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That wasn't an initial safety feature. It was added after abuse had already been reported. Flock also needs to require a case number or some other method of validation for legitimate use. Presuming the continue to exist in any capacity. Otherwise we're just going to keep discovering incidents like this.

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They'll just keep a random old case number on a notepad to put in.

That's a fair point. The only other validation gate I can think of within our current system would be a valid warrant number. A system where the warrant automatically limits the search by time and geo-fence could be interesting.

I don't think warrants are currently cataloged and formatted in a way that can easily be retrieved and parsed by Flock to validate that a given warrant covers the requested data.

I don't think it would need to validate the applicability of the warrant to the requested data. It would just be checking that a valid warrant exists. The deterrent to abuse would be that a Judge's name is attached to each warrant. Cops have lied to judges before to get bogus warrants but I think it would make abuse less likely overall.

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