The prosperous Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta, home to approximately **67,000** residents, utilizes dozens of cameras from **Flock Safety**. This increasingly controversial surveillance company collects license plate data and other information, making it searchable by law enforcement agencies. Public records requests have unveiled that data captured by these **Flock** cameras in Alpharetta is accessible to over 2,000 police departments, colleges, airports, and various government agencies across the United States. This vast network includes entities ranging from **Morehouse College** to Florida’s **Fish and Wildlife Commission**, and even Medicare fraud investigators in Illinois and federal agency inspectors general. Conversely, the **Alpharetta Police Department** receives **Flock** data from more than 1,300 other entities, spanning from the prosecutor’s office of **Whitley County, Indiana**, to the **Metro Police Authority of Genesee County, Michigan**. Notably, the **Alpharetta Police Department** – which previously saw an officer resign due to **Flock** misuse – also exchanges data with agencies that have faced similar incidents of officers misusing the technology. These include Georgia’s **Bibb County Sheriff’s Department**, the **Savannah Police Department**, and the **Dallas Police Department**. Over the past year, Alpharetta’s data-sharing network has expanded dramatically. Since June 2025, the number of entities receiving data from Alpharetta police has surged by about 42 percent, and those sending data to them have increased by approximately 125 percent. This trend, mirrored in other cities, highlights the pervasive nature of **Flock**’s surveillance infrastructure. ## The Allure of Networked Surveillance A key selling point for **Flock Safety** is its extensive network of customers, primarily law enforcement agencies. The company posits that this interconnected system can prevent suspects from evading capture by crossing jurisdictional lines, as queries can traverse city, county, or even state borders. While data sharing among agencies is not new – police departments often share Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) data with state-run **fusion centers** or **High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA)** programs – **Flock** introduces a new dynamic. Unlike federally funded public programs, **Flock** is a private entity managing a sprawling ALPR network. This network operates under a diverse set of rules and restrictions that vary significantly from one city to another. Without stringent oversight of data request and sharing settings within **Flock**’s interface, police departments can inadvertently become nodes in a much larger, more complex surveillance network than they initially intended or fully comprehend. This can lead to situations like Alpharetta’s, where citizens and visitors are integrated into a data-sharing network comprising over 2,300 nodes. ## Setting Boundaries: How Flock's Interface Works To understand the rapid expansion of these data-sharing networks, it's crucial to examine **Flock**'s administrative interface. Analysis of files served by **Flock**'s login pages reveals the settings and sharing preferences available to administrators. An administrator can configure their agency to automatically share **Flock** data with any organization within a custom radius, their home state, or multiple other states. Alternatively, they can manually select individual organizations for data sharing. Furthermore, administrators have the ability to limit the specific types of data other organizations can receive, such as live or archived videos. They can also restrict which organizations are permitted to request data from their agency, for instance, limiting requests to entities within the same state or a defined geographical radius.