A federal judge ruled that a deputy violated the Fourth Amendment by searching a driver’s historical vehicle-location records without a warrant through license plate reader systems, including Flock Safety.
U.S. District Judge Sara E. Hill of the Northern District of Oklahoma issued the 38-page ruling Thursday in United States v. Melisa Susan Kyle. She ordered prosecutors to exclude all evidence officers obtained after the deputy initiated the search.
Federal prosecutors charged Kyle with possessing more than 500 grams of methamphetamine with intent to distribute. Hill’s October 1 order addressed how officers obtained evidence, not whether Kyle committed the alleged offense.
Deputy searched a month of vehicle records
Tulsa County Deputy Sheriff Freddie Alaniz began following a Mazda SUV “for no apparent reason other than” its California license plate and queried Flock, Hill wrote.
Alaniz had access to Flock and VehicleManager, systems that collect license plates and record when and where cameras capture vehicles. His searches yielded more than 50 location records across multiple states covering an entire month, the judge found.
Kyle told Alaniz the SUV was a rental. The records tracked the vehicle, rather than independently establishing who drove it at every sighting.
“This is a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance,” Hill wrote.
Alaniz later stopped Kyle for traffic violations. Hill upheld the initial stop but separately found that he lacked reasonable suspicion to prolong it for a drug investigation.
The government argued that drivers have no reasonable expectation of privacy in license plates and movements visible on public roads. Hill distinguished those individual observations from a broad database search of historical movements.
Drawing on Supreme Court decisions involving digital location records, Hill concluded that the search intruded on Kyle’s reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of her physical movements. Alaniz had neither probable cause nor a warrant, she found.
Flock spokesman Paris Lewbel said the company expects an appeal and reversal, The Washington Post reported.
Different precedent applies in Texas
Hill’s decision does not ban Flock cameras or bind federal courts in Texas.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled March 17 in United States v. Porter that the license plate reader use in that case did not constitute a Fourth Amendment search and required no warrant. The circuit covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
That case arose in Gautier, Mississippi, where an officer received an alert for a vehicle associated with a man wanted on an aggravated assault warrant. The officer estimated the city had no more than 10 cameras.
The Fifth Circuit emphasized that the system provided periodic vehicle sightings and substantially less comprehensive information than cellphone location records. Hill’s ruling involved a month of records across multiple states. Her decision does not override Fifth Circuit precedent.
Dallas cameras remain in use
Dallas had moved to cancel 321 state-funded cameras while keeping more than 300 locally funded readers after Texas withdrew grant funding, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Flock subsequently granted Dallas a 90-day payment pause to keep cameras slated for removal operating, The Texas Tribune reported Friday.
DPD’s September 8 presentation listed a 365-day retention period, required an offense type, reason and case number for searches, and described weekly compliance audits.
Those safeguards do not establish whether Dallas officers conduct the same broad historical searches at issue in Kyle’s case or when they obtain warrants. The Oklahoma ruling makes no finding about DPD’s practices.
