# The Cameras Went Up Without a Vote _Summerset is standing up a Flock camera network over its neighborhoods, its businesses, and Stagebarn Middle School. South Dakota has no law governing any of it. The public review is September 3._ By Zac Martin. Published 2026-08-27. Canonical URL: https://zac4sd.com/blog/flock-cameras-fourth-amendment Platform pillar: P. Surveillance, Privacy, and the Fourth Amendment Yesterday I wrote about my son going back to school. Here is the part I left out of that one. Just north of Rapid City, the city of Summerset is standing up a network of automated license plate readers with a company called Flock Safety. Around the clock. The coverage area includes neighborhoods, local businesses, and Stagebarn Middle School. The public gets to look at it on September 3. Summerset is not in District 32. State law is, and South Dakota has written exactly nothing on this subject. No statute on automated plate readers. No statute on surveillance camera privacy. Nothing on who may query the data, nothing on how long it is kept, nothing on who outside this state is allowed to go looking through it. A pair of newsroom fact briefs confirmed the same thing in May: the law is blank. So the cameras are not waiting for us. They are going up while the statute book stays empty, and that is a choice the legislature is making by not showing up. ## One camera is not the problem Our own police department is the example of doing this correctly, and I am going to say so plainly even though it complicates the story. The Rapid City Police Department runs four plate readers, added in April, on a localized Axon system. Plate data only. No driver identification. Nobody watching a live feed. The stated use is stolen vehicles, violent crime suspects, and missing persons. If every agency in South Dakota operated like that, I would have less to write about. Flock works differently, and the difference is the whole issue. A Flock camera is a node on a centralized national database, and Flock passed 100,000 cameras this year. Plate reads flow into a system that agencies across regions can search. The private business owner who mounts one on his own property controls that footage and can hand police access to it without anybody getting a warrant. In Rapid City that is already happening. The visible Flock cameras around town belong to private owners, not to the department, and no government body is overseeing them. Sioux Falls went the other direction and bought in directly. Twenty-five Flock cameras, a $168,000 contract, approved in early 2025. Madison is using them too. Four cameras that cannot talk to anyone is a tool. A hundred thousand cameras on a searchable national index is an infrastructure, and infrastructure gets used for whatever the next person to hold the keys wants it for. ## The abuses are audited, not alleged I try not to argue from what might happen. Here is what did. In May 2026, an audit of Dayton's camera data found it had been searched more than 7,100 times for immigration enforcement. Dayton's own written policy prohibited exactly that. In June 2026, San Francisco's police chief told the police commission that a routine compliance audit had caught a regional intelligence center running queries against the city's network for federal and out-of-state agencies. Two hundred ninety-nine improper inquiries, over roughly a year. A class action filed in San Francisco Superior Court in February 2026 alleges that federal agencies including ICE, Customs and Border Protection, the FBI, and the ATF queried that city's cameras more than 1.6 million times across seven months, which California law forbids without case-by-case authorization. By June, 53 cities had cancelled Flock contracts over unauthorized federal access. Read that list again and notice what it has in common. Dayton had a policy. San Francisco had a state statute. Both got queried anyway, and in both places the only reason anyone found out was an audit. Nobody discovered these violations by reading the vendor's terms of service. South Dakota has neither the policy nor the statute nor the audit. ## What the Constitution says and what the courts have actually held Article VI, Section 11 of our own constitution reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause supported by affidavit, particularly describing the place to be searched and the person or thing to be seized." Particularly describing the place to be searched. A network that logs every vehicle that passes it, keeps the record, and lets an agency reconstruct where you have been for months is the opposite of particular. I am not going to overstate where the case law sits, because the honest version is better for my argument than the exaggerated one. The Institute for Justice sued Norfolk, Virginia in October 2024 on behalf of residents, arguing its Flock network violated the Fourth Amendment. In February 2025 the court refused to throw the case out, leaning on Carpenter v. United States, where the Supreme Court held that tracking someone through cell phone location records is a search. Then in January 2026 the same court ruled for the city on the merits. Norfolk's system, as operated, was not an unconstitutional search. That decision is now on appeal at the Fourth Circuit. So no, a court has not struck these networks down. What the judge did write is that plate reader surveillance "could become too intrusive" at some point, and that the answer, at least in Norfolk, was "not today." Not today is not a principle. It is a postponement. And the Supreme Court has since moved. In Chatrie v. United States the Court held 6 to 3 that pulling a person's location history from a technology company is a Fourth Amendment search, because even short windows of tracking expose things the Constitution protects. The logic that decided Chatrie does not stop politely at the edge of a license plate. Here is my actual position on all of it. I do not want the Fourth Circuit telling South Dakotans what South Dakota's constitution means. That is the legislature's job, we have not done it, and waiting for a federal appeals court to hand down our privacy rights is not conservative governance. It is abdication. ## The Attorney General moved first. His bill needs teeth. On August 12, Attorney General Marty Jackley announced he will bring legislation