The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty filed a lawsuit Thursday against Waukesha County and 11 cities and villages, arguing police should have to obtain a warrant before using Flock Safety’s camera network to reconstruct a person’s movements.

“Flock cameras essentially place the public under constant surveillance,” WILL President and General Counsel Rick Esenberg said in announcing the lawsuit. “Our lawsuit will not result in their removal or the end of their use. But it will ensure their use is accompanied by reasonable safeguards that will balance the needs of law enforcement with the public’s right to privacy.”

The lawsuit does not seek to have the cameras removed.

Instead, WILL is asking that searches of Flock’s stored location data be treated like other searches involving cellphone location information, GPS tracking or digital location records. Under WILL’s argument, police would need a warrant or a recognized exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.

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Those exceptions could include emergencies involving a kidnapping, missing person, active shooter or someone threatening suicide. Consent could also apply, such as when a vehicle owner gives police permission to search for a stolen car.

WILL filed the case on behalf of a group of Waukesha County residents and taxpayers. Read the complaint⁠

Flock cameras include automated license plate readers. The company’s cameras capture license plates along with vehicle characteristics such as make, color and body type. The information can be searched later as part of an investigation. Flock also allows participating agencies to share vehicle information across jurisdictions.

The size of that network is central to WILL’s case.

Flock says its network now includes more than 120,000 cameras in 49 states. The company has said its technology is used by more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies and more than 6,000 communities.

WILL says more than 120 Flock cameras are operating in Waukesha County and more than 1,500 are operating across Wisconsin.

The lawsuit points to where some of those cameras are located. According to WILL, one near the backyard fence of plaintiff Donavan Haidinger’s Oconomowoc property records traffic moving past his home. WILL cites another camera in the Village of Pewaukee that captures vehicles entering and leaving a mobile home park. The group also points to cameras near churches, gun stores and government buildings.

The cameras themselves are only part of the constitutional argument.

WILL is focused on what happens after the information is collected and placed into a searchable database.

The group says records from Elm Grove show how far a locally owned camera can reach once information is available through Flock’s network. According to WILL’s review, Elm Grove officers searched data from the village’s six cameras about 250 times during June, July and August. Outside law enforcement agencies, many of them from other states, conducted about 3 million searches involving data collected by Elm Grove cameras during the same period.

WILL also says Elm Grove had no written Flock policy and that none of the Wisconsin agency policies it reviewed required probable cause or a warrant before officers searched the database.

Flock disputes characterizations of its system as an unrestricted surveillance database. The company says only authorized users can access law enforcement data, searches are logged and agencies determine their own sharing settings. Flock says searches must be tied to an investigative purpose and that agencies can choose whether their data is shared with other agencies.

Flock has also announced additional restrictions this year, including plans to require case codes for law enforcement searches by the end of 2026 and automatic review of certain unusual search activity. The company is recommending that agencies reduce standard retention of license plate reader data to seven days.

Earlier case

WILL’s constitutional argument relies heavily on the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision in Chatrie v. United States.

In that case, police investigating a Virginia bank robbery obtained Google Location History information for devices that had been near the bank. The Supreme Court held that police conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired the location history because people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in detailed cellphone location information held by a technology company.

The court did not decide whether the warrant used by investigators in Chatrie ultimately satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s probable cause and particularity requirements. It returned that question to the lower court.

WILL wants courts to apply the same constitutional principles to searches of Flock’s vehicle-location records.

“When police track people through GPS, cell phone signals, or app usage, like Google, courts generally require a warrant,” WILL Managing Vice President and Deputy Counsel Dan Lennington said. “Flock cameras and Flock’s related AI-powered tools can track Americans even more accurately than those other tools.”

Second thoughts

The lawsuit arrives as a growing number of Wisconsin communities reconsider Flock.

At least a dozen Wisconsin communities suspended contracts or disabled cameras during the past week, according to Wisconsin Public Radio. The decisions have followed disputes over data access, sharing and how information collected by local cameras can be used outside the jurisdiction that paid for them.

Milwaukee has tightened restrictions on access to its system. Other Wisconsin communities have ended or moved to end their relationships with Flock.

Oconomowoc could soon join them. On Thursday, Alderman Lou Kowieski told MIlwaukee television station TMJ4 that a majority of the Common Council plans to vote next week on removing the city’s $18,000 annual Flock expense from its budget. Mayor Robert Magnus said he is calling for the council vote.

That local debate is separate from WILL’s lawsuit. Even if the cameras remain in place, WILL wants a court to draw a constitutional line around how police can search the information they collect.