In this case, Judge Sara Hill said the deputy should have obtained a warrant before searching the Flock database for the woman's license plate, as he had 'no apparent reason' for the search 'other than the fact that [the woman's vehicle] had a California license plate.' The deputy then used the woman's travel history in Flock as part of the justification for searching her car, where he allegedly discovered 91 pounds of meth. But Judge Hill wrote that all evidence obtained after the Flock search 'must be suppressed as the fruit of a poisonous tree.' Judge Hill also took broader aim at warrantless searches of the Flock database, writing that tracking people's location ' even when they're in public places ' becomes 'constitutionally problematic when law enforcement can indiscriminately and passively catalog your whereabouts over an extended period of time and then use that information for any purpose whenever convenient.' 'This is a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance,' Hill...
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