Our Streets Are Not a Government Tracking Database

We, the undersigned residents of WASHINGTON COUNTY, Utah, call upon our county leaders to remove Flock surveillance cameras from our community and reject the normalization of continuous, indiscriminate tracking of law-abiding citizens.

We believe that a free people must be free to travel, worship, work, visit friends, attend political meetings, seek medical care, raise their families, and simply go about their daily lives without the government creating a permanent record of where they have been.

The Fourth Amendment was written to protect Americans from precisely this kind of unchecked governmental intrusion. It does not say that government may watch everyone simply because technology makes it possible. It protects “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

The United States Supreme Court has now made clear that constitutional privacy protections do not disappear merely because modern technology makes surveillance easier.

In Chatrie v. United States, No. 25-112 (June 29, 2026), the Supreme Court held that law enforcement conducted a Fourth Amendment search when it obtained a person’s historical cellphone location information. The Court expressly recognized that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in records revealing their movements and stated:

• “An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone’s location.”

The Court further emphasized that government intrusion remains a search “even though for only a limited time, and from a third-party tech company.”

Most importantly, the Court reminded us why these protections exist. Quoting its prior precedent, the Court explained that the Fourth Amendment’s basic purpose is:

• “to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions by governmental officials.” (Justia Law⁠)

That principle should matter to Washington County.

A citizen should not have to be suspected of a crime before being worthy of privacy. A person should not have to explain why they drove somewhere. A family should not have to wonder whether their movements are being catalogued. A churchgoer should not have to assume that their attendance is being recorded. A political activist should not have to fear that visiting a meeting will place them into a searchable government database.

The innocent should not be tracked merely because they happen to be near a camera.

Flock cameras transform ordinary public travel into searchable information about people’s movements. The fact that a license plate can be seen by the human eye does not mean that government should have the technological ability to systematically record, retain, analyze, search, and reconstruct the movements of an entire community.

Technology should serve the people—not turn the people into a permanent source of intelligence for the government.

We support legitimate law enforcement. We support investigating crimes, protecting victims, and holding criminals accountable. But public safety and personal liberty are not enemies. A free society does not require the government to monitor everyone in order to catch someone.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Chatrie is a warning against allowing technological capability to outrun constitutional liberty. As the Court recognized, the government cannot evade Fourth Amendment protections simply because information is collected by technology or held by a third party. (Supreme Court⁠)

We therefore call upon the Washington County to:

1. Remove Flock cameras from city streets and public property;
2. Terminate or decline to renew contracts that facilitate indiscriminate vehicle surveillance;
3. Cease the creation of broad databases documenting the movements of law-abiding residents and visitors;
4. Reject surveillance practices that treat every citizen as a potential suspect;
5. Prioritize constitutional privacy, individual liberty, and the trust of the people over the convenience of mass surveillance.

We ask our elected officials to remember that the question is not merely “Can technology do this?”

The question is: “Should a free government do this to its own people?”

We believe the answer is no.

Washington County should be a county where people are free to live their lives without being continuously catalogued by their government.

We choose liberty over surveillance.

We choose privacy over tracking.

We choose constitutional rights over technological convenience.

Remove the cameras. Restore the trust. Protect the people.