Tag: warrantless surveillance

The Fourth Circuit Says Border Agents Can Search Your Phone By Hand, No Suspicion Required

The Fourth Circuit issued a disappointing opinion in U.S. v. Belmonte Cardozo, a case in which EFF filed an amicus brief, alongside the national ACLU, its Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia affiliates, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL).

We argued that electronic device searches at the border should require a warrant based on probable cause, but at minimum, regardless of whether an officer searches by hand or with forensic software that plugs into a device and downloads its entire contents for search, the same Fourth Amendment standard should apply to all device searches at the border.

Unfortunately, the court rejected that argument and ruled that a lower standard applies to manual searches, allowing the government to conduct extraordinarily invasive electronic device searches without any suspicion of wrongdoing, simply because the border officer chooses to search by hand rather than with a forensic tool.

The Border Search Exception Meets Your Phone

The Fourth Amendment requires that government searches of persons or property be reasonable, which usually means obtaining a warrant based on probable cause from a judge.

But a warrantless search can still be reasonable if it falls within an exception to the warrant requirement, including the exception that allows officers to search your belongings at the border. The border search exception allows warrantless searches of persons or property crossing the U.S. border, including the functional equivalent of the border such as international airports, given the government’s interests in controlling who and what may enter the country.

Historically, courts have categorized border searches of luggage, vehicles, and personal effects as “routine” and thus reasonable even if conducted without any suspicion that the traveler has engaged in wrongdoing; courts have also held that more invasive “nonroutine” searches, such as certain body searches and searches that damage property, require reasonable suspicion.

But a person’s privacy interests in the personal data on a phone or laptop are extraordinarily different than their limited privacy interests in the contents of their suitcase.

The Supreme Court addressed cell phone privacy in Riley v. California (2014), holding that the search-incident-to-arrest exception to the warrant requirement did not apply to cell phones, thereby generally requiring a warrant for phone searches, at least at the interior of the country. The court recognized the unprecedented privacy interests people have in their cell phones and how even brief manual searches can reveal the “sum of an individual’s private life,” including our political affiliations, religious beliefs, sexuality, and more. Accordingly, the Supreme Court held that because electronic device searches bear “little resemblance” to searches of bags or physical containers, they should be evaluated differently.

Following Riley, the Fourth Circuit considered two border device search cases involving forensic searches, in which border officers used external software to extract and analyze a device’s data.

In U.S. v. Kolsuz (2018), the Fourth Circuit held that a forensic search of a cell phone at the border “must be considered a nonroutine border search, requiring some measure of individualized suspicion” of a transnational offense, but the court declined to decide whether the standard is only reasonable suspicion or instead a probable cause warrant.

Then in U.S. v. Aigbekaen (2019), the Fourth Circuit held that a forensic device search at the border in support of a purely domestic law enforcement investigation requires a warrant. The court also reiterated the general Kolsuz rule for a forensic border-related device search: the “Government must have individualized suspicion of an offense that bears some nexus to the border search exception’s purposes of protecting national security, collecting duties, blocking the entry of unwanted persons, or disrupting efforts to export or import contraband.”

In Belmonte Cardozo, manual searches were finally before the court.

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Government Spy Hubs Are Surveilling Anti-Flock Camera Activists

Government spy hubs across America are surveilling activists seeking to remove Flock surveillance cameras from their cities and towns according to documents obtained by Deeper States. These intelligence products show dozens of state fusion centers and their counterparts in the FBI and DHS circulating memos warning that peaceful protesters organizing to stop AI powered surveillance cameras in their backyard are a national security threat.

Alongside the grassroots movement to stop data centers in communities across the country, Flock Safety’s automated license plate reader systems have stirred similar outpourings of civic outrage. At town halls and city council meetings, citizens from all walks of life have demanded local legislators ban flock cameras from being used in their localities. These efforts have found success with over 100 cities canceling their Flock contracts.

