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License plate reader searches should require a warrant

andrewpwheeler.com

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Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#61

Post by LPisGood »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #6
cmiles8 wrote: post #3

Either it needs a warrant or it’s fully open and people can start creating websites showing the movements of local politicians. This middle ground that municipalities try to carve out where it’s fully open to police without a warrant but not subject to FOIL laws doesn’t appear tenable for much longer. There’s been too many cases of police officers stalking exes, poking around the data for fun and such so it’s clear p…

I don't understand why a police cruiser can sit in a public space (or even a private one) and write down licence plates and descriptions of passers-by with pen and paper, or record everything around them with dashcams and bodycams for later use, but when it comes to cameras on a pole this would require a warrant. Going back through police officers' notes or cruiser dash cam videos and tracking a car's movements by it…

A difference in degree is a difference in kind. Computer scientists struggle with a lot of legal concepts because they love to reduce situations in attempt to distill some particular facet and argue from analogy. A lot of poor legal analysis regarding things like fraud go similarly: “well in principle isn’t this the same as if I just . . .”

If there were literally hundreds of thousands of government agents on every corner writing down every person/car that walked by, it is quite probable this would be illegal even though you have no expectation of privacy in public. See Carpenter V United States and some of the concurring opinions in United States v. Jones.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#62

Post by devin »

WarmWash wrote: post #33
kentm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand why a police cruiser can sit in a public space (or even a private one) and write down licence plates and descriptions of passers-by with pen and paper, or record everything around them with dashcams and bodycams for later use, but when it comes to cameras on a pole this would require a warrant. Scale actually matters. Things that are generally OK at a small scale become problematic at larger scal…

Great, now rigidly define scale...

You don’t need to rigidly define scale to demonstrate at a common sense level that there is a major difference between a couple cops writing down your license plate and a nationwide network of them entering your plate into a searchable ledger.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#63

Post by missingcolours »

cmiles8 wrote: post #3

Either it needs a warrant or it’s fully open and people can start creating websites showing the movements of local politicians. This middle ground that municipalities try to carve out where it’s fully open to police without a warrant but not subject to FOIL laws doesn’t appear tenable for much longer. There’s been too many cases of police officers stalking exes, poking around the data for fun and such so it’s clear p…

That doesn't seem untenable at all. It's perfectly consistent with legal precedent and current practice.

There are MANY cases where the government legitimately possesses personal information that could potentially cause harm if revealed, for operational as well as public safety purposes. Vehicle registration and drivers license records, for example.

This personal information is typically exempt from FOIA laws. I can't go FOIA vehicle registration records to look up where a certain driver lives, but the state and police officers do have access to that information.

A search involves access without consent. Police don't need a search warrant to perform a search with the consent of the owner. In the case of cell phone data the search is without the consent of the data owner (the phone company). In this case the municipality is collecting public-view data themselves, not without the consent of the collector, so there's no search warrant issue.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#64

Post by smt88 »

veec_cas_tant wrote: post #24
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why a police cruiser can sit in a public space (or even a private one) and write down licence plates and descriptions of passers-by with pen and paper, or record everything around them with dashcams and bodycams for later use, but when it comes to cameras on a pole this would require a warrant. Going back through police officers' notes or cruiser dash cam videos and tracking a car's movements by it…

Police already don’t need warrants to gather video footage from homes and businesses. It certainly isn’t ineffective or else they wouldn’t do it, but everybody knows how effective video footage is. The difference for most does seem to be that it doesn’t cost man hours. We have had cities in the USA with 10k+ cameras in public spaces for years now without much fanfare.

> everybody knows how effective video footage is

There's no evidence that mass video surveillance, Ring cameras, etc. are leading to higher clearance rates of serious crimes.

> We have had cities in the USA with 10k+ cameras in public spaces for years now without much fanfare.

And if the data from those cameras were processed to allow me to type someone's name into the search and then track their every movement, there would be a lot of fanfare. Palantir is probably building that, but it doesn't seem widespread yet.

But as of now, the directionality is reversed.

With regular video, we know a crime happened and expand our search from there to find a suspect. It's not invading a specific person's privacy.

With Flock, we have a suspect and want to retroactively stalk that person. We don't know if that person had anything to do with any crime yet, and we're invading their privacy.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#65

Post by saveferris »

WarmWash wrote: post #33
kentm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand why a police cruiser can sit in a public space (or even a private one) and write down licence plates and descriptions of passers-by with pen and paper, or record everything around them with dashcams and bodycams for later use, but when it comes to cameras on a pole this would require a warrant. Scale actually matters. Things that are generally OK at a small scale become problematic at larger scal…

Great, now rigidly define scale...

