Federal Judge Rules a Flock Search Was Unconstitutional

A federal judge in Oklahoma, Sara Hill, found that a police officer’s warrantless search of Flock Safety’s nationwide automated license-plate reader (ALPR) system violated the Fourth Amendment. The case arose after Tulsa County Deputy Freddie Alaniz followed Melisa Kyle because her car had a California plate, ran a Flock query, then pulled her over for a lane-change violation and interrogated her while reviewing her travel history. Alaniz used Flock’s location records - more than 50 sightings across a month - as part of the justification to search her vehicle, which yielded 91 pounds of meth. Hill ordered all Flock-derived evidence suppressed, noting audit logs show over 100,000 warrantless Flock searches monthly and concluding that pulling comprehensive historical movement data from a nationwide network is an unconstitutional, indiscriminate mass surveillance that intrudes on a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Hill rejected reliance on older precedent like United States v. Knotts, saying those cases did not account for modern, automated, networked collection, and she invoked Carpenter’s approach to digital-location privacy. Civil-rights lawyers hailed the opinion for recognizing the breadth of ALPR databases and the risk of automated pattern-flagging, while Flock, not a party to the case, said the ruling is fact-specific, expects appeal, and pointed to contrary decisions elsewhere. The opinion is influential but not yet binding, and similar challenges are pending around the country.