404 Media reported that a federal judge in Oklahoma, Sara Hill, ruled on Thursday that a deputy broke the Fourth Amendment, which limits police searches. He had looked up a woman's license plate in Flock's camera network without a warrant. The judge found he did it only because the car had California plates. The woman, Melisa Kyle, is accused of meth trafficking. The lookup showed more than 50 records of her location over a month. He used that travel history to help justify searching her car, where 91 pounds of meth were found. Hill ordered that evidence thrown out.
The ruling is not binding precedent, 404 Media said, and other cases on warrantless plate searches are pending. Flock said it was not a party to the case. It expects an appeal and says the ruling covers only these facts. The sources do not say whether an appeal has been filed. They do not say how other courts will treat similar searches.
For people who build or buy tools that track vehicles, a federal judge has now written that searching one such network without a warrant can break the Constitution. The opinion is not binding, and Flock disputes its reach. It is still one court's reasoning on searches of large location databases.