A Texas man sentenced to 60 years in prison for armed robbery is seeking to overturn his conviction based on the use of Flock cameras to track his movements.
The man, 37-year-old Charles Brownlee, was found guilty of five armed robberies in 2024. According to his legal team, authorities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area used Flock cameras to monitor his vehicle’s movements and create a “pattern of life” to tie him to the crimes, reported the Texas Tribune.
Brownlee’s legal team is arguing that this “pattern” was obtained through unconstitutional surveillance methods enabled by Flock camera networks. They contend police should have obtained a search warrant before accessing Flock databases, which surveil Texans via tens of thousands of Flock cameras across the state.
“Flock’s surveillance database indiscriminately collects a vast trove of locational data about Americans who drive or ride in cars. By capturing, storing, retrieving, and indexing this data, Flock gives police the power to find almost anyone and reconstruct their movements,” wrote Brownlee’s legal team in a brief submitted to the 5th Circuit Court.
Brownlee previously sought to toss the Flock data before going to trial, but the judge denied the request.
In a case earlier this month, a federal judge ruled the use of Flock camera databases to track a drug trafficking suspect’s movements across state lines was unconstitutional. The woman at the center of the case was found in possession of methamphetamine after a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officer ran her plate number through Flock databases and deemed her recent travels suspicious.
“Freedom from persistent, dragnet-style surveillance while in public is not a foreign concept in our society, and it is a reasonable expectation that society already accepts,” Judge Sara E. Hill wrote in her decision at the time.
Source: https://mashable.com/tech/flock-camera-warrant-used-to-appeal-conviction
