Petition to the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Office

To Halt the Use of Flock Safety Cameras and Similar Technologies

To: The Cape Girardeau County Sheriff and Office Leadership

We, the undersigned residents of Cape Girardeau County, Missouri, petition the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Office to immediately cease and refrain from using Flock Safety cameras, automated license plate readers (ALPRs), or similar mass vehicle tracking technologies.

Reasons:

Fourth Amendment Concerns: The technology enables warrantless, long-term tracking of movements, creating a digital record of private activities in violation of constitutional protections. Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018), established that government access to comprehensive location data invades reasonable privacy expectations. Pervasive ALPR networks raise parallel issues by building searchable “mosaics” of individuals’ lives.

Techtimes

Overreach on Innocent Citizens: It logs data on non-suspects, facilitating broad surveillance rather than targeted law enforcement. Federal courts have allowed Fourth Amendment challenges to proceed where systems create dragnet coverage (e.g., Institute for Justice cases arguing unconstitutional warrantless surveillance).

Ars Technica

Privacy, Accuracy, and Abuse Risks: Potential for data breaches, false positives, and misuse outweigh benefits in a free society.

Requests:

Halt any deployment or use of such systems county-wide.

Avoid partnerships that share or access Flock-type data networks without warrants.

Commit to warrant requirements for any location/movement data queries consistent with Carpenter.

Public transparency and hearings are requested.