Some people misunderstand my problem with Flock and all of the other surveillance we have been talking about. The cameras aren’t the violation. It’s the infinite, searchable database that SCOTUS has held in regards to Geofencing and cellular location data that violates the 4th Amendment.
The moment a government agent can type in my plates or other identifying information into a query and get hits on everywhere I’ve traveled, that constitutes a search under the 4th amendment and requires a warrant. The Supreme Court agrees with me on this one.
The Supreme Court has already ruled on this in three different cases. SCOTUS ruled in Carpenter v. US (2018) that a person does not “surrender Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into the public sphere.”
The 2018 Supreme Court decision regarding the expectation of privacy is the landmark case Carpenter v. United States. In a 5-4 ruling, the Court held that individuals maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy in their physical movements and location history, even when that data is collected and stored by third-party wireless carriers (Cell-Site Location Information, or CSLI). The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, determined that the government’s warrantless acquisition of historical CSLI constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment and generally requires a warrant supported by probable cause.
United States v. Jones (2012) and Chatrie v. United States (2026) significantly limit law enforcement’s ability to use movement data without judicial oversight. In Jones, the Supreme Court held that attaching a GPS tracking device to a suspect’s vehicle and monitoring the vehicle’s movements constitutes a Fourth Amendment search, generally requiring a warrant. The Court recognized that prolonged electronic tracking reveals detailed information about a person’s private life and therefore implicates constitutional privacy protections.
Building on that principle, Chatrie held that police access to digital location data through a geofence warrant is also a Fourth Amendment search because individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell phone location information. The Court concluded that law enforcement cannot use broad geofence warrants to identify everyone present near a crime scene without satisfying the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of probable cause and particularity. Together, Jones and Chatrie establish that both physical GPS tracking and the collection of digital movement data generally require a warrant, reflecting the Court’s recognition that modern location-tracking technologies can reveal the “whole of a person’s physical movements” and therefore deserve strong constitutional protection.
The unlikely pairing of Alito and Sotomayor have both written how long term electronic monitoring and databases raise serious privacy concerns.
Following the line of reasoning in those three cases leads to the conclusion you can’t collect my cellphone location data without a warrant (Carpenter). You can’t collect my google location data without a warrant (Chatrie), and you can’t collect my OnStar or other GPS data without a warrant (Jones).
The idea that law enforcement believes that in spite of these three rulings from SCOTUS, they can erect a network of camera surveillance to track the movements of everyone, everywhere, at all times and store it into database that they can search without a warrant is absurd and is antithetical to a free people.
25 Comments
ghostsniper · July 13, 2026 at 6:26 am
“The cameras aren’t the violation.”
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Yes they are.
You don’t get to *capture my image* and then use it for your own purposes.
If you capture my image and store it digitally it is perpetually available for misuse.
Now, since the cameras are everywhere, if the capturer wants to compensate me, on a 5 year basis, for the potential use of my image, I can provide contact information for forwarding the $5,000.00 tax free cashiers check. During that 5 year period I promise to not paintball any camera’s.
Joe Blow · July 13, 2026 at 8:19 am
I agree with Ghostsniper, sorry DM. I see your point, but the original infraction against our rights is the city/municipality that purchased and installed the camera, then gave access to the data it generates, to police and law enforcement. After that, they’re just being good cops (use whatever tools are available to you).
The political party swears an oath to uphold the Constitution as a part of their job (even if it’s just in fine-print on one of the doc’s HR makes you sign on day-1). They are the ones using our money, to purchase items that violate our rights, w/o express consent (and it is very much not implied, either, based on the popular resistance we’re seeing). That’s where the infraction occurs. All the other stuff is also in-fact pernicious and illegal, but as it is down-stream from the camera itself – targe the root cause. If the camera’s aren’t there, the geo-fencing and other data they capture doesn’t exist either.
Divemedic · July 13, 2026 at 8:50 am
I dont see a camera that photographs you in public as an infringement. A photo by itself only becomes an infringement if it’s taken of you in a place where you expect privacy, like your home or a dressing room or bathroom. Unless you want to make people get written releases from everyone in a cell phone photo taken on the street.
Divemedic · July 13, 2026 at 8:25 am
I have to disagree with you there. If you are in public and someone snaps your picture, that’s one thing. Whatever. I have a dashcam that takes pictures of other people every time I drive. To do otherwise would make all security cameras illegal.
