Cash for Spying: GOP candidates take money from surveillance companies

When a politician takes an awful position on just about anything, one pretty common reason is that someone paid them to take that position.

The city of Dunwoody is embroiled in a scandal after their spy cam vendor, Flock, was caught accessing and sharing videos of children’s gymnastics and swimming areas. On the same day the city council held a public meeting to discuss their contract with Flock, a report was also released documenting three Dunwoody police officers who were just fired for illegally accessing Flock and other police databases to abet a wanted criminal.

Despite these shocking facts and the unanimous opposition of Dunwoody residents expressed at the meeting, the council voted to funnel even more taxpayer money to Flock. But this isn’t about Dunwoody. The mayor is term-limited and has no reason to worry about the voters anymore, and there won’t be an opportunity to replace any of the city council until November 2027.

But there is a pretty major statewide election next month, and, apropos of absolutely nothing, gubernatorial candidate and Dunwoody resident Chris Carr jumped onto the Mayor’s Facebook post to defend and advocate for Flock. It’s important to remember that Mr. Carr currently serves as the Attorney General¹, the highest law enforcement office in Georgia. The state’s top cop wants you constantly recorded and tracked, thinks this is a perfectly legitimate use of government force, and believes he deserves a promotion for it.

So let’s fact-check what I said about politicians taking awful positions. There it is, right there on page 73 of Mr. Carr’s campaign contribution disclosure dated 7/8/25: $1,000 from Josh Thomas, Flock’s head of communications. Mr. Thomas was quoted in the AJC this week as stating that “chang[ing] you psychologically” is the explicit goal of his company’s surveillance network. I’m not sure why he thought it was a good idea to say such a thing anywhere ever, let alone to a reporter, but hey, if you’re going to be evil, may as well be honest.

Also, it’s no doubt a completely random glitch that Mr. Thomas’ name, company, and donation don’t show up when searching the State Ethics Commission web site. You have to download the PDF reports and text-search through them to find it. It would be conspiratorial to suggest this could be an intentional effort to obfuscate certain donations. Nonetheless, it’s a random glitch that probably should be fixed. 

That said, this isn’t (just) about Mr. Carr either. To be fair and balanced, I checked the remainder of the Republican gubernatorial candidates. Rick Jackson, the self-made billionaire, is also completely self-funding, and to date has disclosed no campaign contributions. A search through current Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s filings revealed no donations I was able to connect to Flock or any of its officers or employees.

But that leaves current Lieutenant Governor and Trump endorsee Burt Jones. Sure enough, on page 30 of his most recent disclosuremost recent disclosure dated 2/9/26, he reported receiving $8,400 (the maximum allowable individual contribution) from Garrett Langley, Flock’s CEO. I’m not aware of any specific advocacy from Jones regarding Flock’s spy network. But I find it unlikely they’ll expect no return on their investment should he be elected Governor.

I didn’t check any of the Democratic candidates’ disclosures, although Flock appears to be a bipartisan abuser of civil liberties – elected offices in DeKalb and its cities are almost entirely held by Democrats, and they can’t shovel our tax dollars to Flock fast enough. I will likely do a more thorough check of all statewide general election candidates after the primaries are over.

I’m also not saying that any candidates are lying about their true beliefs for money. It’s entirely possible that Mr. Carr just hates privacy and loves to spy on his constituents all of his own accord, and would have advocated for more of it for free. But my position is simple: if you take money from Flock or similar spy companies, or advocate for the use or expansion of their surveillance systems, you are not qualified to hold any office of public trust anywhere in the United States. Maybe go and check whether mayor of Pyongyang is available.

1. In the interest of full disclosure, I supported him in both his campaigns for this office. Prior to this morning I had no idea about his support of or connection to Flock. ↩︎