A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled that a sheriff’s deputy violated a woman’s Fourth Amendment rights when using Flock Safety cameras to search for her license plate without a warrant.
According to 404 Media, the sheriff’s deputy searched her license plate in Flock’s automated license plate reader system because it was from California and used her travel history as part of the reason to search her car.
The woman faced accusations of meth trafficking.
“Freedom from persistent, dragnet-style surveillance while in public is not a foreign concept in our society, and it is a reasonable expectation that society already accepts,” wrote U.S. District Judge Sara Hill, a Biden appointee, according to The Hill.
NEW: A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled that police violated the Fourth Amendment by searching Flock and other license plate reader data without a warrant, accessing more than 50 records of a driver’s movements across multiple states over a month. pic.twitter.com/3DkpfQYcha
— SCOTUS Wire (@scotus_wire) October 3, 2026
404 Media has more:
The officer’s “use of the ALPR Systems was an Unconstitutional Warrantless Search,” and “was not supported by probable cause, and it was done without a warrant in violation of [the defendant’s] Fourth Amendment rights,” the judge, Sara Hill, wrote, implying that the law enforcement officer should have obtained a warrant before searching for the vehicle in Flock’s system. There are currently more than a hundred thousand warrantless searches of the Flock system every month, according to audit logs viewed by 404 Media. Hill’s decision will not set a binding precedent and there are several other cases throughout the nation considering the legality of warrantless ALPR searches.
ADVERTISEMENTHill argued that previous judge opinions saying Flock searches were not a Fourth Amendment violation because they track cars in public do not consider the context that Flock’s nationwide network is quickly “approaching dragnet-type law enforcement practice,” and that courts should update their understanding of the technology moving forward.
The circumstances of the court case are really interesting and highlight how commonplace Flock searches have become for police, and the depth of the information they can reveal. In May, a Tulsa County Deputy Sheriff named Freddie Alaniz was parked along the side of the highway in Oklahoma when he saw a Mazda SUV driven by a woman named Melisa Kyle with a California license plate pass by. “Alaniz then pulled his vehicle on the highway to follow the Mazda for no apparent reason other than the fact that it had a California license plate. Alaniz also ran a query on the Flock system for the California license plate number on the Mazda SUV,” Hill wrote. Alaniz then ostensibly pulled Kyle over for changing lanes without a turn signal.
Alaniz interrogated Kyle about her travel “while he continued to review the ALPR systems for the car she was driving,” the judge wrote. Alaniz made Kyle recount everything she had done in the last several days, and compared it to the Flock data. He told her that because she was only in California for a short period of time, he suspected her of trafficking drugs. He used her travel history as seen in the Flock system as part of the justification to search her car; she was found to have 91 pounds of meth in the vehicle. Hill ruled that all Flock evidence and all evidence from Alaniz’s search of the car must be thrown out.
“But it becomes constitutionally problematic when law enforcement can indiscriminately and passively catalog your whereabouts over an extended period of time and then use that information for any purpose whenever convenient,” Hill wrote.
A federal judge in Oklahoma said a police search of the license-plate-reader system Flock amounted to “indiscriminate mass surveillance.”
The order reflects a growing distrust of Flock, and The Post has reported dozens of cases involving police misuse. https://t.co/VHBQQdybP4
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 3, 2026
The Hill shared further:
The judge’s ruling does not label the use of Flock data to aid in arrests as illegal, rather, it clarifies that the officer in this case did not have probable cause and “intruded on her reasonable expectation of privacy” with the technology — setting stricter precedent for when law enforcement may employ extensive ALPR databases during investigations.
A spokesperson for Flock told The Hill, “The ruling goes against the overwhelming weight of authority in similar cases across the country, including multiple recent decisions in Oklahoma, and we expect it will be appealed and ultimately overturned.”
“This ruling is limited to the specific facts of this case. It does not set controlling precedent and does not affect law enforcement agencies’ continued use of these important public safety technologies,” the spokesperson added.
ALPR technology has faced bipartisan pushback.
Two Republican governors — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — made moves over the past two months to limit the technology’s use in their respective states. A growing number of municipalities have also ended contracts with Flock.
ADVERTISEMENTSens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), similarly unveiled legislation that would both prohibit federal agencies from using the AI-powered surveillance technology and pause government grant funding toward local law enforcement agencies looking to contract with ALPR manufacturers.
