Gov. Kemp lauds opening of new drone manufacturing plant, but privacy expert wary

In a new 97,000-square-foot facility in Smyrna on Wednesday, the mechanical whir of a dinner-plate sized drone echoed off the warehouse’s concrete floors and metal ceiling as onlookers marveled at the machine.

The person controlling the drone? Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, helping demonstrate the technology that will be manufactured at the facility owned by Atlanta-based tech firm Flock Safety.

“We’re always proud when a Georgia-grown company can continue to expand right here in the Peach State, like this achievement that we’re celebrating today,” Kemp said Wednesday ahead of a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the facility, which opened this year.

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Flock Safety was co-founded in 2017 by Garrett Langley, Matt Feury and Paige Todd. The company makes license plate readers, gunshot detectors, AI-powered video cameras and drones.

Nearly all metro Atlanta police departments use Flock Safety’s technology, according to company spokesperson Holly Beilin. The company works with more than 4,800 law enforcement agencies across the U.S., as well as businesses, malls and health systems.

But some of its products have come under criticism from residents of communities where the technology is used and from advocacy organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union. Those opposed to the products worry about over-surveillance and potential misuse of the products.

The facility’s ribbon cutting comes just weeks after Flock Safety announced it had raised $275 million and is now valued at more than $7.5 billion. It also builds on Flock Safety’s acquisition last fall of drone company Aerodome, which produces drones for police departments to use in what the industry calls Drone as First Responder programs.

“It’s easy to see that drones are the future of law enforcement. They are safer, they are faster. They work 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Langley, the company’s CEO, said.

“It will change the way policing works, not only here in Cobb County, but in Atlanta, in the state of Georgia and the rest of the country,” he added.

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

But Jay Stanley, a privacy expert at the ACLU, is wary. Stanley co-authored an article in 2023 highlighting the privacy risks of Flock Safety’s network of automated license plate readers.

With DFR programs, Stanley worries about the potential of police departments to have cameras 24/7 flying over people’s homes, saying that it poses risks of creating “a mass surveillance infrastructure, or infrastructure that is susceptible to abuse, like spying for political purposes.”

“These programs have police drones flying all around our communities, day in and day out, and it raises a lot of questions about whether we want to live our lives with flying police robotic cameras over our houses and communities … or if we do decide to permit these operations, what kinds of checks and balances should be put in place,” Stanley told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“We have a long history in this country, unfortunately, of law enforcement investigating people and groups not because they’re suspected of breaking the law,” he said, “but because the authorities, the powers that be, don’t like their politics.”

Now, the Trump administration “appears perfectly happy to target people for their First Amendment-protected expressions, their political views, and so placing this kind of power in the government’s hands is not something that is ever wise for Americans to do, and especially right now,” he said.

Beilin from Flock Safety said privacy is “a core pillar of every single thing that we build.” She added that across all of its technology, every search that is conducted on the company’s platform is saved in an audit report that is indefinitely available to law enforcement officials and city councils.

With the drones, police departments can have a public dashboard that logs every flight and gives information about total calls responded to, average response time, the reason for the flight and more. She added the drone’s cameras face forward until it gets to the scene it was dispatched to, at which point the cameras point down.

But how long the drone footage is stored depends on individual departments’ policies, Beilin said.

In all, three models of drones will be produced at the facility in Smyrna. They have cameras and thermal sensors. The one used in the demonstration Wednesday is the smallest of the three and can take off from the trunk of a police car, said Duncan Mulgrew, director of engineering on the airframes team at Flock Safety.

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Mulgrew said the drone can be used to ensure a building or street is clear and safe of obstructions, in SWAT situations or after a natural disaster to look inside a collapsed structure for potential victims.

The two other models that will be produced at the facility are larger and typically take off from the tops of buildings to survey the scene of a crime or an emergency like a car accident before police arrive, Beilin said.

About 50 law enforcement agencies, including Dunwoody police, use Flock Safety’s drones, Beilin said, and they are only sold to police at this point.

Alongside drones, the Smyrna facility will serve as Flock Safety’s main U.S. hub for its other technology. The solar panels that power Flock Safety’s license plate readers, video cameras and gunshot detection will be manufactured there and it will also be the repair center for Flock’s products.

The company already has about 50 employees working at the facility and expects to hire another 150 over the next three years, Beilin said.

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