Federal judge calls Flock 'indiscriminate mass surveillance'

	Federal judge calls Flock 'indiscriminate mass surveillance'(techcrunch.com)
	478 points by sbulaev 10 days ago \| 265 comments
	tl;dr: A federal judge ruled that a Tulsa sheriff's deputy violated the Fourth Amendment by searching Flock's license plate database without a warrant, suppressing evidence from a subsequent vehicle search that found 91 pounds of meth. Judge Sara Hill characterized Flock as "indiscriminate mass surveillance," though the ruling isn't binding precedent. The decision comes amid growing bipartisan backlash, with Florida and Texas pulling back from the tech and Senator Bernie Sanders introducing the Block Flock Act to ban federal use of automated license plate readers.
	HN Discussion: ↑License plate readers should be redesigned to only match specific plates, not dragnet scanning ↓Questions whether mass surveillance in public actually violates law given no expectation of privacy ~The meth discovery undermines the anti-surveillance narrative by showing the tech working as intended ~Total surveillance is inevitable regardless of individual rulings ↑Lack of transparency about what Flock cameras actually capture is concerning