, and other spaces. Hunyar claims records show that Flock employees spent extended periods monitoring these sensitive areas filled with innocent, unsuspecting children.
Automated license plate readers are deceptively simple in concept but insidious in practice. Flock cameras use radar or triggers to capture images of passing vehicles, recording the plate, timestamp, location, and often vehicle details or surrounding context. A networked system then creates a detailed map of movement over time. But when integrated with private cameras, such as what is happening in Dunwoody, the system explodes in scope. A community center's internal feeds, intended for narrow security purposes, become searchable by anyone with access.
Scientist and YouTuber Benn Jordan and his team highlighted how easy it is to hack into the Flock Safety system to review live footage, showing that you don't even have to be part of law enforcement or an employee to spend hours watching children in sensitive areas. In one of his videos uploaded to YouTube in December 2025, he called the Flock system "Netflix for stalkers."
Holly Bellin, a Flock Safety spokesperson, discounted Americans' righteous fears over privacy concerns, claiming it's just "anxiety," The Guardian reported.
"I completely think that is what's happening is that people are anxious and they're looking for a bully pulpit, and they're looking for someone to be upset at," Bellin said. "I think the reason we're in headlines across the country – in fact, I know it – is because we have the audit records, because individual citizens can actually audit this technology. And so it's almost like we're being punished for transparency." (ROOKE: Surveillance State Has Arrived, And Masked Heroes Are Already Fighting Back)
Nothing Bellin says explains why a system sold to citizens as a tool for catching criminals quietly turned private children's spaces into accessible content for Flock's employees.
The Dunwoody saga forces parents and citizens to grapple with the question: Do we want our children's gymnastics practices or pool days logged in corporate databases?
The U.S. surveillance state came packaged as safety technology with solar panels and sleek marketing. No jackboots needed. Hunyar shone a light on one corner of it. The rest of us must decide whether to look away or demand the system be dismantled.
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