Anti-surveillance sentiment has coalesced with the activist organization DeFlock, which maps the tens of thousands of flock cameras pockmarking the country and offers resources to activists who oppose the widespread adaptation of automated license plate readers.

According to Deflock’s mission statement, “ALPRs [automated license plate readers] are a serious risk to your privacy and civil liberties. These systems continuously record your movements without a warrant, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion. Your driving history is rarely confined to the town or city where the cameras are installed. It’s typically shared with thousands of other agencies nationwide (secretly). Once the data is out of your community, you have no control over how it’s used or what rules apply”.

The organization also points to intentional misuse of Flock systems for stalking and the potential for misidentification of suspects leading to false arrests as further cause for concern. Last year, flock CEO Garett Langley described Deflock activists as a “terroristic organization”, a description he was forced to walk back this week after widespread outrage at the resurfaced comments.

“My comments were a mistake and I apologize,” Langley told Forbes. “There are groups today that have real valid criticisms of the business, and I think what’s changed for us is, as we’ve listened to them and heard them out, what we’re trying to do is find this balance. We believe in a world where we can have safety and privacy.”

Despite Langley’s retreat, intelligence agencies are approaching Deflock’s constitutionally protected speech and organizing with the same tools and language they apply to terrorism. One report obtained by Deeper States and generated by the Wisconsin State Wide Intelligence Center shows intelligence components surveilling organizers of Deflock “days of action” in Alaska and Wisconsin.

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No Fourth Amendment In American Airports?

Do you, as an American citizen, have to hand over your cell phone — along with the access code to open it — upon a (warrantless) demand by a border agent at the airport?

There’s a case grinding through the courts about that right now because one man, a Mr. Sam Tunick, refused.  

Not only did he refuse but he had an app on his phone that triggered its erasure once you keyed in a particular code to open it.  That was the code he gave CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) when they demanded his code to open it.  And then his phone was, indeed, erased right there on the spot, in the hands of the CBP agent.

That’s when CBP got really p***ed off.

According to the reporting on his case, this man was not a criminal.  He was not under suspicion or surveillance for anything, so far as we know. He is not related to Spencer Tunick, an artist who famously creates mass nude photo shoots in public places. He was, in point of fact, a left-wing activist with environmental interests, but, again, without any contact with or prior interest from law enforcement that we know of.

He was just a guy.  Coming home from an international trip (the Dominican Republic.).

You may well be thinking, “A left-wing activist with an erasure code?  Sounds suspicious!”

Let me pause to explain why I don’t think so.

A “right-winger” I know just traveled internationally recently and she traveled with a burner phone to avoid exactly this kind of search in another country.  It was England specifically.  

In England there is no Fourth Amendment and they can search your phone when you land.  They also have no First Amendment and they have terrible censorship laws now.  You can be arrested and jailed for social media posts.  Even some perfectly benign ones, like “Islam is incompatible with Liberty” — that kind of thing.

The Dominican Republic also has no Fourth Amendment and if they simply suspect you have contraband or are engaged in some other illegal activity (so a very wide berth), they have every right to inspect your phone.  Maybe this young man just didn’t want the hassle. Maybe this app was this “left-winger’s” choice instead of a burner, and in the heat of the moment, decided to deploy it once facing our own CPB here in the U.S.

In short, I don’t find it suspicious at all knowing the legal overreach climate we are living in now.  And we certainly can’t be searching American citizens and seizing their devices based on politics alone.  I hope we can all agree on that.

Back to the case:

One attorney, Mike Fox of the Cato Institute characterized Mr. Tunick’s situation this way: “This is new, uncharted territory.”

The Supreme Court has never ruled on your Fourth Amendment rights as they specifically relate to your cell phone at American airports/border crossings.  They have ruled on whether or not your phone is searchable in the interior of the United States and the answer is “no” — not without a warrant.

But somehow an American in an American airport on American soil has to surrender his rights to an American customs agent?  What is this sorcery?

