The Supreme Court just went after Flock Cameras whether intentionally or not #flock #geofencing

Our Take

Peter Zezas is onto something worth watching: courts don't need to mention Flock Safety by name to reshape the legal ground it stands on. ALPR dragnets have survived for years on a shaky assumption — that scanning every plate that passes a camera isn't a "search" under the Fourth Amendment because you're just driving in public. Any Supreme Court language that tightens up geofence warrant standards or narrows third-party doctrine has ripple effects on that assumption, whether the justices were thinking about license plate readers or not.

That's the pattern with surveillance law generally: the tech moves fast, the case law lags, and sometimes a ruling aimed at phone geofence warrants or cell tower data ends up doing double duty as precedent against automated plate readers nobody asked a judge about in the first place. We're not going to overstate what one video summarizes about one opinion — go watch Zezas lay out his reasoning yourself — but the bigger point stands: every crack in the "it's all public information" defense is a crack that advocates, defense attorneys, and local officials can use to push back on blanket ALPR deployment in their own towns.

None of that happens automatically. Precedent only matters if someone brings it up at a city council meeting or in a motion to suppress. If you want to know whether these cameras are already running in your area, check the map, and if you're ready to push back locally, our take-action page has the starting points.