The Libertarian Party of Savannah is condemning the Savannah City Council’s recent decision to use community grant money to purchase additional Flock cameras.
The city council voted recently to allocate community grant money from SCAD Serve for the purchase of Flock cameras.
- In August 2025, the city announced an award of $971,935 from SCAD Serve to purchase FLOCK License Plate Recognition (LPR) cameras (83) throughout the city, seven additional call boxes, AXON/FUSUS platform technology, crime mapping, and GIS systems.
- On December 11, following the acid attack of a woman in December 2025, the city council voted to approve $193,500 for 40 additional License Plate Readers (LPR’s) and 10 more Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) cameras.
- The installation will increase the city’s total to 124 cameras citywide
- In late January 2026, the city announced SCAD Serve would donate another $200,000 for even more cameras in Forsyth Park, though specifics were not immediately detailed.
The city said in a council meeting that Flock Cameras “have become a vital investigative and operational tool, supporting both patrol and criminal investigations” due to the near-instant information, allowing responding officers to quickly identify search areas and determine a vehicle’s direction of travel.”
Similarly, Savannah Police Chief Lenny Gunther told WJCL in January that “[c]ameras allow us to be in places we don’t always have the manpower to be. They give us 360-degree coverage of the park.”
But the Libertarian Party of Savannah says the technology violates the rights of everyone, not just criminals they intend to apprehend, with the use of license-plate tracking technology and AI facial recognition.
“The presence of surveillance cameras does not deter crime; at best, these cameras only assist in apprehending the perpetrators after a crime has already been committed. The use of Flock cameras trades liberty for a false sense of safety,” the organization said in a news release Sunday.
The organization, citing constitutional concerns, also raised the following concerns in their press release:
Hackability – “Anyone with basic programming skills can hack into the Flock system, to view both real-time footage and stored data/images. Videos that demonstrate this are easily available on-line (see the video We Hacked Flock Safety Cameras in under 30 Seconds on YouTube).”
Abuse – “A police chief in Braselton, Georgia was arrested by the GBI and charged for using his access to license plate data from Flock cameras to stalk and harass several people, and a police sergeant in Sandy Springs, GA was terminated for using Flock camera data for personal gain. Mayor Johnson’s public statements imply that this won’t or can’t happen here in Savannah, but what safeguards are in place to prevent this? Who has access to the camera footage and under what circumstances? How can the public be assured that the information gathered from these cameras won’t be unlawfully used against them?”
Cameras are not infallible – “A woman in Denver, CO, Chrisanna Elser, was nearly arrested for theft, because she was misidentified by facial recognition as being at the crime scene when she was in fact nowhere near that location.”
Ability to Track a Single Vehicle Around Town – “Do the residents or even tourists in Savannah really want the police to know when they visit a rehab facility, a CBD shop, a Planned Parenthood clinic, a center for members of the LGBTQ+ community, or other places that may be considered controversial?”
Eavesdropping – Can use “shot-spotter technology, which not only detects the sound of gunshots, but also hears and records private conversations.” Notably, in 2015, SCAD funded $1.6 million for city purchases of the ShotSpotter gunshot detection technology, making it the first university in the country to utilize the technology.”
Contain data that is public record – “Anyone can use a Freedom of Information Act open records request to obtain footage from Flock cameras, which can then be used to stalk, harass, or simply find out when a certain person is likely to be away from home. A judge in Washington state has ruled that footage from public surveillance cameras is public record, accessible to anyone who requests it. This has led to Flock cameras being shut down and contracts with Flock safety being cancelled in several cities across the U.S. (such as Staunton, VA, Springfield, OR, Cambridge, MA, Flagstaff, AZ, and Hays County, TX), rather than allow the public to access footage of city officials or to use footage for nefarious purposes.”
Can grant access to state and federal law enforcement agencies without a city’s knowledge or approval -The Party said this “recently happened in the city of Mountain View, CA). Do local residents want the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms (ATF) to have access to their license plate data, their bumper stickers, and their travel habits? Are the residents of Savannah even aware that this could happen?”
Can open the City of Savannah up to lawsuits – “The City of Norfolk, VA, was recently sued by a group of residents there for surveillance without a warrant. Are City officials in Savannah willing to risk a costly lawsuit being filed over warrantless surveillance?”
“These are concerns which the public, and obviously the members of City Council, are largely unaware of. Did the members of City Council who voted for this expenditure do any research into the potential problems and privacy concerns listed above? We urge the members of Savannah’s City Council to rethink their decision, and to allocate this grant money toward infrastructure, the fire department, or property tax relief for more residents, something that will benefit the community without violating our Fourth Amendment rights,” the Party said in their release.
