Georgia Is Building a Massive Prison Watching System — And Almost No One Knows About It

TL;DR

Georgia is building a new command center called OWL. It will watch all 36 state prisons at the same time. It uses radar, cameras, phone blockers, body cameras, mail scanners, and WiFi — all linked together. The state has spent over $150 million on this tech. No other state has anything like it. And no civil rights group has spoken out about it by name.

Why This Matters

If your loved one is in a Georgia prison, this affects them.

The state is spending huge sums on watching people. It is not spending much on helping them. The budget puts $50 million toward tech and security. It puts only $805,000 toward job training programs. That means for every $1 spent on job training, the state spends $62 on watching people.

This system also scans all mail. That means your letters may be read, copied, and stored. The radar can track people and cars up to 15 km (about 9 miles) away. That reaches well past the prison walls and into nearby towns.

All of this was built quietly. The money was spread across many budget bills over many years. No one held a press event. There is no page about it on the prison system’s website.

Key Takeaway: Georgia spends 62 times more on prison tech and security than on job training for people in prison.

What Is OWL?

OWL stands for Overwatch & Logistic Unit. It is a command center being built right now. When done, it will let staff watch every Georgia prison from one room.

The system pulls together 10 different types of tech:

• Radar that detects drones, people, and cars
• Phone blockers at all 35 working state prisons
• Cameras — including thermal (heat-sensing) cameras
• Body cameras on officers
• Mail scanners that copy letters
• Drone detectors at 25 locations and growing
• Officer tablets — 1,050 handed out so far, with 1,600 planned
• WiFi across every prison to send data back to the center
• A digital forensics unit to search seized phones
• A “Data Intelligence” system that no one has explained publicly

A state lawmaker wrote that OWL “will continuously monitor security cameras across the state, enabling a rapid response to disturbances.” That is the only plain description anyone in power has given.

Key Takeaway: OWL links 10 types of prison tech into one system that watches all Georgia prisons at once.

How Much Does It Cost?

The OWL command center itself got about $17.8 million over three budget years. But the tech it controls costs far more.

Here are the biggest costs:

• $84.6 million for thermal cameras, CCTVs, and fencing
• $35 million for phone-blocking systems
• $7.2 million for body cameras and tasers
• $7.2 million for the OWL center itself (first year)
• $15 million for health records systems
• $1.95 million per year for a secret “Data Intelligence” system

All told, the tech that feeds into OWL costs well over $150 million. This sits inside a broader prison spending push of more than $600 million.

The money was split across three budget years and many bills. This made it hard for anyone to see the full price tag.

Key Takeaway: The full cost of the OWL system and its connected tech is over $150 million — hidden across many budget bills.

The Radar Can See 9 Miles Out

The name “OWL” also stands for a radar company. Observation Without Limits (O.W.L.) makes the radar used in this system. It is owned by Dynetics, which is owned by Leidos — one of the biggest military contractors in the country. Leidos makes over $16 billion a year.

Here is a key detail: O.W.L. is a joint venture between Dynetics and Alabama Power Company. That means a major power company has a stake in prison radar.

The radar can track drones, people, and cars up to 15 km away. One unit covers about 2,000 acres. That reaches far beyond prison walls. People who live near prisons, visit loved ones, or drive past may be tracked — and they have not been told.

This is military-grade technology. The company has 48 years of radar work from defense programs. Now it watches people in rural Georgia towns.

Key Takeaway: Military-grade radar at Georgia prisons can track people and cars up to 9 miles away, reaching deep into nearby communities.

Phone Blocking Across Every Prison

All 35 working state prisons now have systems to block cell phones that are not approved. The state spent $35 million on this — the biggest single tech cost.

Three little-known companies split the work:

• Trace-Tek / ShawnTech covers 28 prisons. They claim to hold 86% of cell phone blocking licenses from the FCC across the whole country. Trace-Tek also runs a program that can permanently kill a phone so it never works again on any network.
• CellBlox / Securus covers 4 prisons. Securus is the same company that charges families for phone calls. Securus spent over $40 million buying up phone-blocking tech.
• Hawks Ear covers 3 prisons. This company has no public website. Almost nothing is known about it.

Securus shows up again and again in this system. It runs prison phone calls. It helped set up drone detectors. And now its branch runs phone blockers. Each new layer of tech means more money for the same companies.

Key Takeaway: Three little-known companies block cell phones at all 35 Georgia prisons, and the same company that charges families for calls also profits from the blocking systems.

The Fusus Platform — Policing Tech Comes to Prisons

At an April 2025 board meeting, the prison chief listed OWL alongside something called Fusus. Fusus is software owned by Axon — the company that makes tasers. Axon bought Fusus in 2024.

Fusus was built for city police. It pulls live camera feeds, sensor data, officer locations, and computer-based alerts into one screen. Now it is being used in prisons.

Axon says Fusus lets “a single Operations Center” see “real-time access to live and recorded video from multiple Corrections facilities, in one interface, accessed from a single computer.”

One Axon case study talks about a “large Southern State” with about 40 prisons that got a $30 million quote for camera upgrades. Axon offered to do it for much less. Georgia has 36 state prisons. That case study appears to be about Georgia.

