Federal Judge Calls Flock Network 'Indiscriminate Mass Surveillance' in Fourth Amendment Ruling

Judge Sara Hill found that an officer violated the rights of a woman suspected of methamphetamine trafficking when he looked up her license plate in Flock's system. According to TechRadar, citing 404 Media, the officer searched the plate simply because it was from California, then used the woman's travel history as justification for searching her car. He worked backward after finding the vehicle in the database rather than relying on probable cause, the report said.

The traffic stop happened in Oklahoma, and the woman was carrying 91 pounds of methamphetamine. But Hill ruled that the officer's reason for pulling her over was not enough. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the judge said the license plate search 'was not supported by probable cause, and it was done without a warrant in violation of [the defendant's] Fourth Amendment rights.'

Hill described Flock's camera network as 'a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance' that the officer had used. She disagreed with earlier judicial opinions that found Flock's network did not breach the Fourth Amendment because its footage was taken in public places. Those opinions, she said, do not consider that the network is 'approaching dragnet-type law enforcement practice' and that courts need to keep up with the technology.

In her ruling, Hill said the factors the government relied on were the same circumstances everyday Americans encounter on long road trips for legitimate reasons. She said many people drive longer than they want to reach a destination, or drive with no destination at all other than the road and sights ahead. Using Flock's catalog of vehicle footage to stop those people would infringe on their constitutional rights, she declared.

TechRadar reported that 404 Media believes more than 100,000 warrantless license plate searches are made within Flock's systems every month. Hill's decision is not binding. It comes shortly after a similar decision that ruled traffic stops made by the U.S. Border Patrol using data from ALPR cameras were unconstitutional.

Previous cases have decided that Flock cameras do not present a Fourth Amendment risk, and the article noted that it is unclear whether this ruling and others like it will lead to significant changes. Public opinion has been solidifying against the cameras, and law enforcement's reliance on the technology is increasingly being called into question.

Michael Soyfer, a lawyer at the Institute for Justice, said Hill's decision recognizes 'the sheer breadth of these systems, that they collect so much information about so many people in a way that sets them apart.' He said courts have resolved these cases too myopically and ignored the depths of the systems and the sweeping modes of surveillance that allow police to reconstruct the movements of anyone in the country, according to TechRadar.