Do Flocks Mock the Law or Rock the Baby?

Letter to Ephesians: A Florida woman recently gave tearful testimony over being placed for 3 days in solitary confinement by police after Flock cameras falsely connected her car & plates to a fatal hit & run crime scene. But aren’t Flocks innocent until proven guilty too?

Those Congressional hearings & horror stories aside, an earlier Fox News story had quoted Mark Beall, ex-Pentagon AI chief, warning how the unfettered & growing use of Flock cameras could “create a China-like surveillance state” in the US. While conceding the technology can have “vital” law enforcement benefits, “clear rules & judicial oversight are first needed to protect Americans’ rights.” Yet, Flock & its advocates worry the sudden outcry against the Flock/ALPR technology is overstated & threatens to proverbially throw the baby out with the bath water; some point to various court decisions in which Flock usage has survived constitutional challenge. As Beall suggested, the larger unresolved legal issue may not just be whether police may capture the info, but whether & under what rules they may use Flock technology to search, aggregate, retain & share it.

It’s true the current case law from various jurisdictions has been consistent in holding that a single Flock/ALPR system photo of a vehicle license plate on a public road does not, by itself, constitute a 4^th Amendment “search,” let alone an unconstitutional one. On the other hand, as the Congressional critics have observed, the technology itself may be constitutionally permissible, but a particular police search, data-sharing practice, retention policy or investigative implementation may not. As the ACLU’s Institute for Justice has told Congress, it has catalogued over 200 incidents of alleged ALPR abuse, e.g., stalking, wrongful stops & even worse detentions, as in the Florida woman’s case. And what about all those reports in which statutory or departmental restrictions are allegedly stretched or even ignored governing what police can do with the aggregated & shared information once they obtain it? At what point, then, is the constitutional line crossed? We’ll undoubtedly know if/when baby gets spanked in court.

 Davd Soul