Matthew Tokson is a professor of law at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, where he directs the Criminal Law Program. His research focuses on the Fourth Amendment and its application to new technologies and social contexts, and his article Knowledge and Fourth Amendment Privacy was cited in an amicus brief he joined in Carpenter v. United States.
Case
On October 1, 2026, a federal judge in Oklahoma held that a deputy's warrantless search of a car's month of license-plate-reader records violated the Fourth Amendment. Prosecutors had argued plates on public roads carry no privacy interest, and Flock expects reversal.
Role at the time: Professor of law at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, in his own Bluesky post
Response to this claim
A Tulsa County deputy's warrantless query of the Flock and VehicleManager plate-reader databases for the historical locations of a Mazda with a California plate, which returned more than 50 records across several states over about a month, was a search under the Fourth Amendment that was not supported by probable cause and violated Melisa Kyle's Fourth Amendment rights.
“A federal district judge just declared that Flock camera systems violate the Fourth Amendment! Applying Chatrie, the court concludes that extensive camera networks engage in unlawful "indiscriminate mass surveillance." A major ruling.”
The reference point is the proposition that the warrantless query was a search that violated the Fourth Amendment. Tokson endorses the court's conclusion and calls it "A major ruling", so we used Condemned. His summary is broader than the holding, which concerns one query of one vehicle's records, and we record his position on the ruling and not the breadth of his wording. The closest competing label is Mixed or conditional, which loses because he states no condition or reservation.
Statement dates: October 3, 2026
Statement dates: October 3, 2026
Statement dates: October 3, 2026
Statement dates: October 3, 2026
