Federal judge rules Flock violated the fourth amendment

A federal judge in Oklahoma found that police violated the Fourth Amendment by querying Flock and other automated license plate reader (ALPR) databases without a warrant, after an officer accessed more than 50 records tracking a driver’s movements across multiple states over a month. Judge Sara Hill concluded the deputy ran the database after seeing a California plate but before any evidence of criminal activity existed; she ruled the warrantless search unconstitutional and suppressed the evidence obtained from that query.

Hill’s opinion frames a month of historical plate data as “indiscriminate mass surveillance,” reasoning that Supreme Court precedent protects an individual’s privacy in the aggregate of their movements even when single movements occur in public. The court distinguished a 1983 ruling that permitted following a car on public roads, noting the Supreme Court itself left open whether different rules apply to dragnet-style surveillance; modern ALPR networks, Hill said, raise that very concern. The decision not only resolves this case by excluding the search-based evidence but also sharpens the legal debate over whether warrant protections must extend to bulk or historical license-plate tracking.