Flock Camera Data Searches by Out-of-State Law Enforcement
Agencies more than a thousand miles away ran tens of thousands of searches on North Carolina drivers’ data. Here’s who, and why it should concern you.
In a single month, agencies far outside North Carolina — led by Houston PD (44,818 searches) and Dallas PD (37,209) — ran tens of thousands of searches on one NC county’s Flock data.
Source: DeFlockILM analysis of Flock audit data via Have I Been Flocked (Buncombe County, NC, March–April 2026). DeFlockILM.org.
In a recent disclosure by Have I Been Flocked, some of the top searches of data collected by Flock cameras in Buncombe County, North Carolina were by law enforcement agencies outside the state of North Carolina. Top searchers from March–April 2026 were:
Top searchers
| Organization | Searches |
|---|---|
| Houston TX PD | 44,818 |
| Dallas TX PD | 37,209 |
| Gwinnett County GA PD | 15,936 |
| Memphis TN PD | 11,756 |
| Columbus OH PD | 10,847 |
| Hillsborough County FL SO | 10,055 |
| Michigan State Police | 8,427 |
| Atlanta GA PD | 8,208 |
| Pinellas County FL SO | 8,008 |
| Texas Department of Public Safety | 7,786 |
While the NC General Statute, N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-183.32, allows the sharing of information with law enforcement (including out of state), the statute limits disclosure of captured plate data to a criminal justice officer, for a legitimate law-enforcement purpose, and pursuant to a written request. It is unclear whether these searches met the requirements of the statute. Why would a law enforcement agency over 1,000 miles away from Asheville make thousands of written requests to search Buncombe County residents’ information?
The report also shows that New Hanover County made 2,099 requests to search Buncombe County records in a one-month period.
Why an out-of-state search should worry a Wilmington driver
Flock’s value to police is precisely that it’s a national network: a single search can reach across state lines. That’s also its danger. North Carolina’s own limits — a legitimate law-enforcement purpose, a written request, disclosure only to a criminal-justice officer — are hard to enforce when the agency running the search sits a thousand miles away and answers to a different state’s rules. Once your plate is in the system, you are relying on every connected agency to follow the law, not just your own.
This is the same problem we hit in New Hanover County, from the other direction. When our Sheriff’s Office released its audit, it redacted the name of every searching agency and officer — so residents can’t even see whether out-of-state or federal agencies have been querying our data the way they queried Buncombe’s. We wrote about who can search our cameras here.
What to demand
The fix isn’t complicated: unredacted audit logs, a written-request requirement that’s actually checked, and a public accounting of which outside agencies have access. Until then, the honest answer to “who has searched your car?” is that the county won’t say.
You’re not a suspect. So stop being tracked like one.
It takes one minute. Add your name — then tell the officials who represent you to take the cameras down.
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