131–140 of 423 posts
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The degree is the problem. I’d have similar complaints if each Flock camera were replaced with an around-the-clock staff of police officers recording every license plate.
Thats a good way to look at it. You would be in a constant state of alarm if the poles were officers.
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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.
Is it common for normal people to set up and use ALPRs?
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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 challeng…
OK sure, but do they now also need a warrant to look at their own footage from their body cam, or their dashcam? What about the camera on the side of the municipal building? Compelling parties to give up data is different than looking at your own data. And it is firmly established that recording and reviewing footage in public space is totally fine. So we are back to square one...How do we define scale such that a po…
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a single person can't set up a fine-grained nationwide network of cameras with a unified search interface that lets one track everyones daily movements.
So by that logic, nation-wide ABPs are also illegal, because a single person can't rally the entire country's law enforcement to find someone?
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These cameras are in public, where expectation of privacy has been ruled against a zillion times. Go against this, and filming your kids baseball game becomes a legal nightmare.
Haven't stalking and surveillance always had a different interpretation despite mostly taking place in public?
Yep. And dragnet surveillance has (pretty much?) always been illegal in the US... but it takes the courts an awfully long time to notice the new dragnets the cops set up.
For example, despite the fact that the third-party doctrine says that cops can just walk up and get any ordinary business records someone you do business with has created about you, courts continue to notice and declare illegal new ways in which naive application of that doctrine creates dragnets.
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As someone who strongly opposes flock cameras... This is a huge problem that people will try to sweep under the rug or hand wave away with wording like "It's the scale the matters". Ideally, laws need to be written like programs are, where fundamental rules of the system are derived and programmatically put into action. So words like "scale" mean nothing. "I need the variable to go negative when the scale is large".…
You realize the law can just make shit up, right? It’s very easy to make a law that says “ALPR data needs a warrant” without impacting the ability of people to record in public. You just need to clearly define ALPR, which isn’t hard.
What is the difference between a security camera watching the municipal tools shack entrance and the security camera watching the main road?
The ultimate goal is to not have a massive database of everything that happened everywhere going back forever. So it even extends far beyond just reading license plates.
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> 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…
Scale is more about efficiency and cost, though. Plenty of people want more policemen patrolling the streets.
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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 challeng…
OK sure, but do they now also need a warrant to look at their own footage from their body cam, or their dashcam? What about the camera on the side of the municipal building? Compelling parties to give up data is different than looking at your own data. And it is firmly established that recording and reviewing footage in public space is totally fine. So we are back to square one...How do we define scale such that a po…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
a single person can't set up a fine-grained nationwide network of cameras with a unified search interface that lets one track everyones daily movements.
So by that logic, nation-wide ABPs are also illegal, because a single person can't rally the entire country's law enforcement to find someone?