Federal judge says Flock search violated Fourth Amendment rights

The ruling could make warrantless use of Flock’s plate database harder to defend in court and may weaken evidence gathered from similar searches.

A federal judge in Oklahoma said a Tulsa sheriff’s deputy violated a woman’s Fourth Amendment rights by querying Flock Safety’s license-plate network without a warrant, making the ruling one of the earliest federal decisions to treat a Flock search as unconstitutional. Judge Sara Hill said the deputy lacked a proper basis for the search and that evidence found afterward should be excluded. She also described the system as a form of indiscriminate mass surveillance because it lets police retrieve location histories from networked cameras on demand. The decision lands amid rising political pressure on Flock, with some state and local governments ending use of the system, Senator Bernie Sanders proposing the Block Flock Act, and reports that Flock has offered voluntary buyouts to reduce headcount.