A federal judge has ruled that warrantless searches of Flock Safety's automated license plate reader system constitute unconstitutional indiscriminate mass surveillance, marking one of the first times a federal judge has found such searches to violate the Fourth Amendment. The ruling came in a case involving Tulsa County Deputy Sheriff Freddie Alaniz, who searched Melisa Kyle's license plate in Flock's system simply because her vehicle had a California license plate, then used her travel history from the system to justify searching her car where he allegedly discovered 91 pounds of methamphetamine. Judge Sara Hill of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma determined that the deputy's use of Flock's automated license plate reader (ALPR) system was an unconstitutional warrantless search not supported by probable cause, writing that all evidence obtained after the Flock search 'must be suppressed as the fruit of a poisonous tree.' Judge Hill's decision went beyond the specific case to address broader concerns about the technology, stating that tracking people's location—even when they're in public places—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.' She explicitly characterized this as 'a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance,' contrasting it with the Supreme Court's Carpenter v. United States decision which focused on targeted access to location data from cell phones. According to the judge, Flock 'is a tool that collects information about all vehicles that pass by any network-connected camera at all times, and it serves up the information to law enforcement on demand.' The ruling highlights significant privacy implications given the scale of Flock's use, with audit logs viewed by 404 Media showing more than a hundred thousand warrantless searches of the Flock system every month. While Judge Hill's decision does not set a binding precedent, it comes amid growing criticism of the technology from across the political spectrum. Numerous local and state governments, including Florida and Texas, have said they will stop using Flock, and Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced the Block Flock Act which would bar federal agencies from using automated license plate readers such as Flock. Flock CEO Garretty Langley has responded by calling for a 'compromise' between privacy and safety and offering apologies to women who have been stalked by law enforcement officers using the system, with the company reportedly offering voluntary employee buyouts amid workforce reductions. The case underscores ongoing tensions between law enforcement capabilities and constitutional privacy protections in an era of widespread surveillance technology deployment.