This post has been read 30 times!
August 30, 2026- by Steven Greer (Plaintiff in Greer v Flock)
Why do we have a Fourth Amendment and why is Flock/Axon etc warrantless surveillance bad?
In 1761, John Adams stood in a Boston courtroom and watched attorney James Otis challenge the British empire. The crown was deeply in debt from the Seven Years’ War, prompting the King to aggressively tax the American colonies to refill royal coffers. In response, resourceful colonists turned to widespread smuggling.
To crack down, British authorities began using “writs of assistance”: broad, permanent search warrants that gave redcoats the absolute right to break into any home or business on a whim, looking for untaxed goods.
This total invasion of domestic privacy was a deeply violating experience for the colonists. Having armed government agents ransack a family home transformed a tax dispute into an unpardonable insult.
This blatant abuse of power is what pushed ordinary citizens past their breaking point, igniting the Revolutionary War and the creation of the Fourth Amendment.
Nearly 265 years later, public awareness of this hard-fought liberty has faded. Many modern citizens willingly compromise their privacy, viewing widespread surveillance tools like Flock as a harmless compromise for security.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety: Benjamin Franklin.
The cameras are sold as crime machines. In Atlanta, the camera dragnet grew about eightfold while FBI homicide crime solving fell from 53.4% to 48%, and auto-theft clearance barely moved. Even if a city could prove a drop in crime, Franklin’s point still holds: you do not trade a free people’s movements for a vendor’s safety pitch.
Flock is not “a camera that reads a plate.” It logs time, place, direction, a photo, and a vehicle fingerprint (make, model, color, racks, stickers, damage). Search “blue truck with a kayak.” A plate that is run in the newer Flock services gives name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, phones, relatives, etc. all with no warrant.
Your cell phone only tracks an account that you can leave at home. Flock tracks whoever uses the street, the park lot, or the road to the gun range, with no consent.
The harm is not theoretical. Dozens of police officers have been arrested for stalking wives and girlfriends. Recently, a police officer near Orlando hunted down his ex-wife, killed her and the children, before killing himself.
The facial biometrics, the highly detailed, travel patterns, etc. are not kept within the local police force. They’re not even kept in the United States. The data go overseas to Israel and many other locations. Foreign spy agencies are benefiting from this.
Police forces in distant states can tap into Flock anywhere in the country. One case of a Houston Police Department used in Ohio flock database more than the actual Ohio police force, and nobody knows why.
Flock have high error rates. The Institute for Justice has catalogued innocent drivers pulled over with guns drawn for being mistakenly listed as driving a stolen car, etc. In many cases, cars are confiscated, and people are put in jail for no reason.
All of that is just the current technology. Flock already sells drones.
What about the Second Amendment and the right to bare arms? Flock cameras are already tracking gun ranges.
Thomas Jefferson: the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
James Madison: if men were angels, no government would be necessary, which is why you do not hand every officer a silent nationwide movement log and hope he is an angel.
John Adams: liberty, once lost, is lost forever. Franklin already said the rest. Safety sold without a warrant is not safety. It is a file on you.