A Texas driver has won a jury verdict — for exactly $76 — after an automated license-plate reader led to a stop and search that a civil-liberties group calls a textbook abuse of mass surveillance.
According to the Institute for Justice (IJ), which helped Alek Schott sue Bexar County, the episode began when an AI-powered camera from the company Flock Safety flagged his license plate. An anonymous law-enforcement agent in the system then decided that his 'completely ordinary' work trip looked suspicious, and a deputy stopped him for an alleged lane drift.
'Footage from Alek's own dashcam shows he never drifted lanes,' IJ said. Bodycam video, the group added, shows he gave 'calm, mundane answers' — yet the deputy called a drug dog anyway. Moments before the dog 'alerted' by jumping on the truck, IJ said, the handler's own bodycam shows he signalled the dog.
Schott was detained for 76 minutes while his truck was thoroughly searched. Nothing was found, despite the alert. In late September a jury sided with him, awarding the token $76 in damages he had requested.
'Money was never what mattered,' his lawyers said. 'This was and has always been about the Constitution.' IJ says it will ask the court to enjoin Bexar County from using baseless traffic stops as a tool for warrantless searches and to spread the precedent across Texas.
The case has become a focal point for critics of the fast-growing ALPR industry. 'This is what mass surveillance looks like when it reaches the shoulder of the highway,' said IJ attorney Josh Windham. Jake Laperruque of the Center for Democracy and Technology told Ars Technica that such stops are 'a pretty quintessential example' of what scrutiny of ALPRs is turning up, warning that the technology creates 'serious dangers for Americans' civil liberties' without 'sensible guardrails'. The Bexar County Sheriff's Office, which promotes its use of Flock Safety cameras, declined to comment.
