Two residents of Norfolk, Virginia, are suing the city after it launched a vehicle surveillance system.
The 172 cameras capture images of every car driving by, unlike traditional traffic cameras, which take photos of vehicles if they sense the car is speeding or running a red light. The images are kept in the system for at least 30 days, according to the Institute for Justice (IJ).
“Norfolk has created a dragnet that allows the government to monitor everyone’s day-to-day movements without a warrant or probable cause. This type of mass surveillance is a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment,” IJ Attorney Michael Soyfer said in a press release for the case.
IJ Senior Attorney Robert Frommer called the technology “intrusive” and “unconstitutional.”
The camera company, Flock, allows any police department across the company using the cameras to share their data, IJ explained.
“Flock pools its data in a centralized database, police across the entire country can access over 1 billion monthly datapoints,” the legal group added. “That means not just tracking drivers within a particular jurisdiction, but potentially across the entire nation.”
Abuse of the camera’s data collection has already been documented in several states.
“In Kansas, officials were caught using Flock to stalk their exes, including one police chief who used Flock 228 times over four months to track his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend’s vehicles,” IJ wrote. In California, police departments violated state law by “sharing data from their license plate reader database with other departments across the country.”
