How an Atlanta Suburb Ended Up Sharing License Plate Data With Over 2,000 Organizations
Public records show that Alpharetta, Georgia's police department exchanges license-plate surveillance data from Flock Safety cameras with more than 2,000 agencies nationwide. The case illustrates how sprawling and loosely controlled Flock's data-sharing network has become.
Alpharetta, a well-off suburb of Atlanta with about 67,000 residents and roughly 120 police officers, operates several dozen license-plate reading cameras made by Flock Safety. According to public records obtained by Wired, data from those cameras can be accessed by more than 2,000 police departments, colleges, airports and government agencies across the country, including Morehouse College and Florida's Fish and Wildlife Commission. In turn, Alpharetta receives data from more than 1,300 outside entities.
The Alpharetta Police Department, which recently saw an officer resign over misuse of Flock technology, also shares data with several agencies embroiled in similar controversies, including Georgia's Bibb County Sheriff's Department, the Savannah Police Department and the Dallas Police Department.
The network has grown rapidly: since June 2025, the number of entities receiving data from Alpharetta police rose about 42 percent, while the number sending data to them jumped about 125 percent.
How the sprawl happens
Flock's system lets agencies automatically share data with any organization within a chosen radius, their home state, or other states, or select partners individually. Alpharetta automatically approves data requests from law enforcement within 500 miles, though a department lieutenant could not explain when or why that setting was configured.
Other cities have faced bigger surprises. Flock's Nationwide Lookup tool, which allows searching any customer's camera network nationwide, was reportedly switched on without departments' knowledge in places including Reynoldsburg, Ohio, and Palo Alto, California. A Flock representative acknowledged the feature was once a common default configuration.
In Minnesota, Beltrami County's sheriff's office initially had unrestricted nationwide access when it joined Flock in 2024, before officials scaled it back to in-state-only requests, saying many searches expand scope without real justification.
In several instances, it remains unclear why Alpharetta would need to exchange data with entities such as a federal inspector general's office or a university campus police department — most of which did not respond to requests for comment.