What makes this disturbing, and unconstitutional in my mind, is keeping a database of everyone who passes in front of that camera, innocent or not. That turns an incidental image into a deliberate Intrusion into people’s private lives.
ghostsniper · July 13, 2026 at 11:18 am
If you take a picture of your wife in a restaurant, and I happen to be in the background, no problem. If you point your camera at me and take my picture you might get a chair in the face. See where this is going?
Intent.
Just because the camera is in a “public” place doesn’t give the user permission to store the captured images for future use.
Anyway, this turkey is already out of the pen and will never go back, so I suspect the market will come up with ways for average people to thwart the cameras.
As a friend from Czechoslovakia in the 1960’s once told me, “When the rules get tougher the people get sneakier.”
Divemedic · July 13, 2026 at 12:50 pm
Thats tough to make a rule for. I take a picture of my parking lot. If you and your car happen to be in the parking lot at the time? How can you determine a photographer’s intent?
If you are at the beach, is that guy over there with the camera taking pictures of your wife, or the pretty sunset behind her?
Giving someone a chair in the face for taking a picture is a good way to wind up in jail or shot.
G-man · July 16, 2026 at 7:22 am
“How can you determine a photographer’s intent?” – The intent of the surveillance camera photograph is to identify every car in the photo, and via the bluetooth other EMF sniffers in the hardware, to associate everyone in that car with that trip, so they can be searched against. Without a hardware-level protocol which has a specified list of cars that the department is looking for, which every single photo is checked against, the retention of that photo becomes de facto surveillance.
Process needs to look like:
Take the picture.
ID the vehicles
If no vehicles match the existing BOLO list HARD DELETE that photo.
Have a new car to add to the BOLO list? Send it out and the cameras start looking AFTER there’s a legitimate, blockchain locked, traceable and auditable law enforcement investigative reason, with an attached warrant or court order (Amber alert? Silver Alert?… has to be trackable). A company can retain the footage from their own security cameras for as long as they want. But the government can’t retain, or pay to have a third party retain, photos that amount to surveillance footage of everybody, everywhere, all the time. Public spaces belong to the public, not the government. I think this is physically doable from a hardware and software perspective. The ability to track movements across an area amounts to actual surveillance, because if they can go back and look after the fact, they were, in fact, surveilling during the period before the warrant. That IS a violation of the 4th Amendment. Period.
Divemedic · July 16, 2026 at 3:55 pm
That brings us back to my point- it isn’t the camera that is the issue. It’s the database. Any database that contains facts about someone should require a warrant to access. You are also right in that the government shouldn’t be able to coopt a third party into violating your rights, any more than they should be able to hire a burglar to break into your house and search it.
oldvet50 · July 13, 2026 at 7:18 am
I still can’t understand why this is where you draw the line. We’ve had unreasonable search and seizure for years. A DUI checkpoint is the most glaring violation. Even if you are waved through, they have already held you up and could possibly have made you late for some minor emergency. I guess if you don’t drive or ride by car, it won’t affect you. The most egregious by far is the TSA checkpoint that amounts to a strip search, mostly virtual but sometimes physical – just for the privelege of traveling by air (for now). If it bothers someone that much, burner phones are still available that can be tracked, but not tied back to any individual (when purchased with cash).
Divemedic · July 13, 2026 at 8:34 am
Search for DUI, TSA, Patriot act, or any other term. I guarantee that those have all been discussed many times over the 19 years of this blog.
Tom235 · July 13, 2026 at 7:50 am
The process is the punishment. So the Supreme Court made a ruling. If local police ignore the ruling, you get arrested and hauled to court. Even if you are judged not guilty (no one is “innocent”), you’ve had your life disrupted by the process. If the lower court decides to agree with the local prosecutor, you can appeal – with more disruption. Again, it’s the process. Doesn’t matter if you’re guilty or not, you’ve been punished.
Divemedic · July 13, 2026 at 8:40 am
Not guilty *is* innocent. We are innocent until proven guilty. A not guilty verdict means guilt isn’t proven, thus innocence. A minor but very important difference.
And yes, I agree that the process is the punishment.
J J · July 13, 2026 at 8:12 am
The biggest issue with anything that SCOTUS rules is that local law enforcement and the judiciary they deal with to obtain warrants don’t care about your privacy.
