How an Atlanta Suburb Ended Up Sharing Flock Data With More Than 2,000 Organizations

Alpharetta, a suburb of Atlanta with about 67,000 residents and 120 local police officers, operates several dozen Flock Safety cameras. Data captured by those cameras is accessible to more than 2,000 police departments, colleges, airports, and government agencies across the United States, according to public records obtained by WIRED. The list includes Morehouse College, Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Commission, Medicare fraud investigators in Illinois, a drug task force in east-central Missouri, and the inspector general of a federal agency.

In exchange, Alpharetta receives Flock data from more than 1,300 entities, including the prosecutor’s office of Whitley County, Indiana, and the Metro Police Authority of Genesee County, Michigan. The Alpharetta Police Department also shares data with agencies that have faced recent officer misconduct incidents involving Flock, including Georgia’s Bibb County Sheriff’s Department, the Savannah Police Department, and the Dallas Police Department. The network has grown sharply since June 2025, with entities receiving data up about 42 percent and those sending data up about 125 percent.

Flock’s interface allows administrators to share data automatically within a custom radius, their home state, or other states, or to choose organizations individually. Administrators can also limit what data others receive, such as live or archived video, and restrict which organizations can request data. Lieutenant Jason Hiott of the Alpharetta Police Department said the department automatically approves requests from law enforcement agencies within 500 miles, while requests from farther away require individual approval. He could not say what the default settings were, whether they were altered, or how long the 500-mile radius had been in place, though he said the department shares no live feeds or analytics.

Flock spokesperson Jess Montejano said data sharing is off by default for new customers, and spokesperson Paris Lewbel said that historically, customers could request data from others within the same state or within 50 miles. Flock’s Nationwide Lookup tool, introduced in 2023, allows any customer to query any other customer in the country with a specific license plate, and the company disabled it for federal agencies after backlash over its pilot program with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In Reynoldsburg, Ohio, city attorney Chris Shook said the police department discovered in June that the Nationwide Lookup tool was active, though leadership believed officers could only search cameras within Ohio.

Shook said the department changed its settings to in-state searches only, but had no idea when or why nationwide searches were enabled. Emails reviewed by WIRED show Flock public affairs manager Caroline Bush said the tool was enabled before February 2025, and that an event-log limitation prevented her from saying exactly when. She found nationwide searches as early as March 2023, and suggested the setting was likely enabled during initial account setup, calling it a common default configuration before Flock introduced stronger disclosures and controls. Shook said he believes an error occurred, but is unsure how.

The situation in Alpharetta illustrates how cities can become nodes in a vast surveillance network without full awareness. While sharing license plate data across agencies is not new - police can, for example, share with state fusion centers or federally funded High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area programs - Flock is a private company managing a sprawling network with rules that vary by city. If departments do not closely monitor their settings, they can unwittingly participate in a network far larger than intended. Alpharetta’s network has grown to more than 2,300 connected entities, showing how pervasive Flock’s reach has become across the United States.

More technology news from TechManNews.