Filed in a Virginia federal court Monday by the public interest law firm Institute for Justice , the suit alleges the pervasive "dragnet" created by the cameras violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.
The suit names two residents of Virginia cities Norfolk and Portsmouth as plaintiffs, claiming the installation of the cameras where they live makes it impossible for them to move about the city by car without having their movements logged by the system.
Police can search a database of vehicles and their movements "whenever they want for whatever they want — no need to seek advance approval" or obtain a warrant, the suit argues.
Bay Area cities including Oakland , Vallejo , Richmond and Fairfield have also deployed the cameras to catch crooks, along with the San Mateo County Sheriff's Department . In all the company claims 5,000 communities across the U.S. have installed the cameras, which claim to use artificial intelligence to read license plates and direct police to vehicles involved in crimes.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced plans to install 500 of the cameras around Oakland earlier this year. Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and police officials said last month that the cameras have led to arrests in shooting and robbery cases.
Neither Flock Safety nor any of the above named departments immediately responded to an emailed request for comment.
SFPD spokesman Evan Sernoffsky said in an email only that the case was filed in Virginia and did not address the alleged Fourth Amendment violations.
Although the lawsuit is in a very early stage, rulings in federal cases can have national implications. A federal judge in Florida voided the federal government's ability to enforce mask mandates on planes and other forms of transportation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
About a quarter of a planned 400 camera systems across San Francisco were up and running by mid-June, according to the police department and Mayor London Breed's office.
Breed and the police have touted them as a critical component in their fight against persistent retail theft and other quality of life crimes that have spiked in San Francisco and the Bay Area since the pandemic.
Police have said the cameras help them make arrests every day, including catching suspects in organized retail theft, carjacking, robbery and sexual assault cases. The cameras are part of expanded police powers that voters handed to the SFPD earlier this year, including the ability to use drones and engage in vehicle pursuits under more circumstances.
The city said in a statement from earlier this year that the cameras have contributed to a 33% year-over-year decrease in overall property crime, and reduced car break-ins by half while cutting down on motor vehicle thefts by about a fifth during the same period.
That capability comes at the expense of fundamental civil rights, the Virginia lawsuit claims.
"Every passing car is captured, and its license plate and other features are analyzed using proprietary machine learning programs, like Flock's 'Vehicle Fingerprint,'" the suit said.
Combined with a database that can determine where any car was at a given moment within the areas the cameras survey, that gives law enforcement the ability to map any person's movements throughout an area without a warrant, according to the suit.
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