A class action suit against Flock should be filed for 4th Amendment violations on a massive scale.
Divemedic · July 13, 2026 at 8:43 am
Thats a hole in our system, as far as i am concerned. Flock, and the government maintain Flock can’t violate rights because 4A only applies to government.
It’s the same way that cops hire burglars to break into houses and report on what they see.
Steve · July 13, 2026 at 10:31 am
Or even worse, partner with criminals as “confidential informants”.
See: The FBI and Whitey Bulger. The two were partners in crime in the Boston area for years, until the FBI “running” Bulger retired.
You referenced your brother’s experience in a previous post. I think both the criminal and the cops (FBI) should have gone to prison, but ‘qualified immunity’ allows them to escape consequences.
JimmyPx · July 13, 2026 at 8:39 am
Good article, in addition Border Patrol now can and will randomly pick people and force you to unlock your phone and electronic devices and go through them when you enter or re-enter the country.
Besides a massive violation of your 4th amendment rights, they have arrested and convicted people saying they found “kiddy porn”. Maybe they did but if someone has my device, they could plant anything and frame you and you WILL be going to jail and your life ruined.
Oh and someone mentioned burner phones, there is a bill in Congress right now to make those illegal.
The point is do you want to live in a police state or not ??
I most certainly do NOT !!
TRX · July 13, 2026 at 10:27 am
They don’t need a warrant if the information is voluntarily given. Verizon will give call data to any ‘legitimate’ law enforcement agency without needing a warrant. And United Parcel Service will happily open packages the FBI is interested in, and report on the contents. Both of those have hit national news more than once. And the FBI simply purchases location and other data from ‘data brokers’, both privately and as a function of its “fusion centers”, which are private-but-not-really intelligence shops that the courts have agreed totally aren’t law enforcement.
Divemedic · July 13, 2026 at 11:03 am
Again, thats NOT what SCOTUS had to say. I refer you to the three cases listed in the post. Carpenter in particular addressed that. In a 5-4 ruling, the Court held that individuals maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy in their physical movements and location history, even when that data is collected and stored by third-party wireless carriers
Tom Hyland · July 13, 2026 at 11:02 am
Here’s a whole durn article about flock cameras and the history of authoritarians whose mission was to create criminals. This will raise your blood pressure.
https://wilderwealthywise.com/the-economics-of-the-surveillance-state/
Paddy O'Furniture · July 13, 2026 at 12:25 pm
Geezo take the L dude you are completely and utterly wrong. All components of the total control grid they are right now continuing to construct need to be destroyed. Period.
what is it about 100% totalitarianism don’t you get?
Divemedic · July 13, 2026 at 12:53 pm
So how do you write a law for that? All cameras illegal? What about your neighbor’s security camera? The one in the grocery store parking lot?
Again, how do you write that rule?
ghostsniper · July 13, 2026 at 6:38 pm
“Again, how do you write that rule?”
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We don’t. We graciously and willingly pay huge bux to the anointed few to do that chore for us. /sarc
Seriously though, it seems like us citizens are always in the catch up phase. The tyrants at the top invent a new way to piss us off whether we like it or not, and then we have to figure out ways to make them stop or undo what they did. It all becomes so tiresome when we just want to work and live our best lives, just like they do. Invariably we keep ending up with the short end no matter what we do.
I enjoy discussing these things, especially when they don’t descend into pissing contests, because they make me think and I learn stuff, but I’ve long realized that there is probably nothing I can do about any of it. I can’t change others but I can change me, so I do. See my previous comment from the Czech’s.
Divemedic · July 13, 2026 at 8:59 pm
I agree. That’s why I work to make this a place where ideas are discussed without name calling.
Tom Hyland · July 14, 2026 at 8:29 am
This Gateway Pundit article is a focus on what happens when Flock cameras fail to transmit correct information and “cop brain” kicks in because arresting people is fun and exciting.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/07/auto-journalist-swarmed-cops-flock-cameras-mistakenly-flag/
Big Daddy · July 15, 2026 at 8:21 pm
The system already knows who the criminals are and chooses to do very little about it.
Flock and whatever surveillance technology that is coming next do not exist to find actual criminals. Yes, they are used that way some. But for the most part they’re used to surveil citizens that are going about their day.
The system would like to find some White people doing things they can get charged with so they don’t get called racist like they do when they lock up negroid criminals. This is just one way to do it.
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