Let’s review the Fourth Amendment, in its entirety:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The Supreme Court has ruled on Fourth Amendment exceptions at border crossings, but not cell phones in particular.  That’s why you have to go through customs and scanners and open your luggage, etc.  We’ve all been doing it forever without a thought.

But your phone ought to be a separate matter entirely, containing as it does, your digital “papers and effects.”  According to the available reporting, there was no “probable cause” to search Mr. Tunick. CPB wasn’t looking for anything specific, which is what a warrant would demand.  They just wanted to go out on a scenic drive, seeing what they could see on his phone.

Hell. No.

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The War on Drugs Has Come to the Maternity Ward

At first glance, a new mother taking part in a drug screening seems reasonable. For the sake of the mother and child, a doctor performs a clinical test to rule out any complications or signs of risks to the newborn.

But the story quickly takes a dark turn. If there’s a positive test result, it doesn’t stay between the doctor and the patient. In 24 states and Washington, D.C., a positive test alone is enough to initiate a child welfare report, according to a report by the Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association. Depending on the state, that test could land the mother on a child abuse registry. Worse still, the mother may be notified the test has occurred only after the fact.

This seems to run afoul of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Ferguson v. City of Charleston (2001), where the Court found it unconstitutional to drug test pregnant women without consent solely for “law enforcement purposes.” 

However, Enrima Ukoha, an obstetrician-gynecologist and maternal-fetal medicine specialist at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, tells Reason this practice—known as “test and report”—is “common” and “often happens in non-consensual ways.” In fact, over six years, The Marshall Project found “at least 70,000 cases in 21 states” where parents were referred to law enforcement after a positive test for drug or alcohol use.

Ukoha says a lot of medical professionals are influenced by “stereotypes and stigma” associated with people who use substances in pregnancy, leading them to make “false assumptions about their ability to parent.”

The practice developed as part of the response to the opioid crisis roiling the nation. Each year, nearly 10 percent of births in the U.S. are affected by drug or alcohol use. 

To deal with the issue, Congress amended the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 in ways that made it easier for these nonconsensual tests to occur. The 1974 law ties federal grant funding to state-level development of “plans of safe care” for infants “born and identified as being affected by substance abuse or withdrawal symptoms.” It also requires healthcare providers involved in the “delivery or care” of affected infants to “notify the child protective services system”; however, it also states that nothing in the law should be read as requiring “prosecution for any illegal action.”

In 2016, Congress passed an amendment changing the requirement to include infants affected by all substance abuse by striking the word illegal from its substance abuse clause. In 2018, lawmakers passed another amendment that put money behind the idea, authorizing grants to assist state agencies with “developing, updating, implementing, and monitoring” their plans of safe care. And in 2019, the law was again amended to provide “civil and criminal liability” to anyone who makes a “good-faith report of child abuse or neglect.”

There is no federal definition for child abuse or neglect. Left to their own devices, each state has adopted different standards for reporting and treatment. Ukoha says the process “varies across providers, institutions, and states,” but the result is that “individuals are tested in pregnancy without their knowledge or consent.” 

Apart from potentially being separated from their newborns, mothers risk placement on child abuse registries—which would prevent them from holding certain jobs or participating in school activities—or incarceration. In the case of Idaho mom Nicole Hamann, one positive test for THC got her 10 years on the state’s child protection registry, according to a joint report by CBS News and The Marshall Project. 

But moms can find themselves facing criminal charges even when the substances are legal. In South Carolina, Ayanna Harris-Rashid was arrested and faced a 10-year felony sentence after testing positive for THC. Harris-Rashid admitted to using CBD, which is legal in the state and can contain trace amounts of THC, to “relieve cramping and nausea.” Her charges were dropped a year after her arrest. 

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Police Are Deploying 60 MPH Autonomous Drones to Read Your License Plate from the Sky

If you thought Flock Safety’s Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) were deeply invasive when they were just mounted to neighborhood stop signs and hidden inside speed trailers, you might want to look up.

