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SCOTUS declines to hear challenge to warrantless pole camera surveillance

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Re: SCOTUS declines to hear challenge to warrantless pole camera surveillance

#31

Post by cvoss »

LatteLazy wrote: post #27
chmod600 wrote: post #5

SCOTUS mostly hears cases where there is disagreement among the appeals courts, or where they feel the appeals courts are getting it wrong consistently. They don't usually go after every decision they disagree with. And for those that think the current SCOTUS is somehow anti-fourth-amendment, you should really read the Carpenter decision and opinions.

Surely declining to hear the appeal IS agreeing with the ruling, at least de-facto? Doing so because they are busy or don't want to interfere etc doesn't change that. At best they have retained the option to hear an identical case later, but SCOTUS always has that right anyway...

No, it's not an agreement. Handing down a SCOTUS opinion is the most powerful thing they can do, and all lower courts are bound by it. But maintaining silence permits lower courts to continue operating each on its own best judgment. SCOTUS defers to the specialized authority of lower/local bodies all the time, saying, "We trust you have a better and more intimate perspective and will come to a good decision." That's not agreeing with a judgment call, that's letting somebody else make a judgment call, and being ok with the fact that SCOTUS may or may not have ruled differently.

Re: SCOTUS declines to hear challenge to warrantless pole camera surveillance

#32

Post by gumby »

scott_w wrote: post #23
giantg2 wrote: post #16

I don't like it, but there's nothing stopping your neighbor or anyone else from filming your home from a public/street view. Let's not forget that even if a court decides the police need a warrant to film, a third party could do the filming and police could just buy the data legally. Again, not something I like, but that's how it goes. There are very few details in the article. Now I'm curious how they found out abou…

> police could just buy the data legally. Doesn't this still fall foul of existing surveillance protections, though? The police can't circumvent legislation by just paying a PI to stalk you instead. Doesn't this fall into the bucket of turning the seller into an agent of the state?

Your position is logical, but unfortunately there is by now a large body of precedent saying that that gaping loophole is fine. So for example police can’t track your movement without a warrant, but they can buy that info from the phone companies.

This could be fixed very simply by a law. The chances of such a law being passed are sadly extremely low.

Re: SCOTUS declines to hear challenge to warrantless pole camera surveillance

#33

Post by 35997279 »

giantg2 wrote: post #16

I don't like it, but there's nothing stopping your neighbor or anyone else from filming your home from a public/street view. Let's not forget that even if a court decides the police need a warrant to film, a third party could do the filming and police could just buy the data legally. Again, not something I like, but that's how it goes. There are very few details in the article. Now I'm curious how they found out abou…

> I don't like it, but there's nothing stopping your neighbor or anyone else from filming your home from a public/street view

This is not a natural occurrence, not a law of physics like gravity. It’s the result of large corporations normalizing surveillance. Recall that some Germans rebelled against Google Street View, and the government made them stop putting photos people’s homes on the web. But the cold logic and power of surveillance capitalism prevailed, and even the nominally “privacy protecting” corporation Apple now does the same.

“That’s how it goes” implies it can’t be stopped. It can. Through laws. This branch of government just decided they’re not the ones to do it.

Re: SCOTUS declines to hear challenge to warrantless pole camera surveillance

#34

Post by kibwen »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #11

Arguing that cameras in a public place capturing only public places are an invasive search is an interesting argument.

A utility pole is not public property, it's government property. A member of the public is not legally allowed to just mount whatever equipment they want on the pole.

Re: SCOTUS declines to hear challenge to warrantless pole camera surveillance

#36

Post by Clubber »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #30
giantg2 wrote: post #16

I don't like it, but there's nothing stopping your neighbor or anyone else from filming your home from a public/street view. Let's not forget that even if a court decides the police need a warrant to film, a third party could do the filming and police could just buy the data legally. Again, not something I like, but that's how it goes. There are very few details in the article. Now I'm curious how they found out abou…

> there's nothing stopping your neighbor or anyone else from filming your home from a public/street view Perhaps at the moment, but there's no moral reason why the law cannot constraint and regulate this space, especially if it harms the common good.

>Perhaps at the moment, but there's no moral reason why the law cannot constraint and regulate this space, especially if it harms the common good.

The legal problem is: do you now arrest a parent taking a picture of their child on a public street and your house happens to be in the frame? Of course not, but how do you legally differentiate the two?