Groups like the EFF have warned that Fusus “really encourages the adoption of additional surveillance tools.” The ACLU of Michigan called it “a gateway drug into other surveillance technologies.”

Key Takeaway: Georgia is using a policing platform called Fusus to pipe live camera feeds from every prison into one command center.

No Other State Has Anything Like This

GPS research looked at all 50 state prison systems and the federal system. None of them run anything like OWL.

The closest is Tennessee. It proposed a similar center in early 2026 with a $5 million budget. But that plan is still just a proposal. It has not been built.

Other states have bits and pieces:

• California blocks phones at 18 prisons but has no central command center
• South Carolina and Mississippi have tested phone blockers at single prisons
• The federal system has data tools but nothing like a live watching center

Georgia’s system appears to be the first of its kind in American prisons. The state has not claimed this. But the evidence supports it.

Key Takeaway: No other state prison system in America runs a centralized watching system like Georgia’s OWL.

Operation Skyhawk — How the Radar Was Tested

The radar first came to Georgia through a federal grant. The Bureau of Justice gave GDC $420,216 to put radar at Baldwin State Prison.

That radar helped lead to Operation Skyhawk in March 2024. The results:

• 150 people arrested — including 8 prison officers
• 87 drones seized
• 273 cell phones seized
• 22 weapons seized

This operation showed the tech worked. It became the basis for the much larger system now being built. In 2019 alone, GDC found 3,200 cell phones in its prisons. The state argues these phones fuel violence and crime. But the response — a statewide watching network — raises big questions about how far the watching goes.

Key Takeaway: A small federal grant led to a radar test that justified the much larger OWL system now under construction.

No Civil Rights Group Has Spoken Up About OWL

Despite how big this system is, no civil rights group has spoken about it by name.

The ACLU of Georgia has not. The Southern Center for Human Rights has not. The Southern Poverty Law Center has not. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has not. None of them have filed lawsuits, put out statements, or written reports about OWL.

This does not mean no one has concerns. Groups have raised alarms about the parts of OWL:

• The EFF wrote a major report on Fusus in 2023
• The Knight First Amendment Institute sued over prison mail scanning in another state
• The Prison Policy Initiative called mail scanning “a harsh and exploitative new trend”
• Worth Rises has shown how prison phone companies pass costs to families

But in Georgia, advocacy groups are focused on the DOJ probe into prison violence, short staffing, and poor medical care. The watching system was built while everyone looked elsewhere.

The state broke OWL into small pieces across many budgets. No single document showed the full picture. This made it very hard for anyone to see what was happening.

Key Takeaway: No civil rights group has publicly named or challenged OWL, even though it is the most sweeping prison watching system in the country.

What This Means for Families

If you write letters to a loved one in a Georgia prison, those letters may be scanned and stored. If you visit, your phone signal may be logged by the phone-blocking system. If you live near a prison, the radar may track your car.

The state says this tech makes prisons safer. But:

• The budget spends 62 times more on tech and security than on job training
• The companies that block phones are often the same ones that charge you for calls
• The radar reaches 9 miles into nearby communities with no public notice
• Your mail may be copied and kept — no one has said for how long

A $436.7 million new prison being built in Washington County will have OWL tech designed in from the start. This system is not going away. It is growing.

The prison system’s total budget has grown 44% since 2022. Much of that growth goes to watching. Very little goes to healing, teaching, or preparing people to come home.

Key Takeaway: Families who write letters, make calls, visit, or live near prisons are all touched by this system — often without knowing it.

Glossary

• OWL (Overwatch & Logistic Unit): Georgia’s new command center that links watching tech from all state prisons into one hub.
• Managed Access: Tech that blocks cell phones inside prisons. Only approved phones can work.
• Fusus: Software made by Axon that pulls live camera feeds and sensor data into one screen. It was first built for city police.
• GroundAware Radar: A radar system that spots drones, people, and cars up to 9 miles away. Made by a military contractor.
• AirWarden: A drone detector that finds both the drone and the person flying it by picking up radio signals.
• Thermal Camera: A camera that sees heat. It can spot people in the dark.
• Digital Forensics: Searching seized phones and devices for evidence.
• CIS (Contraband Interdiction System): The FCC’s name for approved phone-blocking systems in prisons.
• C-DOS (Cellular Denial of Service): A program that permanently kills a phone so it can never connect to any network again.
• Data Intelligence Advanced Integration: A secret system funded at $1.95 million per year. No one has said what it does.
• Leidos: One of the largest military contractors in the U.S. It owns the company that makes the OWL radar.
• Securus: A company that runs prison phone calls, helped set up drone detectors, and runs phone blockers at 4 Georgia prisons through a branch called CellBlox.
• Axon: The company that makes tasers and body cameras. It now owns Fusus.

Read the Source Document

This post is based on GPS’s full research brief: Georgia’s Prison Panopticon Takes Shape Behind Closed Doors (March 4, 2026). The brief draws on Board of Corrections meeting minutes, Georgia budget bills, FCC filings, federal grant records, corporate disclosures, and vendor documents.

Read the full research brief (PDF) →

Other Versions

We write every report for multiple audiences:

• Legislator Version — Policy brief for lawmakers and staff
• Media Version — Press-ready summary for journalists
• Advocate Version — Detailed analysis for attorneys and organizers