Flock Cameras, Public Safety, and Your Right to Privacy

Flock cameras can be enormously useful law-enforcement tools. They can help find a kidnapped child, locate a dangerous suspect, and solve serious crimes. I support each community's right to decide which law-enforcement tools they want used to keep us safe and catch dangerous criminals because every tool we entrust to government comes with limits on its use—whether it is a service weapon or a surveillance system. Oconee County citizens  just made their voice heard, to determine what they wanted for their community.

And your constitutional rights are not obstacles to good policing. 

They are an inherent part of good policing. 

The Rule of Law applies equally to everyone and protects all of us.

SO WHAT IS MY ROLE AS YOUR ATTORNEY GENERAL? 

There is a fundamental misunderstanding in our politics about whom the Attorney General serves. 

I am not confused about it. I will serve YOU. 

That means the Attorney General is a PROTECTOR OF THE PUBLIC INTEREST, (AG accountability Report p.2) especially when new technology pushes against the boundaries of your constitutional rights. 

The office exists to serve the people of South Carolina and uphold The Rule of Law. 

That is the law and it is my lens.

As the People's Attorney, I will never forget whom government exists to serve.

The Attorney General does not run SLED or local police departments. 

But that does not mean the Attorney General is powerless when government power is abused.

I will honor the office's INDEPENDENT RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC INTEREST, PUBLIC SAFETY, AND PUBLIC RIGHTS.

Where criminal misuse of government power falls within the jurisdiction of the State Grand Jury—including appropriate public-corruption matters—the Attorney General has substantial investigative and prosecutorial authority.

MY POSITION IS CLEAR: 

Use the technology to catch criminals within the boundaries prescribed by the community, Constitution, the courts, and The Rule of Law. Audit its use. Protect the data. And if someone entrusted with government power criminally abuses that power to invade the privacy of innocent South Carolinians, investigate it—and prosecute it where the evidence warrants.

THE LAW:

 The constitutional boundaries governing the use of Flock/ALPR systems and data have not been conclusively defined or decided by either the Supreme Court of the United States or the Supreme Court of South Carolina. But as a lawyer who has spent 30 years litigating constitutional rights in federal court, including the United States Supreme Court, and as a professor of constitutional law at two law schools, I would add two important considerations to this discussion:

 YOUR RIGHT TO PRIVACY IS IN SOUTH CAROLINA'S CONSTITUTION 

(1) South Carolina's Constitution goes further than the federal Fourth Amendment. It expressly protects the people against “unreasonable invasions of privacy.” S.C. Const. art. I, §10. Those words mean something; and

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT JUST ADDRESSED A DATA PRIVACY RIGHTS CASE 

(2)  Just this June, the United States Supreme Court decided Chatrie v. United States (2026), holding that government acquisition of a person's stored cell-phone location history is a Fourth Amendment search because we have a reasonable expectation of privacy in our location information. The Court sent the case back to determine whether that search was constitutionally reasonable. This SCOTUS decision could impact the privacy rights of ALPR / Flock camera data.  

NOTE: As courts interpret this decision, and the law develops, it will be up to communities, like Oconee County just did, to determine what they want for their community.

As Attorney General, I will work to make sure that as surveillance technology changes, the rights guaranteed to you by our Constitutions continue to have meaning in your daily life while also providing for public safety. 

The Rule of Law can and should keep you safe from criminals AND protect you from government overreach.

Those are not competing values. I honor them both.

That's how The Rule of Law is supposed to work—and that's what your Attorney General is supposed to do. 

- Richard