A secret network of Flock surveillance cameras in Texas led to a man's constitutional rights being violated, a jury ruled – and more Americans could be harmed. 

Alek Schott was driving along Interstate 35 just outside of San Antonio when he was pulled over in March 2022 by a Bexar County Sheriff's deputy.

Little did he know that being pulled over would become a 76-minute traffic stop that would violate his Fourth Amendment rights. 

The Texan would be put in the front seat of a cop car, where he was interrogated by the deputy, and where he later stayed while a drug dog sniffed his car when he refused a search. 

Schott had been told he was pulled over for crossing the yellow shoulder line, but his dashcam footage proved otherwise. The officer would later testify in court that he used it as an excuse to look through Schott's vehicle. 

After the encounter, Schott would complain to the sheriff's office, which told him to file a lawsuit if he felt he had been mistreated, his lawyer said. 

And through the lawsuit, the Houston resident would discover the real reason he was pulled over: A series of Flock surveillance cameras had caught him making a one-day trip to the US-Mexico border. An anonymous law enforcement agent had flagged it as suspicious. 

'Simply driving across Texas isn't illegal,' Schott told the Daily Mail of the act that would eventually lead him to be searched. And a federal jury agreed with him Monday, ruling that the Bexar County Sheriff's deputy had violated Schott's constitutional right to be free of unlawful searches. 

'Holding the government accountable for false stops, unlawful detentions, and searches without cause is incredibly hard,' Schott told the Daily Mail. 

Through the discovery process, Schott learned just how much data these random surveillance cameras collected, including that it knew he had a woman in his car when he left and whom he would later drop off at a hotel. 

And little is known about these cameras – not even who owns them, operates them, or who is determining what is deemed 'suspicious' behavior, lawyer Christie Hebert told the Daily Mail. 

'But we do know that there is a broader license plate reader network,' said the Institute of Justice lawyer, who represented Schott. 

An officer testified in court that these readers are everywhere – on mile markers, on tow trucks, and even in one's own neighborhood. 

'There's a comprehensive network,' Hebert said. 'This network would scan everyone's plate that drives by and [it] feeds into a broader database that was being monitored, according to these officers, by folks who would then say: "Okay, this person's done a quick trip here. Stop them, hunt them for a traffic stop."'