Federal Judge Labels Flock Safety 'Mass Surveillance'
Original: Federal judge calls Flock ‘indiscriminate mass surveillance’
Why This Matters
Court rulings on warrantless plate tracking could reshape law enforcement data practices nationwide.
A federal judge ruled a Tulsa deputy violated Fourth Amendment rights by using Flock Safety's license plate database without a warrant, calling the system 'indiscriminate mass surveillance' in a potentially precedent-setting opinion.
Judge Sara Hill of a federal court ruled this week that a Tulsa, Oklahoma sheriff's deputy violated a woman's Fourth Amendment rights by searching Flock Safety's license plate database without a warrant. The deputy's stated reason for the search was simply that the vehicle had a California plate. He then used the woman's travel history pulled from Flock to justify searching her car, where he allegedly found 91 pounds of meth. Hill ordered all evidence suppressed as 'fruit of a poisonous tree.'
The ruling is not binding precedent, but it marks one of the first times a federal judge has directly called a Flock search unconstitutional. Hill wrote that tracking people in public becomes 'constitutionally problematic when law enforcement can indiscriminately and passively catalog your whereabouts over an extended period of time.' She described Flock as broader in scope than the Supreme Court's Carpenter v. United States case — it sweeps up everyone, not just a targeted individual.
Political pressure on Flock is mounting from multiple directions. Florida and Texas have moved to drop the technology. Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Block Flock Act to bar federal agencies from using automated license plate readers. Flock CEO Garretty Langley has proposed a 'compromise' on privacy and apologized for cases where officers used the system to stalk women. The company has also reportedly offered employee buyouts amid a wave of cancellations.