The Washington Post reports:

When Andrae Wright left his job as an investigator at the Effingham County Sheriff’s Office in 2021, he handed in his gun and badge. But he kept something powerful: his log-in credentials for Flock, a police tool he used to search a vast network of roadside cameras tracking the locations of passing cars.

In the five years after leaving the force, Wright searched the system more than 60 times without being stopped by anyone at the Georgia sheriff’s office, according to a statement by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Flock audit logs reviewed by The Post. He repeatedly searched the location of a vanity license plate bearing the middle name of his wife, according to the audit logs. The couple divorced this year, court records show, and at the time of some of his Flock searches, Wright was fighting for permanent custody of their teenage daughter.

In July, after a tipster alerted local authorities, police arrested Wright and charged him with stalking his wife, claiming he misused Flock data “for the purpose of harassing and intimidating her,” according to his warrant. State law restricts the use of license plate readers to legitimate law enforcement investigations.

Wright did not respond to phone calls, text messages or voicemails seeking comment. Brian Bailey, a sheriff’s office spokesman, said that the agency had not conducted regular audits of who had access to its Flock system during that time but that it plans to begin doing so.

The case marked one of at least 11 times in which government officials have discovered unauthorized users have gained access to Flock databases and searched them without permission, sometimes to track the locations of romantic partners, a Washington Post investigation has found.

The incidents expose what security experts describe as alarming vulnerabilities within Flock’s nationwide network of license-plate-reading cameras and the law enforcement agencies that use them.

Though Flock has pitched itself as a security-first business that closely controls access to its trove of license-plate data, company leaders have resisted calls from their own staff to implement stricter guardrails, according to three former employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional repercussions.

Flock managers told staff repeatedly that they didn’t want to create barriers to securing camera contracts with law enforcement agencies that were resistant to more restrictive security controls, two of the employees said. [Continue reading…]