Wherever Marci Bakely went, her ex-boyfriend appeared to know. When the Georgia single mom drove to the grocery retailer or a date, he typically texted inside minutes.
In response to a Washington Post investigation, Bakely’s ex-boyfriend, Braselton Police Chief Michael Steffman, searched her license plates and people of her teenage daughter roughly 600 instances by way of Flock Security, an organization that makes and operates networks of automated license plate readers, or ALPRs.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested Steffman in November 2025 on expenses of stalking, harassment, and misuse of an ALPR. He was found dead earlier than trial.
Bakely’s case is not unique. The Submit recognized no less than 50 officers accused of misusing ALPRs, together with 26 who used Flock’s cameras to spy on present or former companions or individuals they hoped to fulfill. Its investigation has since recognized at least 100 police department employees charged with or accused of misuse.
Flock says these individuals signify a tiny share of its more than 140,000 monthly users and that everlasting audit logs assist uncover misconduct.
However these abuses required no hacking or stolen credentials. Every person walked by way of the entrance door.
I’m a scholar of criminal procedure and I direct a school devoted to forensics. I consider the controversy over ALPRs factors to a defect within the surveillance system’s structure, not simply the criminality of a few of its customers.
A search engine for actions
Flock cameras capture a vehicle’s plate, location, and distinguishing marks down to dents or a bumper sticker. AI can sort license plate photographs by date taken. Police departments throughout the community can then conduct searches with out warrants or supervisory approval.
In September 2026, information shops Wired and 404 Media analyzed data that hackers had copied from one Flock camera. About 21 days of logs contained roughly 50,200 autos and 1.6 million pictures. The software program detected individuals and bicycles, and it even remoted an American flag patch on a motorcyclist’s saddlebag. Flock mentioned it lacked sufficient data to evaluate the hackers’ technical claims about safety vulnerabilities within the digital camera.
Flock says prospects control their data, but a division that leaves sharing enabled could not know who’s wanting. In 2025, U.S. Customs and Border Protection accessed more than 80,000 cameras throughout an undisclosed nationwide vehicle-tracking pilot, together with one police division’s cameras with out its data.
Logs document misconduct solely after it occurs, and provided that somebody reads them. Indianapolis police didn’t frequently audit Flock searches till The Washington Submit flagged 1000’s of questionable inquiries by one officer. A systemwide audit discovered alleged misuse by 4 extra officers. Different police departments likewise learned of officers’ misuse from reporters.
Flock’s August 2026 changes shorten advisable information retention from 30 days to 7 days and require misuse detection and case codes to document searches. However prospects could retain information longer, emergencies could bypass case codes, and getting into a case quantity might be executed with out judicial approval.
Examples of person overreach
Flock’s structure turns native cameras right into a cross-jurisdictional surveillance community that companies that by no means bought the cameras could question.
Public records from Danville, Illinois, revealed greater than 4,000 searches by federal companies, together with some with a possible immigration-enforcement focus, though U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had no Flock contract.
A 2026 examine equally discovered 11,935 immigration-related searches in partial information from eight school police departments. Federal immigration companies typically accessed campus digital camera information with out campus officers’ data.
The community additionally permits searches in different legally contested areas. In Could 2025, a Texas sheriff’s workplace searched more than 83,000 cameras for a lady who had self-managed an abortion. The logged purpose was “had an abortion, seek for feminine.” The search reached Illinois, the place state law forbids sharing plate data to implement one other state’s abortion ban. The sheriff known as it a welfare check. Regardless of the motive, one deputy triggered a nationwide dragnet with out unbiased assessment.
These examples mirror greater than particular person misuse. The platform makes the cameras straightforward to make use of by a second occasion, tough to watch, and arduous to manage as soon as native cameras are linked.
Why the Fourth Modification issues
The regulation stays unsettled on ALPR use.
In October 2025, a Virginia appeals court docket held that police officers needed no warrant to retrieve three pictures spanning seven minutes from Norfolk’s 172-camera community as a result of they confirmed autos, not individuals. However later findings about Flock’s people-detection capabilities weaken that distinction. Evaluation of the hacked digital camera confirmed that its software program may determine an individual and document that particular person’s location inside a picture.
In January 2026, a federal judge held that Norfolk’s then-176-camera community didn’t violate Fourth Amendment protections. The system didn’t seize anybody’s whole actions, the court docket reasoned, though it photographed two plaintiffs’ autos 475 and 325 instances over 4 and a half months. The ruling is being appealed.
In 2018 the Supreme Court docket held in Carpenter v. United States that buying seven days of historic cellphone location information typically requires a warrant as a result of they’ll reconstruct somebody’s previous actions. Flock’s structure raises a associated however unresolved query: Its database can even reconstruct actions, but cops could search it and not using a warrant.
Each Norfolk rulings predate the Supreme Court docket’s June 2026 resolution in Chatrie v. United States, which held that police performed a search underneath the Fourth Modification once they obtained two hours of saved Google location historical past. The court docket didn’t determine whether or not the search was lawful. As a substitute, it returned the case to the decrease court docket to find out whether or not the warrant happy the Fourth Modification’s necessities.
That didn’t make the entry routinely unconstitutional: The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches, not all searches. However the police typically want a warrant supported by possible trigger as soon as their conduct is classed as a search.
The Chatrie resolution distinguished autos uncovered to public view from phone-location information that may observe somebody into a house or different delicate place. Nevertheless it additionally expressed concern about complete archives that may be searched retroactively. A license plate reader community can create an analogous archive of a driver’s public actions.
The constitutional query in Norfolk, subsequently, turns not solely on the seven minutes retrieved, but additionally on the surveillance energy of the 172-camera community.
Enforceable limits
The Indianapolis instances expose the boundaries of inner controls in Flock’s system. Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said many proposed guardrails wouldn’t have prevented the conduct. He pointed to the necessity for unbiased or judicial oversight.
I consider 5 safeguards may protect Flock’s benefits whereas curbing abuse:
- Judicial authorization for retrospective regional or nationwide searches based mostly on individualized suspicion, ideally a probable-cause warrant, with an emergency exception.
- Technical entry controls limiting immigration and reproductive-health searches.
- Deletion of knowledge after a short period.
- Opt-in interstate data sharing, moderately than by default.
- Independent audits of search logs and machine safety.
Flock’s new safeguards present that the corporate concedes that design issues, however non-public settings can’t substitute for legal guidelines. It’s not a matter of creating certain officers observe the principles. It’s about creating enforceable limits.
Henry F. Fradella is a professor of criminology and prison justice at Arizona State University.
This text is republished from The Conversation underneath a Inventive Commons license. Learn the original article.