SCOTUS has (sort of) done this in the recent Chatrie case. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-112_0am4.pdf

It's obviously different in that Chatrie was about google location data, and there actually was a warrant. SCOTUS ruled that warrant was too broad since it captured everyone in that location, not a specific person(s).

Constitutional scholars have pointed out the ALPR are next in line to face challenges based on the same principles as Chatrie - LEO can get a warrant for a specific person(s) to search but cannot search the entire universe.

That would not prevent ALPRs from existing, but it would require a warrant to search them. Which seems reasonable and completely in line with the 4th amendment.

Edit: words/spelling

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#66

Post by VeninVidiaVicii »

missingcolours wrote: post #63
cmiles8 wrote: post #3

Either it needs a warrant or it’s fully open and people can start creating websites showing the movements of local politicians. This middle ground that municipalities try to carve out where it’s fully open to police without a warrant but not subject to FOIL laws doesn’t appear tenable for much longer. There’s been too many cases of police officers stalking exes, poking around the data for fun and such so it’s clear p…

That doesn't seem untenable at all. It's perfectly consistent with legal precedent and current practice. There are MANY cases where the government legitimately possesses personal information that could potentially cause harm if revealed, for operational as well as public safety purposes. Vehicle registration and drivers license records, for example. This personal information is typically exempt from FOIA laws. I can'…

You’re missing the point. It seems like you’re saying how things “generally” are, but not how they legally should play out. For instance, among my lawyer friends, they insist that drug-sniffing dogs should require a warrant as well, and a few have said they’d happily take a case like this pro-bono to start putting the goalposts where they belong.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#67

Post by dave78 »

cmiles8 wrote: post #15
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why a police cruiser can sit in a public space (or even a private one) and write down licence plates and descriptions of passers-by with pen and paper, or record everything around them with dashcams and bodycams for later use, but when it comes to cameras on a pole this would require a warrant. Going back through police officers' notes or cruiser dash cam videos and tracking a car's movements by it…

But you can generally FOIL records of this. Want body cam footage of what the officer was doing, you can generally get that. Want the video footage from their dash cam while sitting there, you can generally get that. However municipalities treat the data from these license plate cameras like a state secret. That disparity is largely what’s at issue here.

Can I submit a FOIA request to get all the plate reads from Flock for my town's mayor or police chief (their private vehicles) so that I can create a map of where they go and share it online? I genuinely don't know the answer as I've not tried, but from things I've read I'm pretty sure they will not provide this. And that's the point - why can a police officer search the database for any plate they feel like but the public cannot?

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#68

Post by speak_plainly »

A license plate is already publicly displayed information (and is in most jurisdictions not private property), and you're operating in a public space.

I know it's unpopular but I went from not supporting these sorts of systems to embracing them after seeing the positive effects in China.

For crimes that depend on anonymity, theft, assault, hit-and-runs, vandalism, illegal parking, etc., surveillance changes the calculation because the offender expects a higher or even a near certain chance of being identified/caught in China. I think this is a good thing. I also see no issue with someone breaking the law and receiving a ticket almost immediately.

With all systems, it comes down to the design. What sort of oversight is there, how long is footage stored, can it be used for specific crimes or expanded later, and are there mechanisms to correct false identification.

Done right, these systems work well. I would be happy to live in a society where street crime is rare enough that I can leave personal property anywhere, like a bike, without constantly worrying about theft. I think many fears about these systems come from dystopian science fiction and assume the worst possible implementation, rather than recognizing that technology can be designed with strong safeguards.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#70

Post by jmalicki »

gruez wrote: post #59
neodymiumphish wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former law enforcement officer here. I can say that when we conducted surveillance, we weren't allowed to use equipment that wasn't common for normal people to use. So for example, I couldn't use some sort of long-distance microphone to overhear a conversation between two people in public because a normal person wouldn't have that same type of technology. I think this applies in this context to say that a cop just sc…

That's not a good argument against ALPRs because citizens can theoretically set up an ALPRs too.

And do! A lot of newer home security cameras have ALPRs so you can set up rules like "if a car with a plate number not on this whitelist pulls up on my driveway send me an SMS"
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