Flock cameras are an invasion of privacy. The cameras, spreading like a virus across America, are sparking outrage from the political Right and Left. They are torn down by vigilantes, targeted by politicians, and now compiled in databases for citizens to track. Legal conservatives must share the outrage. Flock’s networked automated license-plate readers (ALPRs) create a massive, retroactive, and warrantless surveillance regime irreconcilable with a faithful reading of the Fourth Amendment.
ALPR use has largely been upheld in court, but a recent case from the Supreme Court should call those rulings into question. Take, for example, a leading case against Flock ALPRs: Schmidt v. City of Norfolk. Norfolk has blanketed the city with 176 Flock cameras grouped into 75 clusters, placed so that it is “difficult to drive anywhere of any distance” without being photographed. The system uses AI to create a “Vehicle Fingerprint” of each car, storing the images in a searchable database for 21 days.…