The company that built a massive, interconnected surveillance net across American roadways has officially taken its technology airborne. As highlighted in a viral X post by Josh Walkos, Flock is rolling out “Flock Alpha”—a highly advanced, autonomous police drone designed to track vehicles and suspects from the sky.

Walkos perfectly captured the escalating nature of the tech in his post: “Remember when everyone was told Flock was ‘just reading license plates’? Anyway, here’s Flock Alpha, the autonomous drone.”

The “Drone as a First Responder” Play

Flock isn’t just selling a standard quadcopter; they are aggressively pushing a concept known as “Drone as First Responder” (DFR). Following a strategic partnership with aviation software company Aerodome, Flock integrated its existing street-level surveillance web directly into an autonomous aerial platform.

The specs on the Flock Alpha are undeniably impressive—and for privacy advocates, entirely terrifying.

When a 911 call, a gunshot audio sensor, or a street-level ALPR camera triggers an alert, an officer can deploy the Alpha drone directly from their smartphone. The drone launches itself from a weatherproof docking station and can reach the scene at speeds up to 60 MPH. According to Flock’s promotional materials, the drone arrives first on the scene 78% of the time, long before patrol cars can navigate traffic.

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“Don’t Flock Me”: Massie Readies Bill To Yank Federal Cash From Cities And Police Departments Running Flock Cameras

On Saturday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) announced he’ll soon sponsor “a bill to withhold federal money from municipalities and police departments” that deploy Flock-style cameras to surveil law-abiding citizens. He attached a Gadsden flag parody: a coiled rattlesnake wrapped around an automated license plate reader on a pole, over the words “don’t flock me.”

Rather than regulating or litigating the cameras, Massie’s bill would cut off federal funding to every city and police department that installs them. Flock’s business model runs on local government contracts across roughly 6,000 communities, so a funding-withholding bill aims directly at its customer base.

Third Strike In A Week

Massie’s bill is the third Republican move against Flock in a matter of days.

On July 21, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) filed H.R. 9800, the Protection Against Mass Surveillance Act, which would bar federal agencies from purchasing, funding, or accessing automated license plate readers – Flock is named explicitly – along with biometric tracking tech covering fingerprints, iris, voice, and gait. Any data a federal agency obtained would have to be deleted within 30 days and would be inadmissible in court. Burchett’s pitch: “We gotta ban these dadgum things.”

Earlier this month, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) tried to attach an amendment restricting the readers in committee. It failed, and Perry responded that the fight wasn’t over: “STOP THE FLOCK.”

In April, Massie teamed with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) on the Surveillance Accountability Act, which would require a probable-cause warrant before federal or local agencies surveil Americans, ban warrantless facial recognition in public spaces, block the government from buying its way around the Fourth Amendment via third-party data brokers, and make individual federal employees personally suable for violations. Boebert’s framing: the government is building a “digital footprint of your entire life” without a warrant or probable cause.

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Georgia Cops Keep Getting Arrested And Fired For Illegally Using Flock Cameras To Stalk People, But Surely Those 17 Bad Apples Aren’t Representative Of The Entire Bunch

“Another Georgia cop accused of misusing Flock data in growing trend,” the USA Today headline reads. If you remember now-former Braselton police chief Michael Steffman’s arrest on stalking charges last year, it would be understandable if you assumed CBS News meant a second Georgia officer had been arrested for misusing Flock’s license plate data to stalk their victims. There couldn’t be that many bad cops getting arrested in one state, right? Well, that depends on whether your definition of “not that many” because USA Today reports that at least 17 Georgia cops have been accused of Flock-stalking in just the last couple of months. 

Former Sergeant Kabiru Salawu lost the job he’d held with the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office since 2009, after he was arrested over allegations that he engaged in “unauthorized use of the agency’s Flock Safety technology.” Salawu currently faces a felony charge for violating his oath of office, but in Georgia, misuse of license plate data is charged as a misdemeanor. For now, the sheriff’s office hasn’t released any information on how it caught Salawu, nor have they explained what he’s accused of using Flock’s system to do.

