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Federal Judge Rules Warrantless Flock Safety Plate Search Unconstitutional
A federal judge found that a Tulsa, Oklahoma sheriff's deputy violated a woman's Fourth Amendment rights by querying Flock Safety's license plate network without a warrant, and suppressed the evidence that followed.
Judge Sara Hill concluded that the deputy should have secured a warrant before running the woman's plate through the Flock database, writing that he had "no apparent reason" for the search "other than the fact that [the woman's vehicle] had a California license plate."
The deputy subsequently relied on the woman's travel history stored in Flock as part of his justification for searching her car, where he allegedly discovered 91 pounds of methamphetamine. Hill ruled that the evidence obtained after the Flock query "must be suppressed as the fruit of a poisonous tree."
The decision, issued this week, does not establish binding precedent, but it is one of the first instances of a federal judge holding that a Flock search is unconstitutional.
Hill also directed broader criticism at warrantless queries of the Flock database, noting that tracking a person's movements, even in public places, becomes constitutionally problematic when law enforcement can "indiscriminately and passively catalog your whereabouts over an extended period of time and then use that information for any purpose whenever convenient."
"This is a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance," she wrote, adding that it is "not targeted on a single individual," in contrast with the Supreme Court's reasoning in Carpenter v. United States on location data.
The case centers on Flock Safety, a company whose automated license plate recognition network is used by law enforcement agencies, and on the Fourth Amendment protections governing how such data can be searched.