Flock Cameras, Carpenter, and the Fourth Amendment

Guest Opinion by Joshua McKee

Flock’s automated license plate reader network records license plates, vehicle images and characteristics, the date and time of each detection, and the location of the camera. Those individual observations can then be searched electronically. Flock currently says its standard retention period is seven days, although retention can vary and, under certain conditions, can be extended.

Flock also states that its ALPR system does not use facial recognition and does not itself identify drivers or passengers. That distinction matters. But it does not eliminate the larger constitutional question: when a known person’s vehicle is associated with that person, a network of cameras can potentially reveal where that vehicle has appeared over time.

That brings us to Carpenter v. United States (2018).

In Carpenter, the Supreme Court confronted a different technology—historical cell-site location information. But the constitutional principle is extremely important.

The government argued that the information had been collected by third parties and concerned a person’s movements through public places. The Supreme Court nevertheless held that obtaining Carpenter’s extensive historical location information constituted a Fourth Amendment search.

The Court recognized that Americans have a legitimate privacy interest in the “whole of their physical movements.” It also recognized something particularly important in the digital age: technology can allow the government to accomplish cheaply and almost instantly what previously would have required enormous manpower—secretly monitoring and cataloging someone’s movements over an extended period.

That is why large ALPR networks deserve serious constitutional scrutiny.

One camera observing your vehicle on a public road is one thing.

A searchable network capable of showing that the same vehicle appeared at Location A at 8:02 a.m., Location B at 9:17 a.m., Location C at 12:40 p.m., and Location D that evening presents a fundamentally different privacy question.

At sufficient scale, those observations can potentially reveal patterns: where someone works, where they spend their nights, the people or organizations they visit, and potentially their religious, medical, political, professional, or personal associations.

That is precisely the type of power that concerned the Supreme Court in Carpenter. The Court explained that aggregated location records can provide an extraordinarily revealing window into a person’s life.

There is also an interesting contrast with Section 702.

Section 702 is a foreign-intelligence authority. It does not authorize intentionally targeting a U.S. person under that authority, and Congress has established statutory minimization and other safeguards concerning U.S.-person information.

Yet domestic ALPR technology can potentially allow government investigators to search historical vehicle-location information about Americans under a very different legal framework.

That doesn’t mean every Flock camera or every ALPR search is unconstitutional. Carpenter did not rule on Flock, and the Supreme Court specifically described its decision as narrow and said it was not deciding the constitutionality of conventional security cameras.

But the constitutional question becomes increasingly difficult to ignore as surveillance becomes networked, searchable, retrospective, and capable of reconstructing movements over time.

Congress is now examining exactly these concerns. At a September 23, 2026 Senate hearing, lawmakers from both parties raised privacy and Fourth Amendment concerns about modern ALPR networks, while also recognizing legitimate law-enforcement uses such as finding missing people and stolen vehicles. Proposals discussed at the hearing included requiring warrants for government access to certain historical location data. 

The issue isn’t whether police should have technology.

The issue is where we draw the constitutional line.

The Fourth Amendment was written to restrain government power, not technology.

If the government wants to reconstruct the movements of an identifiable American who is not under arrest and has not consented to being tracked, there is a serious question whether accessing a comprehensive historical record of those movements should require judicial authorization based on an appropriate legal standard.

Technology has changed.

The Fourth Amendment has not.

And protecting that principle should remain completely nonpartisan.

Joshua McKee lives in Baldwin County with his wife Jennifer and their family. His life story; from a broken childhood to Special Forces leadership, is detailed in Built Without Applause. He is a Green Beret Veteran, businessman, constitutional conservative and former Alabama Congressional candidate.

Opinions do not reflect the views and opinions of ALPolitics.com. ALPolitics.com makes no claims nor assumes any responsibility for the information and opinions expressed above.