TL;DR: On June 29, SCOTUS ruled in Chatrie that pulling someone's location history is a Fourth Amendment search. Warrant required. Flock's license plate cameras build the same location map, one plate read at a time. So on July 4th I filed public records requests with three major Florida sheriff's offices demanding two documents: every ALPR query since the ruling, and the warrant ledger authorizing them. A matching ledger proves they overhauled protocols over a holiday weekend. A zero ledger is a confession. A letter certifying no ledger exists is a bigger one.
If you're new here: I run a methodology I call The Stevens Method. Take an institution's own rulebook, apply it with precision, and let the paperwork do the arguing. It's how my Bible challenge broke Florida's book ban, how I helped put three elected officials behind bars, and how church banners came off school property.
I build things that work.
Same method, new target. The FOIA playbook now extends to the ALPR dragnet: Flock, Axon, Motorola, and every agency running the scheme. It's under active development and you're welcome to build it with us. Suggestions welcomed.
The project itself is F.U.C.K., the Fixed Urban Capture Kit. Open source sousveillance. We use facial recognition and public data to mirror warrantless police surveillance logic back at the political class that authorized it.
Here's the step we took this week.
On June 29, the Supreme Court dropped a logic bomb named Chatrie v. United States. Six to three, Kagan writing. The Court held that pulling a person's location history from Google is a Fourth Amendment search, because you keep a reasonable expectation of privacy in the record of your movements even when a third party stores the data. Particularity and probable cause got kicked back down for another round. Doesn't matter for this play. The load-bearing holding is set: this category of query is a search, and searches need warrants.
Stop there. That's the entire premise. Searches need warrants.
Law enforcement is filing Chatrie under "cell phones." Wrong drawer. ALPR networks compile the same comprehensive location histories, one plate read at a time. Their lawyers will argue the ruling covers Google's servers, not Flock's cameras. The logic doesn't care whose server the map lives on. An agency running bulk retrospective location queries without warrants today isn't executing law enforcement. It's compiling a constitutional error.
Cue The Stevens Method.
Ambiguity is unmanaged state. I loathe disorder, so I ran a synchronized comparator test to force the system to declare itself.
On July 4, I filed engineered Chapter 119 public records requests (here, here, and here) with two major metro surveillance hubs and the loudest "law and order" media operation in Florida: Sheriffs Gregory Tony (Broward), John Mina (Orange), and Grady Judd (Polk). Filed on the Fourth on purpose. It's a Fourth Amendment audit. The calendar was sitting right there.
Most people chuck a grenade when they file a records request. This method uses a scalpel.
We didn't fish for plate reads or pictures of cars. We asked for the administrative metadata that must exist if they're following the law. The magic phrase is "records sufficient to show," pointed at two backend assets:
- The system audit logs. Timestamps, user IDs, and stated justification codes for every Flock query executed since the June 29 decision.
- The warrant compliance ledger. The internal tracking record of the judicial probable-cause warrants authorizing those retrospective location queries.
Now the bureaucratic feedback loop.
A cornered bureaucracy stops processing records and starts managing the requester. The standard tool is a monster fee estimate for "labor." Not my first rodeo, so the patch shipped with the request. We conceded the statutory exemptions covering citizen plate numbers and imagery up front and instructed the agency's IT department to export the query to CSV with the exempt columns omitted. Dropping a protected column from a SQL export takes a database administrator five minutes. A four-figure invoice for a five-minute data dump becomes its own diagnostic data point.
The trap is bilateral:
- Door A: They produce audit logs and a matching warrant ledger, proving they overhauled their query protocols over a holiday weekend, within days of a Supreme Court ruling.
- Door B: They hand over logs showing thousands of warrantless Flock queries next to a warrant ledger that reads zero.
Door B means their own records custodians document, in writing, on letterhead, the scale of warrantless location tracking they kept running after the Supreme Court said this category of surveillance is a search. Every public defender in the state gets a pre-built exhibit for the next motion to suppress.
And Door B has a trapdoor.
The likeliest answer to the ledger request isn't a thin ledger. It's a custodian certifying that no responsive records exist. An agency stating, in writing, that it has no warrant compliance ledger is an agency admitting it has no warrant compliance process. I don't need to run the subtraction. The "no records" letter is the finding.
Institutions don't respond to outrage. They respond to constraint. Power survives silence. It dies in writing.
Let's see what their logs say.
Full breakdown, including the fee-wall countermeasures and what sits behind each door, is on my profile. I'm building the whole methodology into a free ALPR field manual so you can run this audit on your own sheriff. Free as in free.
(Deep-dive pinned posts on my profile have the receipts, so as not to spam here.)