According to CBS News, Salawu’s arrest brings the total number of law enforcement officers accused of abusing their access to the private surveillance system that tracks everyone everywhere all the time, even if you don’t drive a car or have a license plate visible, to 10 “in recent weeks.” Not months or years. Weeks. As internal audits continue, don’t be surprised to see those numbers rise in the coming weeks, either. Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire, and if internal audits turned up enough evidence to charge 17 officers over the last several months, it stands to reason that ongoing investigations will turn up evidence of even more abuses within the Georgia law enforcement community.

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Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

While Flock claims its system tracks vehicles, not people, the documented record of police chiefs stalking ex-partners through Flock shows otherwise. When the most experienced, highest-ranking officers in law enforcement, the people most responsible for enforcing the rules, demonstrate ongoing abuses, the answer is the same courts have given for each generation of powerful tracking technology: require a warrant first.

The police chief of Holiday Hills, Illinois, and a part-time officer at Prairie Grove Police Department, was arrested June 18, 2026, and charged with two counts of official misconduct, a Class 3 felony.

Prosecutors alleged he used Prairie Grove’s Flock license plate reader system and the Illinois State Police LEADS database to track six people he knew personally.

Three of those people were women the chief had been in romantic relationships with, according to prosecutors at his arraignment. He also tracked an ex-boyfriend of one of those women, running that man’s plate 140 times over several months, a figure the protective order petition put at 178, with 86 of those searches conducted while off duty.

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SELF-DEFENSE AGAINST THE MACHINE: Virginia Man Puts Warrantless Flock Surveillance on Trial

As millions of Americans passively consume state-sanctioned fireworks this Fourth of July, it is crucial to remember that Independence Day was not birthed from compliance, but from radical, unapologetic defiance against a monolithic empire. That raw spirit of 1776 has not been extinguished; it has simply shifted targets from a tyrant king to the digital panopticon. The surveillance state rarely takes kindly to those who blind its all-seeing eye, and the latest casualty in this modern war for liberty is a 41-year-old Suffolk, Virginia resident named Jeffrey Scott Sovern. Between April and October of 2025, local authorities allege Sovern channeled that revolutionary energy by systematically dismantling 13 Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) cameras operated by the private surveillance behemoth Flock Safety.

Investigators claim Sovern separated the two-piece mounting poles and removed the tracking equipment with tools, targeting the $1,300 setups that include the camera, solar panel, and mounting hardware. For allegedly blinding the panopticon, Sovern now faces 13 counts of felony destruction of property, six counts of petit larceny, and six counts of possessing burglary tools.

The official narrative, conveniently laid out in a criminal complaint, asserts that after Sovern was arrested on October 17, 2025, on unrelated warrants, he outright confessed to disassembling the units. Police claim he admitted to keeping solar panels, batteries, and other hardware at his Nicklaus Drive residence, which culminated in a raid that allegedly recovered six of those stolen solar panels.

Unsurprisingly, a spokesperson for Flock Safety issued a statement expressing gratitude toward law enforcement for holding individuals accountable when their devices are damaged. Yet, this corporate applause completely ignores the glaring constitutional crisis created by the very existence of these devices on public roadways.

These ALPR networks act as an unconstitutional dragnet, indiscriminately logging the movements of innocent, peaceful individuals without a shred of probable cause. In fact, just a year prior in June 2024, a Circuit Court judge in neighboring Norfolk correctly ruled that collecting location data from the city’s 172 Flock cameras constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment, accurately likening the vast database to warrantless tracking devices.

The state’s portrayal of a clean, by-the-book investigation is already facing heavy public scrutiny. Individuals claiming to have been inside Sovern’s residence during the raid publicly asserted that police stormed the home, forced a resident to cower in a towel, and threatened everyone with handcuffs while refusing to immediately produce a warrant.

