Flock Safety Camera Data Shared Across 2,000+ U.S. Agencies

A Surveillance Network Larger Than Expected

Alpharetta, Georgia—a suburb of Atlanta with 67,000 residents and 120 police officers—operates several dozen Flock Safety license plate cameras. Public records obtained by WIRED reveal that data from those cameras is now accessible to more than 2,000 police departments, colleges, airports, and government agencies across the United States.

The network includes entities as diverse as Morehouse College, Florida's Fish and Wildlife Commission, Medicare fraud investigators in Illinois, and a Missouri drug task force. In return, Alpharetta receives Flock data from more than 1,300 organizations spanning from Indiana prosecutor offices to Michigan metro police authorities.

This network has grown dramatically. Since June 2025, entities receiving Alpharetta's data increased by approximately 42 percent, while those sending data to the city grew by roughly 125 percent.

Why it matters

Flock Safety markets its surveillance network as a tool to track suspects across jurisdictions, but these records demonstrate how quickly local police camera systems can become nodes in a national surveillance infrastructure. Unlike traditional data-sharing through state fusion centers or federal programs, Flock is a private company managing an interconnected network with rules that vary by municipality. When departments don't actively manage their settings, citizens and visitors become embedded in data-sharing arrangements far beyond what local officials may realize or intend.

How Default Settings Drive Expansion

Flock's administrative interface allows agencies to automatically share data with organizations within custom distances, within their state, or across multiple states. Administrators can also limit what data others receive and restrict who can request information.

Lieutenant Jason Hiott of Alpharetta Police told WIRED the department automatically approves data requests from law enforcement within 500 miles. Agencies beyond that radius must individually request access. Hiott could not specify when this 500-mile radius was established or whether it represented a change from default settings.

Flock spokesperson Jess Montejano stated that data sharing is now turned off by default for new customers, though the company did not clarify whether this has always been policy.

Nationwide Lookup Catches Agencies Off Guard

Several police departments discovered their Flock systems had capabilities they didn't know existed. Flock's Nationwide Lookup tool, introduced in 2023, allows any customer to query any other customer nationwide using a specific license plate.

Reynoldsburg, Ohio's city attorney Chris Shook told WIRED that in June, the police department discovered Nationwide Lookup was active while processing a public records request. Leadership believed officers could only search Ohio cameras. Flock confirmed the tool had been enabled since at least March 2023—potentially during initial setup when it was a "common default configuration."

Similarly, Palo Alto, California's city manager reported that Flock activated Nationwide Lookup for all customers in mid-2023, but the department didn't learn about it until December 2025—despite California law prohibiting ALPR data sharing with federal or out-of-state agencies.

Query Scope Varies Widely

Audit logs from Reynoldsburg Police show dramatic variations in search scope. One officer queried 53 Flock networks for a potential offense, then 40 minutes later queried 5,392 networks citing the same offense code. Officers can customize network scope per query, and according to Shook, they "typically search every network they have access to."

Commander David Hart of Minnesota's Beltrami County Sheriff's Office said his office initially could exchange data with any Flock customer nationwide when it started using the system in early 2024. He later restricted it to in-state agencies, noting: "It's gotten to the point where people want to search more agencies just to be able to search more agencies, without a real reason behind it."

These details were first reported by WIRED based on public records requests filed with multiple jurisdictions.