They Said Outside Agencies Must Request the Data. The County’s Own Log Shows 388 Grants of Access.

What the records establish — and what they don’t

Because this turns on fine distinctions, here is the honest ledger up front. Established by the county’s own records: that Brunswick granted 355 outside agencies access to its Flock system in 2026, most including the power to search, many including video, and that the inbound audit has not been produced to us. Not established, and we don’t claim it: exactly how many of those agencies actually ran searches, whether a given search returned a Brunswick vehicle, how many grants were still switched on the night of the meeting, or what any one of them did with a result. Those are the questions the records we are still owed would answer — and the reason we keep asking for them.

First, in plain English: permission is not the same as a search

Flock keeps several different records, and keeping them straight is the whole point:

• The sharing settings / Event Log are the keys — who has been given permission to search Brunswick’s cameras.
• The Organization Audit is the log of searches run by Brunswick’s own officers (which can include their local cameras and any shared networks their query reached).
• The Network Audit is the log of outside searches that included Brunswick’s camera network. It would show who searched in a way that touched Brunswick — though not, by itself, whether a given search returned a Brunswick record.

A key is not a search, and a search in a log is not proof that it pulled back a Brunswick vehicle. We are careful about that below. But the keys matter on their own: handing 355 outside agencies the ability to search directly is not the same picture as “they must ask us first.”

The direct evidence: 388 grants of access, in the county’s own log

This part needs no inference about how Flock is built, and it rests on nothing the Sheriff was forced to hand over. Brunswick’s own Event Log — which the Sheriff’s Office posted publicly on its own website — records 388 events creating network-share grants on Brunswick’s network to outside agencies: 355 distinct departments, including Fayetteville (TN) PD, dozens of Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and South Carolina agencies, and a regional intelligence center. Most grants (238) carried Search permission — the direct ability to query Brunswick’s cameras — and 140 carried live or recorded video. Thirteen shares were later deleted, so a handful were wound back; the rest stand in the record. Whether every one was still active on the night of the meeting is a fair question — and one only the current settings can answer, which is the second record we have asked for.

The Sheriff’s Office’s strongest counter — and the open question

In fairness, the Office could argue that granting access to named partner agencies, one at a time, is different from opening Brunswick’s cameras to a broad national pool that any participant can query — and that a grant of permission is not the same as an outside agency actually searching. Both points are fair, and we don’t pretend otherwise. But a grant of Search permission is, by definition, the ability to search directly rather than to “request information” first — which is the specific thing officials told commissioners outside agencies must do. And how heavily that access was used, and whether it is on today, is precisely what the inbound audit and the current settings would show. A narrow, well-controlled arrangement is the easiest thing in the world to prove: produce those records. They have not been produced.

We asked for the proof in June. It still hasn’t come.

We requested the inbound Network Audit — the record of which outside agencies have searched in a way that reached Brunswick’s cameras — from the Sheriff’s Office on June 29, 2026, and, when we received the outbound log instead, specifically restated the request in writing on September 22, 2026. Captured plate data is confidential under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-183.32 — but the inbound audit is access metadata (who queried the system), not the plate images themselves, and a record’s use in an investigation “shall not affect its status as a public record” (§ 132-1.4(f)). For a request to a computer database, § 132-6.2(c) requires the custodian, on request, to put the reason for any denial in writing; exemptions are construed narrowly and the burden rests on the agency (News & Observer v. Poole; DTH Media Corp. v. Folt). No written denial identifying the record and an exemption has been provided, and the inbound audit had not been provided to DeFlockILM as of publication. Where part of a record is confidential, the law still asks the custodian to release the nonconfidential portion.

It is a routine export from the same Insights tab, and Kure Beach Police produced exactly that report in response to the same request. See the public file yourself: the file BCSO posts and labels its “Network Audit” is actually the outbound log — we have mirrored it to the Internet Archive, and every search row in it names the same searcher, Brunswick County, and no one else. By construction it cannot show an outside searcher. The inbound log, which can, is the one still outstanding.

How the county can settle it

We’re not asking anyone to take our word, and we’re not asking for anything confidential. If Brunswick has narrowed or switched off its sharing, that is the right move, and we’ll say so. Note that Flock keeps National Lookup (the national pool) separate from direct, named agency-to-agency shares — so turning one off does not necessarily close the others. The way to resolve the whole question is with records the Office already holds:

1. Publish the current sharing settings — all of them, national and named, with the dates of any change. That shows who can search today.
2. Produce the inbound Network Audit. That shows how the access was actually used.
3. Explain what “a search is deleted” means. Deleting Brunswick’s own copy of a result is not the same as the data not being shared: if an outside agency downloaded or saved a Brunswick record while access was on, a later change to Brunswick’s settings would not reach that separately held copy.

Until those records are on the table, the fair statement is narrow and sourced: Brunswick’s own log shows it granted 355 outside agencies direct access to its Flock system, and the record that would show how that access was used has been requested since June and not produced. That is a question the commissioners — and the public — are entitled to see answered.

These are answerable questions the Sheriff’s Office can resolve: how many agencies hold active access, which permissions were on during the relevant period, and what “deleted” refers to. We will update this post with the Office’s response.

Sources & related: ACLU of Massachusetts on Flock’s National Lookup · WECT — the Oct. 19 commissioners debate · BCSO’s self-published audit files (Internet Archive) · Our June 29, 2026 records request (Internet Archive) · Brunswick’s new policy can’t audit the outside searches · The fix that works: turn off sharing.