in the 2027 session limiting plate readers to, in his words, "solely for legitimate law enforcement purposes with strong protections for the public's privacy," including a deadline for destroying the data. He is working on it with Lance Russell. He moved before I did and he deserves the credit for it. I will vote for that bill. I will also try to fix what it leaves out, because as announced it does not require a warrant, does not require an independent audit, and does not say a word about privately owned camera networks. Dayton had a purpose limitation. San Francisco had one written into state law. A purpose limitation with no warrant in front of it and no audit behind it is an honor system, and the audits are the only reason we know the honor system failed. Retention limits have the same problem: a deletion deadline nobody is checking is a promise, not a protection. ## What I will file The ALPR Accountability Act, in the 2027 session. Seven pieces. A warrant before any South Dakota agency queries a plate reader network for a person's location history. A hard retention limit with automatic deletion, written in statute instead of a vendor's settings page. No sharing of South Dakota plate data with federal or out-of-state agencies without an order from a South Dakota judge. Independent audits, published where the public can read them, with penalties attached to improper queries. No cameras sited to surveil a school, a church, or a medical building. A public hearing and a recorded vote before any agency in this state signs a plate reader contract. And no warrantless police access to privately owned camera networks. I know the objection to a warrant requirement, because it is the only serious one. Somebody will say it slows down real police work. Officers get warrants for phones, homes, and bank records every single day, and a genuine investigation clears probable cause without much trouble. Police in two South Dakota cities have credited plate imaging with closing theft cases, and nothing I am proposing stops that. A warrant does not obstruct the case with a suspect in it. It obstructs the fishing trip, the deputy looking up an ex, and the out-of-state agency running your plate for a reason nobody in this state ever approved. The camera at that middle school is not going to be aimed at your kid. That is not the argument. The argument is that a record of every car that pulls into that lot, held indefinitely, searchable by agencies that never answered to anyone in Meade County, exists now because we never got around to writing the rule. ## September 3 Summerset's public review is September 3. If you live up there, go to it. If you live in District 32, that hearing is a preview of the conversation this whole state is about to have, and I would rather we have it before the network is finished than after. Call your city council and ask a specific question: who can query our plate data, how long is it kept, and who audits it? If the answer is that nobody knows, you have found the problem. The Fourth Amendment has no technology exception. It did not expire because the cameras got cheaper. Strong Families. Strong South Dakota. Read the full Surveillance and Privacy plank at zac4sd.com. You get two votes for State House on November 3, and I am asking for one of them. --- ## Common questions on this issue **Q. This is anti-police.** A. The Rapid City Police Department runs four plate readers on a localized Axon system. Plate data only, no driver identification, no real-time monitoring, used to find stolen vehicles, violent crime suspects, and missing persons. That is a defensible policy, and I have said so publicly. My problem is that it is a policy rather than a law. A policy holds until a chief retires, a vendor changes its terms, or a regional fusion center starts running queries nobody here approved. I want the good policy written into statute so it survives the people who wrote it. **Q. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.** A. The Fourth Amendment is not a reward for having nothing to hide. It is a limit on what government may do without cause. And the record shows the fear is not hypothetical. A May 2026 audit found Dayton's camera data had been searched more than 7,100 times for immigration enforcement, which that city's own policy prohibited. In June 2026, San Francisco's police chief disclosed 299 improper queries run on behalf of federal and out-of-state agencies over about a year. Those were not criminals being caught. Those were rules being broken. **Q. The courts already said these cameras are constitutional.** A. One federal district court said so about one city, in January 2026, and it is on appeal to the Fourth Circuit. That same judge warned the practice could become too intrusive and wrote that the answer, at least in Norfolk, was not today. Meanwhile the Supreme Court held 6-3 in Chatrie v. United States that pulling a person's location history from a company is a Fourth Amendment search, because even short stretches of tracking expose protected details. I am not willing to let the Fourth Circuit decide what South Dakota's own constitution means for South Dakotans. **Q. The Attorney General is already handling this.** A. Attorney General Jackley announced on August 12, 2026 that he will bring a bill limiting readers to legitimate law enforcement purposes with a data destruction timeline, and he deserves credit for moving first. I will vote for it. It also does not require a warrant, does not require an independent audit, and does not address private camera networks. Dayton and San Francisco both had purpose limits on paper. Purpose limits without a warrant and without audits are an honor system, and the audits are the only reason we know the honor system failed. **Q. These cameras solve real crimes.** A. Some of them do, and I am not pretending otherwise. Police in two South Dakota cities have credited plate imaging with closing theft cases. A warrant requirement does not stop that work. Officers get warrants every day for phones, homes, and bank records, and serious investigations clear that bar routinely. What a warrant stops is the fishing trip, the ex-boyfriend with a badge, and the out-of-state agency running your plate for a reason no South Dakotan ever voted to allow. --- Paid for by Zac Martin for South Dakota.