North Carolina Representative Mark Harris is warning that the government’s growing reliance on AI to track Americans’ movements does not change the constitutional requirement for a warrant before doing so.
“Americans should not surrender their Fourth Amendment rights simply because new technology makes it easier for the government to track where they go,” Harris posted on X.
His statement frames the debate as one of principle rather than capability. Advances in artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and location-tracking tools have made it technically simpler for government agencies to monitor where people travel, who they meet, and how they communicate.
In an interview on Newsmax, Harris’s contended that ease of collection carries no constitutional weight — the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches applies regardless of how advanced and efficient the surveillance technology that the government developed is.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-media-max-width=”560″><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Americans should not surrender their Fourth Amendment rights simply because new technology makes it easier for the government to track where they go.<br><br>Mass surveillance of innocent Americans without a warrant is unconstitutional and un-American. <a href=”https://t.co/Z6RsOBh36D”>pic.twitter.com/Z6RsOBh36D</a></p>— Rep. Mark Harris (@RepMarkHarrisNC) <a href=”https://x.com/RepMarkHarrisNC/status/2094848845108662401?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>September 1, 2026</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.x.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
The tension Harris is describing has surfaced repeatedly as federal and state agencies adopt AI-driven tools originally built for other purposes, then apply them to track ordinary citizens who are not suspected of any crime.
Flock cameras are popping up in communities across America.
Government officials claim their license plate readers are necessary to fight crime while citizens wonder why they are stationed outside of gun rangers and worry about potential abuses to invade privacy and create a database of political opponents’ movements.
Critics of these programs argue that a warrant requirement is the mechanism the Constitution provides to prevent that kind of open-ended monitoring, regardless of the technology involved. The same argument has animated recent fights in Congress over foreign intelligence surveillance authorities, where lawmakers pushing for warrant requirements have said the underlying principle does not change depending on which agency or which tool is doing the tracking.
In the Newsmax interview, Harris cited highlighted specific state legislative efforts to restrict AI surveillance tools before they become embedded in routine law enforcement practice. Those state-level actions have become a focal point for lawmakers who argue that federal oversight has not kept pace with the technology.
Harris’s comments add his voice to a wider push among members of Congress to establish warrant requirements for government tracking of Americans’ movements and communications, a debate that has intensified as surveillance tools have grown more sophisticated and less expensive to deploy at scale.
Harris said that standard should apply to any new tracking technology the government adopts. “Mass surveillance of innocent Americans without a warrant is unconstitutional and un-American,” the North Carolina Congressman maintained.
