A Tulsa judge blocked evidence from a warrantless Flock database search, calling the technology indiscriminate mass surveillance and joining growing calls to restrict ALPR systems.
By Adam Makins·
A federal judge in Oklahoma has dealt a significant blow to Flock Safety, one of the fastest-growing automated license plate reader companies. Judge Sara Hill ruled this week that a Tulsa sheriff’s deputy violated a woman’s Fourth Amendment rights by searching the Flock database for her license plate without a warrant.
While this ruling doesn’t create binding precedent across the country, it marks one of the first times a federal judge has declared a Flock search unconstitutional. The case centered on a deputy who searched for the woman’s vehicle simply because it had a California license plate. Judge Hill found this reason insufficient and ordered all evidence obtained from the warrantless search suppressed.
The deputy had then used the woman’s travel history from Flock to justify searching her vehicle, where they allegedly found 91 pounds of methamphetamine. But because that evidence stemmed from an unconstitutional search, it became what legal experts call “fruit of the poisonous tree” and had to be excluded.
Judge Hill’s language went well beyond the immediate case. She wrote that tracking people’s location through Flock 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.”
She explicitly called Flock “a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance.” Unlike targeted surveillance focused on specific suspects, Flock collects data on every vehicle passing any network-connected camera at all times. Law enforcement can then access this information on demand. This distinction matters legally and philosophically. The judge noted that Flock differs fundamentally from cases like Carpenter v. United States, which dealt with targeted cell phone location data.
The concerns about privacy aren’t coming from one ideological corner either. A growing chorus of critics spans the political spectrum, from local governments in Florida and Texas to Senator Bernie Sanders, who introduced the Block Flock Act this week to bar federal agencies from using automated license plate readers.
Flock is feeling the heat. CEO Garretty Langley has called for a “compromise” between privacy and safety and apologized to women stalked by law enforcement using Flock. The company has also offered voluntary employee buyouts as government contracts evaporate.
Langley will appear on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt to discuss these challenges, and it’s hard to imagine that conversation won’t be tense. The company built its business on what seemed like a win-win: helping law enforcement solve crimes while providing data to private customers. But the Oklahoma ruling suggests courts may disagree that the tradeoff is constitutional.
This ruling could open the floodgates. Defense attorneys across the country will cite Judge Hill’s decision in motions to suppress Flock evidence. State legislatures facing constituent backlash about surveillance will feel emboldened to restrict ALPR technology. And companies building tech solutions for law enforcement will need to think harder about constitutional guardrails.
The fundamental tension remains unresolved: Can legal systems effectively prevent crime without conducting mass surveillance? Judge Hill says no, at least not through systems that catalog everyone’s movements indiscriminately. Whether appellate courts and other judges agree will determine whether Flock survives as a business or becomes a cautionary tale about scaling too fast without building in constitutional protections.
As reported by 404 Media
What happens when the convenience of surveillance outweighs the constitutional right to move through public without constant documentation?
