Judge Rules Flock Cameras in Norfolk Are Legal
The Flock Safety surveillance camera system for license plate recognition, like similar technologies, is increasingly becoming the subject of lawsuits across the country. In Norfolk, Virginia, the city has just won a victory that allows its camera network to remain active, at least for now, after a lawsuit alleging violations of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
However, this decision does not put an end to the matter. In fact, the same federal judge who supported the city also noted that future rulings could change in favor of the other side. The plaintiffs also do not intend to stop fighting.
Do License Plates Have a Right to Privacy?
In a ruling issued on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Mark Davis rejected the claims of two Hampton Roads residents who argued that Norfolk’s automated license plate reader (ALPR) network constitutes unconstitutional mass surveillance. The city operates nearly 200 Flock cameras, primarily located at busy intersections, highway off-ramps, and major entry and exit points.
Judge Davis pointed to growing judicial precedent recognizing that drivers do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding license plates displayed on public roads.
Judges have “almost unanimously concluded,” he wrote, that photographing plates in public places and storing those images in a searchable database is not a warrantless search. We will return to that “almost” and its significant meaning a bit later.
Legal Challenges and Context
Judge Davis’s logic closely echoes what Flock Safety says about this issue. The company has repeatedly argued that license plates are government identifiers designed to be visible and that capturing them is no different from an officer observing a passing vehicle. However, the ruling also highlights the reasons why similar lawsuits have found greater traction elsewhere.
Several courts have cautioned against treating ALPR cases as settled law, especially as technologies evolve. The concern is not a single plate image, but whether large-scale, long-term data collection can be used to reconstruct “a person’s every physical movement”—a concept borrowed from Supreme Court precedents like Carpenter v. United States.
Some judges have sided with plaintiffs when surveillance systems approached this threshold, particularly in cases involving persistent aerial monitoring or continuous location tracking. In such scenarios, courts have found that mass data collection can reveal intimate life patterns, even if each individual data point is collected in a public place.
Questions Beyond Legality
Regardless of their legal basis, the reality of systems like Flock Safety’s is that it is impossible to guarantee that access to them is always lawful. As we have repeatedly pointed out, these systems have serious security vulnerabilities.
If it were possible to create a completely secure camera network—which it is not—the problem would then shift to unlawful use. This happens more often than one might think. We have already seen several instances of law enforcement improperly accessing camera images and data.
For now, the cameras in Norfolk remain on, but the plaintiffs state they plan to appeal the decision. As ALPR networks expand, data retention periods increase, and analytical tools improve, Davis warned that the constitutional balance “could, perhaps, shift the other way.”
This Norfolk lawsuit is just one of many fronts in the legal battle surrounding mass surveillance. While the judge deemed this specific implementation of the technology legal, his warning about future changes points to the dynamic nature of this area of law. Technology evolves faster than legislation, and today’s court rulings may not match tomorrow’s realities, especially when it comes to the ability to track and analyze people’s movements over time and space. Data security issues and the potential for abuse remain critically important, regardless of court verdicts on constitutionality. Society will have to continually balance the benefits of technology for security with the protection of personal freedoms in the digital age.