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Tuesday, September 01, 2026

Alpharetta, a prosperous suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, is home to about 67,000 people, served by about 120 local police officers. It also hosts several dozen cameras sold by Flock Safety ...

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WIRED has made this article free for all to read because it is primarily based on reporting from public records requests. Read the full story: www.wired.com/story/how-an ...

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-- WIRED (@wired.com) 12:05 PM · Aug 28, 2026

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... These range from Morehouse College to Florida's Fish and Wildlife Commission and include Medicare fraud investigators in Illinois, a drug task force focused on east-central Missouri, and the inspector general of a federal agency.

In return, Alpharetta receives Flock data from more than 1,300 entities, which span from the prosecutor's office of Whitley County, Indiana, to the Metro Police Authority of Genesee County, Michigan.

The Alpharetta Police Department -- which, as reported by WIRED, had an officer resign due to Flock misuse on August 5 -- also exchanges Flock data with several agencies that have been similarly rocked by recent incidents of officers misusing its technology, including Georgia's Bibb County Sheriff's Department, the Savannah Police Department, and the Dallas Police Department.

Alpharetta's data-sharing network has expanded tremendously over the past year. Since June 2025, the number of entities receiving data from Alpharetta police has grown by about 42 percent, and the number of entities sending data to them has grown by about 125 percent.

And, according to documents obtained via public records requests from several other cities around the country, Alpharetta is far from alone in having an expansive and complicated data-sharing system, providing a potent example of how pervasive Flock's surveillance network has become.

One of Flock's central selling points is its network of customers -- mostly, though not entirely, law enforcement agencies. ...



#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-08-31 04:41 PM | Reply

I'm having a hard time with the fact that DeSantis is doing something I agree with. He just removed all Flock cameras on Florida highways.

#2 | Posted by TFDNihilist at 2026-09-01 11:27 AM | Reply

Expect fire with fire.

#3 | Posted by redlightrobot at 2026-09-01 12:00 PM | Reply

More ...

Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. We Got Its Code
www.wired.com

... Flock's surveillance cameras have already sparked outrage. WIRED reconstructed its next-generation AI system, already in use by some police, to confirm it goes much further than tracking license plates. ...

Drawing on a network of cameras that logs the movements of drivers in more than 6,000 communities, the tool can pick out potential witnesses by how often their cars pass through a neighborhood, or surface a driver's "associates" from the cameras they pass together. Because the system also reaches police case files, 911 dispatch logs, and commercial identity records, those plates can be turned into names, home addresses, and relatives. It can search for people in an area drawn on a map based on nothing more than a physical description. ...

The suggested prompts sit in a cache of more than 450 files that WIRED found on Flock's own website, served by its login pages to anyone who loaded them. The code describes 45 tools at the AI's disposal, giving it access to plate scans and camera metadata, arrest records, case files, dispatch logs, ballistics results, and commercial databases that contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives and associates. ...


#4 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-09-01 12:13 PM | Reply

He just removed all Flock cameras

Did he ban all license plate readers or just Flock?

#5 | Posted by Nixon at 2026-09-01 02:11 PM | Reply

How long before ICE gets full, unfettered access to all the Flock databases?

#6 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-09-01 02:39 PM | Reply

How long before ICE gets full, unfettered access to all the Flock databases?

#6 | POSTED BY LAMPLIGHTER

It's cute that you think they don't already have complete and "unfettered" access.

They don't have OFFICIAL login access.

But they get maga friendly law enforcement agencies to login for them. All ICE agents have to do is request local and state law enforcement officers"who already use an automatic license plate reader (ALPR) systems"to look up plates for immigration investigations.

Investigations and media reports show local police have performed thousands of database lookups at the request of federal immigration enforcement.

So yeah ... I guarangawddamtee they already have access to it.

#7 | Posted by donnerboy at 2026-09-01 02:48 PM | Reply

@#5 ... Did he ban all license plate readers or just Flock? ...

Along those lines ...

Communities Nationwide Tearing Down Flock Cameras, Quietly Replacing Them With These Brands
www.military.com

... A wave of public backlash is pulling Flock's license plate reader cameras off streets nationwide. But in many communities, surveillance isn't ending and cameras are actually just changing brands.

As cities cancel their contracts with Flock Safety, more are hiring Axon instead. They are another law enforcement technology company that installs cameras that scan and track passing vehicles much as Flock cameras do, and they lack the public attention that Flock has received over the course of the past few months. ...


#8 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-09-01 03:42 PM | Reply

@#5

But to answer your question, from the article in #8

... That trend has even reached the Florida Department of Transportation. They ordered all license plate readers removed from state roads on Aug. 31, revoking permits for Flock, Axon and Motorola cameras alike and giving agencies 30 days to take them down.

The order affects hundreds of cameras and marks the first time a state has pulled the entire category off its roads rather than leaving the choice to individual cities. ...


#9 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-09-01 03:44 PM | Reply

Florida cops know this data will come back to haunt them.

#10 | Posted by snoofy at 2026-09-01 04:11 PM | Reply

I have a friend that works in city government, he has all sorts of rules and regulations he has to conform with to publish information about the governments internal discussions for people requesting information.

I find the Flock system fascinating from this government perspective. How in the world did a company not think of this, just give the data to the governments without any authorizations/authentications or audit trail. Delete all the data 30days.

I don't blame Flock, I blame the governments doing this. I see no reason a local neighborhood shouldn't be allowed to install Flock for IDing thieves, where the local police need to request the info from the neighborhood watch. I also understand the advantage of a networked system that Flock created, this is hardly outrageous, its just good use of technology.

I don't see why Florida removed it, just make laws and regulations to limit access.

How can you be for single payer healthcare and against Flock? The same rules and laws apply to accessing the data. For instance Medicare data isn't private if there is an investigation, same with Flock data ..... meaning neither one needs a warrant.

But its just so difficult to understand why access is so poorly controlled, its mind boggling really.

Surprised our resident technologist doesn't see this issue.

It's more difficult for a government to get access to all my phone location data, than to access it via Flock.

#11 | Posted by oneironaut at 2026-09-01 04:13 PM | Reply

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