Everyday activities such as driving a car, transferring money, or carrying a smartphone can quietly pull ordinary people into government and law enforcement surveillance dragnets. These sprawling digital data collections often operate in total secrecy for years, emerging into public view only through investigations by advocacy groups, journalists, or congressional inquiries. Privacy advocates warn that these expansive surveillance networks rely on vast amounts of information and capture massive numbers of individuals, raising severe constitutional and civil rights questions.
Key takeaways
- Law enforcement agencies have increasingly utilized commercial data brokers and advertising networks to purchase cellphone location data without obtaining a traditional warrant.
- License plate reader networks, such as Flock Safety's system spanning approximately 120,000 cameras across 49 states, face a wave of proposed class-action lawsuits.
- Federal civil rights lawsuits and legal challenges are mounting as courts reach conflicting decisions regarding whether tracking motorists and utilizing automated data collection constitutes an unconstitutional search.
- Legislation such as the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act has been introduced to curb government purchases of personal data, though major reform bills have stalled.
The Real-World Risks of Automated Data Collection
The dangers of these opaque tracking systems were highlighted in September 2025 when a Colorado resident named Chrisanna Elser was issued a summons by Columbine Valley Police Sgt. Jamie Milliman. Police used Flock license plate readers to identify Elser's green Rivian after it was driven through the neighboring town of Bow Mar around the time a package was stolen from a porch. Although the surveillance video of the crime did not show the suspect entering any vehicle, the officer remained convinced he had the right person. Elser was forced to prove her innocence and ultimately had the charge dropped only because her vehicle's built-in cameras recorded her exact route that day. In October 2026, Elser filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Flock Safety, the towns of Columbine Valley and Bow Mar, and two police officials.
Legal challenges to Flock Safety's network of roughly 120,000 cameras across 49 states are proliferating. Proposed class-action lawsuits in Georgia, California, and Colorado are questioning whether tracking motorists' movements violates state privacy laws or constitutes an unconstitutional search, while federal judges in different states have reached contradictory conclusions. Furthermore, a Pew Research Center analysis revealed that among 1,517 law enforcement agencies with public Flock transparency portals, only half disclosed individual search data. The median agency among those reporting shared its data with 217 other organizations, primarily other law enforcement agencies.
Commercial Data Brokers and the Third-Party Doctrine
Government agencies frequently bypass traditional warrant requirements by turning to commercial data brokers. In March 2026, internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection records obtained by 404 Media revealed that the agency had purchased cellphone location data tied to mobile advertising IDs from the online advertising industry for targeting and vetting processes. Through Freedom of Information Act litigation, the American Civil Liberties Union also discovered that other Department of Homeland Security agencies acquired large quantities of location data from brokers. This practice exploits the data-broker loophole, which is tied to the legal concept of the third-party doctrine. Under this doctrine, individuals are traditionally considered to have a diminished expectation of privacy in information shared voluntarily with third parties like banks or telecom operators.
However, the legal landscape is slowly shifting. In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that police generally need a warrant to obtain historical cellphone location records from wireless carriers. In June 2026, the Supreme Court ruled in a case involving Okello Chatrie that police conducted a Fourth Amendment search when obtaining a suspect's Google location history through a geofence warrant, sending the case back to the appeals court to evaluate probable cause and specificity. Meanwhile, lawmakers have attempted to close the data-broker loophole through proposals like the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, the Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act of 2026, and the Government Surveillance Reform Act of 2026, though none have successfully advanced out of committee.
Financial Tracking and the Push for Privacy Reform
Beyond location tracking and license plate readers, financial transactions have also served as a vast surveillance mechanism. In 2022, Sen. Ron Wyden revealed that Homeland Security Investigations collected bulk records from international money transfer companies for transactions of $500 or more to and from certain Southwestern states and Mexico. These records were funneled into a database run by the Transaction Record Analysis Center, a nonprofit established via a 2014 settlement between the Arizona attorney general's office and Western Union. By July 2024, the database held more than 337 million transaction records accessible to over 600 law enforcement agencies. Although originally created to combat money laundering, the database was subsequently utilized in immigration enforcement investigations, such as a case in Hawaii where a Mexican man sending money to relatives was charged with illegal reentering.
In response to these pervasive systems, privacy advocates emphasize that privacy is a collective right rather than a matter of having nothing to hide. Studies have shown that surveillance tools like license plate readers are often disproportionately deployed in predominantly Black and high-poverty neighborhoods, placing vulnerable populations including immigrant communities and domestic violence survivors at greater risk. Abigail Kunkler, counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, stresses that citizens must voice their support for legislation restricting government purchases of personal data and demanding stricter oversight to limit the expansion of digital surveillance.
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