United States v. Sturdivant

IJ filed an amicus brief in United States v. Sturdivant, asking the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hold that using automated license plate readers (ALPRs) to track people’s movements is a search that requires a warrant.

IJ’s brief argues that the 6th Circuit “should hold the use of an ALPR dragnet to surveil drivers without suspicion is an unreasonable search.” Specifically, IJ points out that recent Supreme Court precedent makes clear that the trial court was wrong to focus on the limited amount of information this dragnet captured about Sturdivant. ALPRs capture astonishing amounts of information about the movements of ordinary people who are not suspected of any wrongdoing and feed that information into massive databases that police can search on demand. This is exactly the type of virtual panopticon the Supreme Court has repeatedly held is a search that requires a warrant because it violates expectations of privacy dating back to the founding.