Chatrie v. United States and What it Means for Flock Cameras

In a ruling that could send ripples through Fourth Amendment law for years to come, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Chatrie v. United States (2026) that law enforcement does indeed conduct a Fourth Amendment search when obtaining a citizen’s location history from a tech company (in this case, Google) via a geofence warrant. Building on the precedent set in Carpenter v. United States (2018), the Court ruled that individuals retain a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell phone location history. SCOTUS rejected the government’s argument that a short window of surveillance (in this case, two hours) does not constitute a search, and held that even brief periods of tracking can reveal constitutionally protected personal details.

“Everything Carpenter relied on to find that law enforcement officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they accessed cell site location information applies as well or better to the police’s accessing of Location History data,” said Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority. “Where the Amendment applies, it applies regardless of the quality or quantity of information,” she added.

Justice Neil Gorsuch reached the same conclusion against the state and emphasized that location records constitute a person’s personal property. “Cell-phone location data forms part of an individual’s private ‘effects’ under the Fourth Amendment, which the government cannot commandeer from third parties without a valid warrant,” argued Gorsuch.

The two issues are not exactly comparing apples to apples, but it does not take a Fourth Amendment scholar to predict that governments employing automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) provided by Flock Safety, among other companies, will come under similar legal scrutiny. ALPRs use high speed optical and infrared cameras to log citizens’ plates, vehicle “footprints,” and timestamps. The state has long relied on the traditional “plain view” doctrine, meaning law enforcement can seize illegal items or evidence without a warrant if those items are clearly visible. The Court ruled that a cell phone user’s location data is constitutionally protected, and Flock cameras have the potential to go several steps further than geofence warrants. Using ALPRs, police have the ability to input a license plate number or vehicle description in order to reconstruct past movements across a grid. Chatrie directly undercuts (and Justice Kagan explicitly rejected) the argument by proponents of Flock Safety that querying ALPR data for a short time, or a single incident, does not violate the Fourth Amendment.

Friedrich Hayek warned that centralized institutions cannot successfully manage an economy (or a society) because vital information is dispersed among millions of individuals, and that attempting to concentrate that knowledge into a single authority results in disaster. There are other obvious and predictable byproducts of a technology like Flock Safety. Independent Institute’s Jonathan Hofer pointed out that many security vulnerabilities have been discovered in Flock Safety products. Several of Flock’s new AI-powered “Condor” cameras were found broadcasting both live and archived footage directly to the open internet.

The issue of constitutionality aside, there is also the human element. Former National Security Agency intelligence contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden warned, among other things, that NSA analysts routinely shared intercepted, sexually explicit images of private citizens, calling it a “fringe benefit” of their jobs. Predictably, ALPRs such as Flock invite similar behavior. Milwaukee Police Officer Josue Ayala was criminally charged after using his department’s Flock ALPR system more than 170 times over two months to track the location of a woman he was dating, as well as the movements of her ex-boyfriend. Ironically, Officer Tehrangi Chapman, who was tasked with investigating Ayala, was charged with misconduct for using the exact same technology to track people in his own personal life. At least twenty to thirty law enforcement officers have been fired, arrested, or criminally charged for misusing Flock Safety databases.

The landmark decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022) opened up the floodgates on gun rights. Several decisions since have strengthened Second Amendment rights, including Garland v. Cargill (2024), which struck down the ban on “bump stocks” and Wolford v. Lopez (2026), which overturned Hawaii’s default no-carry law. The Court agreed to hear challenges to so-called “assault weapons bans” in Cook County, Illinois and Connecticut in the 2026/2027 session. Considering the implications of Chatrie, and the widespread public dissatisfaction with services such as Flock, it is possible that we could see the Roberts Court issue as robust a defense of the Fourth Amendment as their defense of the Second.