The government does need a warrant to surveil me, though, and multiple court cases have found that using an intermediate third party doesn't absolve the government from adhering to the fourth amendment.
You're correct that the government can't use a third party to circumvent privacy laws. But privacy laws never prohibited what Flock does. The government could directly set up its own cameras in public, and nothing about that violated the Fourth Amendment.
Police do need a warrant to place a GPS device on your vehicle.
Data continuity is a function of data point frequency [0]. If all public space (and some participating private space) is monitored, the practical difference between a GPS device and a retroactive dragnet system disappears.
You are correct that police do not require a warrant to follow someone around in public, but these systems aren't that, and in practice much closer to the GPS tracking, which does require a warrant. It's unclear without trying this further in court which this should qualify as.
IMO: If the system has seen me exit the public space outside my home, or work, or someone elses home, or a store, or whevever, the system knows where I am at all points in time, like a GPS, with very little exception.
"Flock and other ALPR tech is illegal"
And
"Flock and other ALPR tech is legal. But it's my personal prediction that some future Supreme Court decision will make them illegal."
For reference, US v. Jones was a 9-0 in the SC, in favor of Jones, though bipartisan split on the reasoning, which might be what carries over to any case that gets tried regarding this tech.
It's legal until your expected Supreme Court decision lands. This is just another way of saying "Flock tech is legal, but if the Supreme Court rules the way I want then it will become illegal."
> For reference, US v. Jones was a 9-0 in the SC, in favor of Jones, though bipartisan split on the reasoning, which might be what carries over to any case that gets tried regarding this tech
"Might be" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. And again, until the court actually gives that ruling, Flock is legal.
There's a difference between de facto legal and de jure legal. If the SC strikes it down, it was never legal, ie void ab initio.
Until some court reinterprets the law, it is legal. E.g. segregated school were until the Brown v. Board of Education landed and made it illegal.
This is not true. The question is whether you have a "reasonable expectation of privacy." If you do, then the government needs a warrant. This is why the government can't tap a payphone without a warrant even though it is in public.
It is true that a single police officer can post up somewhere and scan license plates without a warrant. The difference here is scale. The question of whether scale affects a "reasonable expectation of privacy" has never been addressed by the supreme court, though it has been raised before and discussed in concurring opinions.
"Reasonable expectation of privacy" covers things like restrooms. Not highways, streets, parking lots, etc. This isn't relevant for Flock.