A federal judge in Oklahoma has ruled that law enforcement crossed a constitutional line when an officer used an automated license plate reader database to search a month of a driver’s historical movements without a warrant.
The ruling came in United States v. Melisa Susan Kyle, where U.S. District Judge Sara E. Hill examined the use of automated license plate reader technology, including Flock Safety.
According to the court, the deputy searched the vehicle’s plate and gained access to more than 50 sightings across multiple states covering roughly one month.
Judge Hill found that the historical database search amounted to a search under the Fourth Amendment.
The court described the technology as a form of “indiscriminate mass surveillance” and questioned whether the government should have the ability to reconstruct where ordinary people travel simply because cameras photographed their vehicles on public roads.
Hill wrote:
“Why is it the government’s business where everyone goes all the time?”
The judge ultimately suppressed evidence obtained after the unconstitutional search began.
The ruling does not mean Flock cameras have been declared unconstitutional nationwide. It also does not prohibit police from reading license plates visible on public roads.
The constitutional issue centered on something much larger: collecting those observations, storing them, sharing them across agencies and allowing officers to search a person’s historical movements after the fact without a warrant.
That distinction is exactly where APR St Tammany has repeatedly raised concerns about Flock technology.
A camera seeing your vehicle on a public roadway is one thing.
A searchable database capable of showing where your vehicle has traveled over days or weeks is another.
The ruling is not binding on Louisiana courts, but it adds another significant federal court decision to the growing debate over how far automated license plate surveillance can go before the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant.
For St. Tammany residents, the question remains simple:
How much information about innocent people’s movements should government agencies be allowed to collect and search without judicial approval?
