Federal Judge Calls Warrantless Flock Search ‘Indiscriminate Mass Surveillance’

A federal judge ruled that a Tulsa, Oklahoma sheriff’s deputy violated a woman’s Fourth Amendment rights by using Flock Safety to search for her license plate without a warrant. Judge Sara Hill said the deputy had “no apparent reason” for the search other than the vehicle’s California license plate. TechCrunch notes the ruling does not create binding precedent, but says it is one of the first federal rulings finding a Flock search unconstitutional.

The deputy used the woman’s travel history in Flock as part of the justification for searching her car, where he allegedly discovered 91 pounds of meth. Judge Hill wrote that evidence obtained after the Flock search “must be suppressed as the fruit of a poisonous tree.” The takeaway for law enforcement agencies is direct: database access can become legally vulnerable when it substitutes for a warrant-supported investigation.

Judge Hill warned that tracking people’s location in public can become constitutionally problematic when law enforcement can passively catalog whereabouts over time and retrieve that information later. She described Flock as a tool that gathers information about vehicles passing network-connected cameras and makes it available to law enforcement on demand. Her language frames the issue as broader than a single search: it is about whether automated location databases need stronger legal guardrails.

The ruling lands amid growing scrutiny of Flock from local, state, and federal officials. TechCrunch reports that Florida and Texas have said they will stop using the technology, while Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Block Flock Act to bar federal agencies from using automated license plate readers such as Flock. Flock CEO Garretty Langley has called for a “compromise” between privacy and safety and apologized to women who have been stalked by law enforcement officers using the Flock system.