Resident urges Athens-Clarke County to re-evaluate Flock Safety cameras, cites security and access risks

Tuesday Demeter, an Athens-Clarke County resident, used the public-comment period to raise privacy and security concerns about license-plate reader cameras (noted in the budget). She cited findings from MITRE and CVE about vulnerabilities and referenced an open-records disclosure she said showed Flock Safety employees accessed footage at sensitive community locations.

"These cameras are not only unsafe. They play an active role in the criminality that they claim to deter," Demeter said, listing alleged incidents and asserting that external access to cameras is possible. She urged the commission to treat the cameras as a potential breach to neighborhoods rather than a straightforward crime-reduction tool.

After the comment, a commissioner requested that the manager’s office provide a memo outlining the county’s contract terms and what assurances exist about access to camera data; County Manager Bob Cowell said he could coordinate a response from the police chief and noted the county maintains local standards for access. Cowell and other commissioners emphasized that the county scrubs some data on a 30-day cycle and that local law enforcement oversees access procedures while acknowledging that no system is immune to hacking.