{"id":64855,"date":"2026-09-22T12:43:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T17:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=64855"},"modified":"2026-09-22T12:43:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T17:43:18","slug":"reason-no-warrant-no-suspicion-no-problem-flock-and-border-cellphone-searches-excluded-from-4th-amendment-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=64855","title":{"rendered":"Reason: No Warrant, No Suspicion, No Problem: Flock and Border Cellphone Searches Excluded From 4th Amendment Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Reason: <a href=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/2026\/09\/21\/no-warrant-no-suspicion-no-problem-flock-and-border-cellphone-searches-excluded-from-4th-amendment-rules\/\">No Warrant, No Suspicion, No Problem: Flock and Border Cellphone Searches Excluded From 4th Amendment Rules<\/a> by Elizabeth Nolan Brown (\u201cCops keep carving out tech exceptions to the Fourth Amendment\u2014and courts are giving them their blessing.\u201d):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Part of the bedrock of American civil liberties is the Fourth Amendment&#8217;s prohibition against unreasonable searches. There is no right to privacy, and no due process in the justice system, without that. But immigration authorities, cops, and courts keep deciding that, for some reason, the Fourth Amendment just doesn&#8217;t apply where new technology is concerned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Case in point: A federal court just held that authorities searching automated license plate reader systems such as Flock doesn&#8217;t count as a search for Fourth Amendment purposes. That means: no warrant necessary. No probable cause necessary. Cops can search Flock networks with &#8216;LOL&#8217; or &#8216;LMAO&#8217; as the reason, and it&#8217;s fine\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the Supreme Court held in June that geofence warrants do indeed count as searches &#8216;and therefore trigger the Fourth Amendment&#8217;s safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures,&#8217; as Reason&#8217;s Damon Root pointed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That case\u2014Chatrie v. United States\u2014could &#8216;trigger a rethinking of how the Fourth Amendment applies to automated license plate reader systems such as those provided by Flock Safety,&#8217; suggests Stanford law professor Orin S. Kerr (noting that &#8216;there was an oral argument in the Eleventh Circuit on this question on July 29 that you can listen to here&#8217;).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reason: No Warrant, No Suspicion, No Problem: Flock and Border Cellphone Searches Excluded From 4th Amendment Rules by Elizabeth Nolan Brown (\u201cCops keep carving out tech exceptions to the Fourth Amendment\u2014and courts are giving them their blessing.\u201d):<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-automatic-license-plate-readers","category-geofence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64855"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64856,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64855\/revisions\/64856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}