At the core of American civil liberties lies the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches. Without it, privacy rights and due process in the justice system falter. Yet immigration authorities, police forces, and judges continue to argue that, when it comes to modern technology, the Fourth Amendment simply does not apply.

Take, for example, a recent federal ruling that using automated license plate reader networks like Flock Safety does not count as a Fourth Amendment search.

That effectively means: no need for a warrant. No probable cause required. Officers can query Flock’s databases with “LOL” or “LMAO” as the justification, and the court deems it acceptable.

Couple this with another recent federal ruling—this one upholding warrantless and suspicion-free searches of cellphones at the border—and we’re undermining the Fourth Amendment, which promises Americans protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures” of their “persons, houses, papers, and effects.” For such a search to be constitutional, authorities must secure a warrant supported by probable cause and clearly describe in advance what will be searched or seized, as the Founders insisted.

Admittedly, the authors of the Constitution could not have anticipated Flock cameras or smartphones. Yet that does not provide a reason to insert a technology exception into the Fourth Amendment.

Nevertheless, that is precisely what many law-enforcement agencies appear to be claiming.

They tested the waters with location data from phones, arguing that “geofence warrants”—which compel technology firms to hand over data on everyone within a crime-scene vicinity—do not violate the Fourth Amendment because the data gathering itself isn’t a “search.”

But in June, the Supreme Court ruled that geofence warrants do count as searches—and therefore trigger the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, as Reason’s Damon Root notes.

That decision—Chatrie v. United States—could spark a reconsideration of how the Fourth Amendment applies to automated license plate reader systems like those provided by Flock Safety, signals Stanford law professor Orin S. Kerr (who notes there was an Eleventh Circuit oral argument on this question on July 29 you can listen to).

Yet, to date: not favorable for challengers. In a decision issued September 10 by Judge Virginia A. Phillips of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, automated license plate reader “database queries are not searches within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.”

The ruling arose from Culver City police querying their Flock database for information about vehicles linked to two separate abductions and robberies. In such scenarios, it’s easy to rationalize law enforcement actions—after all, who wouldn’t cheer cops for catching kidnappers?

Nevertheless, investigators might have obtained the kidnappers without rummaging through Flock databases—this case did not involve a kidnapping in progress. And a guardrail of warrants could prevent the use of Flock to indiscriminately search people for less justifiable reasons.

Even more troubling is a recent ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit last week.

The decision concerned Customs and Border Protection’s claim that agents may search travelers’ electronic devices—including cellphones, laptops, smartwatches, and more—and copy their contents without a warrant or reasonable suspicion if the devices belong to travelers flying into or out of the United States at a border checkpoint.

In a September 17 ruling, 2nd Circuit judges deemed this approach reasonable and thus not in conflict with the Fourth Amendment. “No suspicion is required before the government searches a traveler’s cellphone at the border,” wrote Judge Steven Menashi, echoing the court’s precedents.

I side with Patrick Jaicomo of the Institute for Justice on this matter. “In legal terms, this is ‘nuts,’” Jaicomo remarked. “Clearly a suspicionless search of someone’s phone—a device that is indispensable to participating in modern life—violates the right to be secure in one’s papers and effects. If precedent points to a different outcome, it should be overturned.”

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The House passed the Ratepayer Protection Act 417-3. In our latest @ReasonFdn @CadenRosenbaum and I write that it’s a common sense fix for an issue arising from the high energy demand of the largest data centers. https://t.co/GKUIwm3BLY

— Max Gulker (@maxg_econ) September 17, 2026

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