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Civil rights attorneys say a recent Supreme Court ruling in a landmark digital privacy case could put “wind in the sails” of local organizers challenging police deployment of automatic license plate readers (ALPRs). However, those organizers in cities large and small still face both a powerful industry and police departments determined to outfit their forces with the latest tech. It will take more than a single Supreme Court ruling to unravel the rapidly growing system of AI-powered mass surveillance.

The Supreme Court ruled on June 29 that so-called “geofence” requests issued by police departments to Big Tech companies for data from cellphones located within a certain geographical boundary at a specific time are considered a “search” under the Fourth Amendment. In other words, cops are supposed to get a warrant from a judge before demanding that a cellphone company hand over the location data attached to all of its users who happened to be present near the scene of an alleged crime.

While the Supreme Court did not mention ALPRs in their decision, experts say the ruling could have major implications for police searches of data gathered by cameras from surveillance companies like Flock on the street. ALPRs can identify a vehicle’s location at a specific date and time as well as make, model, color, and identifying features such as dents, roof racks, and bumper stickers, often turning these into searchable data points, according to DeFlock.org.

“The court is really focusing on the mass surveillance aspect of these technologies,” said Michael Soyfer, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, in a call with reporters on July 8 in relation to the recent ruling.

The Supreme Court case, Chatrie v. United States, stems from a 2019 robbery at a credit union and the use of smartphone data to track down a suspect. Police asked Google for location data potentially going back months or years from all the cellphones in a specific area in and around the credit union, creating the digital “geofence.” By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court sent the case back to a lower court to consider whether the geofence request complied with the Fourth Amendment, which protects individuals from “unreasonable” searches and seizures by the government.

A Vast Camera System Now Feeds Information to Police on Drivers Across the US

Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan argued that “[a]n individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cellphone’s location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information — even though for only a limited time, and from a third-party tech company.”

Soyfer reiterated Kagan’s point, stating that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy about their movements and daily routines, which can be tracked by police searching ALPR databases with powerful AI tools. Under Chatrie, defense attorneys can now argue that such searches violate the Fourth Amendment without a warrant from a judge.

“A tiny fraction of all the billions of data points these cameras capture across the country are relevant to any criminal investigation, and all of that data is held in a police database that lots of people can access,” Soyfer said. “It’s about police being able to go back in time and reconstruct someone’s movements despite not having any reason to suspect them when the data was collected.”

Stalking Cops and a Wave of Scandals

The ruling comes amid a wave of controversy and scandals involving ALPR cameras sold to local governments by the company Flock Safety and its competitors — including aggressive wrongful arrests, and multiple cases of cops using the cameras to stalk romantic partners. Across the country, people are packing into........

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