Re: SCOTUS declines to hear challenge to warrantless pole camera surveillance

#37

Post by noisy_boy »

justinclift wrote: post #29
rektide wrote: post #2

I like the modern strategy of doing to politicians what they let or perpetrate on others, but I think we'll have a hard time finding some cops to point a bunch of cameras at senators & Supreme Court justices. The technical capabilities of state-based Survelliance keep rising. Just buying the data corporations keep on us seems like the absurd new main mode. Ring cameras, for example. Having the police themselves doing…

Hmmm, how feasible do you reckon it would be to start using the same "buy data from third parties" on these senators and Supreme Court judges? And probably do the same for the (registered) lobbyists and political donors, then look for after hours instances where the data shows their location being very close / overlapping. Or something along those lines anyway. Would probably take a bunch more thinking about + some t…

Problem is that activists haven't kept up with the technology. What is the point of shouting with placards when you can invest the donations to setting up legitimate companies that can do data collection on the lawmakers, following the current law, and then just publicize it. See how quickly the law changes (though instead of changes for the general public, it'll probably be in terms of just adding exclusionary clauses for lawmakers e.g. like how insider trading is rampant among them and nobody gets thrown into jail for doing it while I have to sit through yearly preaching organized by my company about what a terrible, horrible, bad thing it is).

Re: SCOTUS declines to hear challenge to warrantless pole camera surveillance

#38

Post by photochemsyn »

The American government, including the political, bureaucratic and the judicial sectors, seems quite eager to implement the Chinese system of mass surveillance and control of the population, and would do so immediately if given the chance.

Incidentally, this warrantless camera surveillance of specific targets is fairly similar to the current practice of private companies engaging in surveillance of all kinds of online communities, then selling their collected data to the FBI, which thus avoids the need to go before a judge to get a warrant.

https://www.leefang.com/p/private-spies-hired-by-the-fbi-and

Re: SCOTUS declines to hear challenge to warrantless pole camera surveillance

#39

Post by DirectorKrennic »

codingdave wrote: post #25
giantg2 wrote: post #16

I don't like it, but there's nothing stopping your neighbor or anyone else from filming your home from a public/street view. Let's not forget that even if a court decides the police need a warrant to film, a third party could do the filming and police could just buy the data legally. Again, not something I like, but that's how it goes. There are very few details in the article. Now I'm curious how they found out abou…

But most people staking out your home are somewhat obvious. A car parked across the street would be noticed, as would most permanent cameras. Getting permission to put something on a utility pole that is so small as to not be noticed is different, and whether or not that makes it illegal is exactly the question at hand. Think about it as if it was a person -- while it might be legal for me to stand on the sidewalk an…

> but what criteria should?

In a democracy, the will of the people. And in a dictatorship, the will of the leader. That's it, that's all.

People should take matters in their own hands and start taking down those cameras.

Re: SCOTUS declines to hear challenge to warrantless pole camera surveillance

#40

Post by jzb »

giantg2 wrote: post #21
jzb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that the length and amount of surveillance is invasive. You expect when you walk out of the house a neighbor might see what you’re doing. Hard to call it invasive if that happens a few times a week. But if your neighbors take turns sitting on their porch, watching every move you make - if you can never come and go without them watching - and they’re taking notes and pictures of every visitor, every packag…

"You expect when you walk out of the house a neighbor might see what you’re doing. Hard to call it invasive if that happens a few times a week." I mean, maybe that's the expectation/argument from the 19th century. Cameras have been around a long time and are increasing in popularity among the general population (Ring etc). It might feel invasive, but there's no reasonable expectation of privacy legally .

"but there's no reasonable expectation of privacy legally."

Um. Isn't that what this case is trying to establish? It's unclear what the legal expectation is or isn't.

Just because we have the technology to do something doesn't mean it immediately follows that erodes a given right. The government can tap just about any call, but courts have restricted that substantially (at least in theory...). If you have not, I recommend watching The Wire and checking out all the hoops that the police have to jump through to establish cause and perform wire taps. Technology is very dated now, but it gives an interesting view. (It is also, I'll add, a damn good show...)

Here, the ACLU is trying to establish that constant camera surveillance of a house is a violation of your rights. Nobody is arguing it's not technically possible, nor is anybody arguing that my neighbor can't have a Ring camera that happens to have my house in its field of view.

But the state planting a camera specifically to surveil a house for months at a time is, arguably, a violation without showing any cause or getting a warrant to do so.

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