Fourth Amendment

No Warrant, No Suspicion, No Problem: Flock and Border Cellphone Searches Excluded From 4th Amendment Rules

Cops keep carving out tech exceptions to the Fourth Amendment—and courts are giving them their blessing.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown | 9.21.2026 11:30 AM

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(Illustration: Charles McClintock Wilson/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom/Ivra00/Dreamstime/Midjourney)

Part of the bedrock of American civil liberties is the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches. There is no right to privacy, and no due process in the justice system, without that. But immigration authorities, cops, and courts keep deciding that, for some reason, the Fourth Amendment just doesn't apply where new technology is concerned.

Case in point: A federal court just held that authorities searching automated license plate reader systems such as Flock doesn't count as a search for Fourth Amendment purposes.

That means: no warrant necessary. No probable cause necessary. Cops can search Flock networks with "LOL" or "LMAO" as the reason, and it's fine.

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Combine this with another recent federal court ruling—this one upholding warrantless and suspicion-free searches of cellphones at the border—and we're making a mockery of the Fourth Amendment, which says that Americans shall not be subject to "unreasonable searches and seizures" of their "persons, houses, papers, and effects." For such a search to be constitutional, authorities must obtain a warrant that's based on probable cause and describes........

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