Atlanta surveillance is more vast than you think. Time for stronger oversight.

However, many cities are ending their contracts with Flock over numerous concerns, including that Immigration and Customs Enforcement could be accessing data collected for local public safety purposes.

Flock has downplayed these concerns, stating ICE doesn’t have “direct access” to its data, but the company knows its system makes local surveillance data indirectly available to ICE through other Flock customers, regardless of whether a direct contract exists.

Here’s how the feds get around local data sharing bans

Credit: Handout

Credit: Handout

At the heart of the problem is Flock’s data-sharing model. Police departments partnering with Flock can choose how widely they share the license plate data they collect: keeping it internal, sharing it with select departments, opening it to agencies across their state or the default setting of making it available to every department in the Flock network nationwide. Although framed as a local choice, Flock’s quid pro quo system rewards maximum sharing.

Departments that opt into nationwide sharing can search data collected by agencies across the country.

The ACLU of Georgia’s open records request revealed the Atlanta Police Department shares data with nearly 2,000 other police departments through the Flock network. Even if APD does not conduct immigration-related searches, the data it collects can be accessed and searched by thousands of other agencies, including those cooperating with ICE.

Data sharing creates real risks. A recent audit of Flock’s network in Virginia found five counties there shared ALPR data with federal authorities for immigration enforcement, despite prohibitions against it.

In Fairfax County, officials said searches of their network for immigration enforcement were not conducted by local officers, but their data is also directly shared with 13 other agencies.

Data sharing is only part of the story. Our records request also revealed APD’s contract with Flock Safety and uncovered a provision that expands access beyond what departments may select within Flock’s application. Police departments may limit internal access, but Flock still reserves the right to share data with law enforcement, including federal agencies, for broadly defined “investigative purposes.”

Federal agencies can also access local surveillance systems through law enforcement partnerships. In November 2025, the Atlanta Community Press Collective reported that March 20-24, 2025, two people using APD credentials conducted 15 searches of Atlanta’s license plate reader network to track migrants. One was an APD investigator assigned to an FBI task force, and the other worked with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Atlanta.

Atlanta should join other cities strengthening oversight of surveillance technology

When immigrants believe their movements are being tracked, they often stop living their regular lives out of fear.

In Atlanta, the most surveilled city in the U.S. — where cameras line highways, neighborhood streets, apartment entrances and parking lots — there is no way to get to work, school, church or a doctor’s appointment without being recorded. Accordingly, entire communities are forced to retreat into the shadows.

The impacts of mass surveillance don’t end with immigration enforcement. The same systems that track immigrants are also used to monitor protest activity. As Americans protested last year, law enforcement watched in unseen ways. Agencies, including the U.S. Border Patrol, used Flock’s automated license plate readers to monitor vehicles near demonstrations.

An analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that more than 50 federal, state and local agencies conducted hundreds of searches through Flock’s network tied to protest activity. In many cases, officers were asked to justify these searches with only a few words, often entering nothing more than “protest.”

Atlanta is not powerless here. At least 26 cities have adopted ordinances that empower community members and city council members to help them make more transparent and better-informed decisions about if and how surveillance technologies are used. These ordinances ensure techs like ALPRs can be used only for specific, clearly defined purposes approved by the city council. Atlanta should join them.

Local advocates, including the ACLU of Georgia, are pushing for a surveillance oversight ordinance to do just that.

Atlanta didn’t sign up to be an arm of the federal government, but without oversight and clear guardrails, that’s exactly what our surveillance systems could become.

Christopher E. Bruce, Esq., is the deputy executive director for the ACLU of Georgia, where he leads the organization’s community advocacy efforts to protect and advance civil rights and liberties for all Georgians.