While disabling a device that is actively executing an unconstitutional search on your person might seem like a righteous defense of liberty, bringing that dismantled hardware into your home is a fatal tactical error. By allegedly harvesting the state-contracted property for personal use, Sovern crossed the threshold into petit larceny, handing the monopoly on violence the exact legal pretext it needed to execute a traumatic raid and levy multiple felonies.

To enforce the protection of their massive surveillance grid, the state didn’t hesitate to escalate its own aggression against a citizen. Investigators openly admitted in the criminal complaint that they obtained a search warrant for a GPS tracker, slapping it onto Sovern’s vehicle prior to his arrest to secretly monitor his movements and place him near the scenes of the disabled cameras.

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Colorado Gun Owners Sue Over New Law Allowing Warrantless Access to Dealer Records

A new Colorado law has raised the hackles of a coalition of gun owners in the state, leading them to challenge its constitutionality in federal court.

Signed into law on June 2 by Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, the Requirements for Firearms Dealers Act requires all gun sellers in the state to allow any “duly authorized peace officer” to inspect their sales records “at all times.”

The bill follows in the footsteps of 11 other states and Washington, D.C., by extending the state’s record-keeping requirements for firearms dealers to all retail transactions, including transfers. Dealers will be required to note the customer’s name, age, and address, as well as the firearm’s serial number, letters, make, and caliber. Failure to comply could result in a fine of up to $75,000, the loss of a dealer’s license, and up to a year in jail. 

Gun owners in the state are pushing back against this overreach. Ten days after Polis signed the bill into law, three firearms dealers and two firearms associations filed a joint civil suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, arguing that the bill is a “warrantless-inspection scheme for firearms dealers” that violates the Fourth Amendment because it includes no stipulations for warrants or probable cause and no restrictions on time or frequency.

Colorado’s law would make it easier for law enforcement to engage in fishing expeditions. Under the law, a Colorado police officer could presumably demand that a dealer provide records of firearms sales for the last month, with no mention of a crime being committed or a suspect in mind. While the bill does prohibit law enforcement from creating or maintaining a firearms registry, that provision seems moot if firearms dealers are themselves forced to maintain the registry for cops. 

While the court challenge is ongoing, it’s difficult to see how Colorado’s law complies with the Supreme Court’s precedents on warrantless searches. 

In New York v. Burger (1987), the Court ruled that a warrantless search of a “closely regulated” industry violates the Fourth Amendment unless it satisfies three criteria: the state must have a substantial interest in regulating the industry; the warrantless inspections must directly serve that interest, be necessary for the regulatory scheme; and the statute must offer a constitutionally adequate warrant substitute, such as notification and limits on “time, place, and scope,” to “impose appropriate restraints” on an officer’s discretion. 

Colorado’s law might satisfy the first criterion. But it appears to fall short of the other two entirely, especially since the law is broad enough to allow sheriffs and campus security alike to inspect the records of any firearms dealer in the state.

Even when the law permits the government to inspect a business without a warrant—an administrative search—the Supreme Court ruled in Los Angeles v. Patel (2015) that the subject must be afforded a review by a “neutral decisionmaker” for the search to be constitutional. Colorado law does not provide firearms dealers with an opportunity for such a review before inspection.

Aside from the record-keeping provisions, the bill adds new administrative burdens for firearms dealers by requiring businesses in the state to provide the Department of Revenue with a “comprehensive security plan.” It also tasks the department with adopting rules on acceptable security measures that dealers must comply with. Those requirements will go into effect in October 2027.

State Sen. Cathy Kipp (D–Fort Collins), a cosponsor of the bill, told Complete Colorado the new law “builds on a new bureaucracy established in 2024” to stop “preventable shooting deaths” and reduce gun violence. But another outcome is far more likely: treating gun owners and firearm dealers like de facto criminals.

Colorado lawmakers have created an environment ripe for confrontation between law enforcement and legally armed Americans, all while violating Coloradans’ right to privacy.

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