TechCrunch reports that a federal judge ruled this week that a Tulsa, Oklahoma sheriff’s deputy violated a woman’s Fourth Amendment rights by using Flock Safety to search her license plate without a warrant. The article says this account comes from 404 Media. The ruling does not create binding precedent. It is one of the first times a federal judge has held that a Flock search is unconstitutional.

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A camera mounted on a pole beside an empty road, with a closed black notebook at the foot of the pole.
The camera faces an empty road, and the notebook is closed. That is a plate record used in a search a judge rejected. An illustration, not a news photograph., AI-generated illustration, not a news photograph

Judge Sara Hill said the deputy should have obtained a warrant before searching the Flock database. She wrote that there was no apparent reason for the search other than that the vehicle had a California plate. The deputy then used the woman’s travel history in Flock as part of the justification for searching the car, where he allegedly found 91 pounds of methamphetamine. Hill wrote that all evidence obtained after the Flock search must be suppressed as the fruit of a poisonous tree.

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Hill also wrote that tracking people, even in public, becomes constitutionally problematic when law enforcement can indiscriminately and passively catalog their whereabouts over a long period and then use that information for any purpose whenever convenient. She called it a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance: not a search aimed at one person, but a tool that collects information about every vehicle that passes a network-connected camera and serves that information to law enforcement on demand. The article adds that on Friday Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Democrat, introduced the Block Flock Act, which would bar federal agencies from using automated license-plate readers such as Flock. Some governments, including in Florida and Texas, have said they will stop using the technology. How a search is run is not included here.

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要点

  • The judge found that a warrantless Flock search of a California plate violated the Fourth Amendment. Later evidence was suppressed. The ruling is not binding.
  • Hill called the system indiscriminate mass surveillance because it records every vehicle that passes a camera.
  • Sanders introduced a bill on Friday that would bar federal agencies from using this kind of plate reader. The query steps are not included.