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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

#271

Post by etdznots »

gruez wrote: post #170
etdznots wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not that police can’t use tools that arent available to the general public. It’s that in the US we have the plain view doctrine which defines the boundary between the things that can be plainly observed in public, which don’t constitute a search and thus don’t trigger the 4a protections, and observations that are not plain view observations and which are a search and trigger 4a protections

OP's contention is that private citizens don't have access to a network of cameras to look for license plates and therefore it isn't "plain view", but I don't see how that's different than law enforcement being able to muster the entire nation's cops to look for a suspect.

Because it is not about some principle that cares about the nature of the action, the principles are related to the civil liberties at risk, and whether or not certain powers jeopardize them.

The level of observability and risk involved in using the entire nation’s police resources is extremely high, whoever asks for that much resources will have to account for what they are doing and many of the details of the event are likely to be scrutinized by many parties, media, other departments, etc. It is unlikely to be wielded to abuse or strip civil liberties or to harass people, as we’ve seen ALPR’s be used

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#272

Post by veec_cas_tant »

TaLiTr wrote: post #263
veec_cas_tant wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every car I have owned in the last decade has a GPS tracker built in and I carry one in my pocket and on my wrist. I don’t believe any warrant is required for police to follow someone, so they wouldn’t even need the tracker!

> I don’t believe any warrant is required for police to follow someone, so they wouldn’t even need the tracker! Interesting how you reframe that, because the police would absolutely need a warrant to put a GPS tracker in your car. This kinda proves everyone's point about this sort of thing, an officer following you is clearly different from the omnipresent surveillance dragnet enabled by Flock cameras.

Yeah legally there might be a difference, not my area. The question was whether I’d be fine with a GPS tracker and the answer is I have opted in already with numerous GPS tracking devices, both in my car and on my person. I don’t believe for one second that someone against cameras would be okay with a personal police shadow everywhere even if the Supreme Court has okayed that.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#273

Post by tshaddox »

rileymat2 wrote: post #96
t-3 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about scale, it's about oversight. A warrant puts a lock on the data until the request is approved. Leaving it wide open is the reason we have constant news stories about police being arrested for stalking people. Nobody wants to limit the police's ability to investigate crimes, but we do want them to use their power to investigate crimes, not to stalk their baby mama, crush, rival, etc. I fully understand a…

> Nobody wants to limit the police's ability to investigate crimes. This is not true of privacy advocates, they do want to limit the ability to fish for circumstantial evidence that targets innocent people and causes suspicion.

I mean it's just not true at all. We don't want police to torture people for information. We don't want police to detain people for questioning, even briefly, without reasonable suspicion. We don't want police to search people or their property without a warrant. And so on.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#274

Post by zahlman »

DANmode wrote: post #264
zahlman wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is non-sequitur. "Investigating crimes" entails knowledge that a crime has actually occurred, and deliberately seeking information specifically related to that crime; "fishing for circumstantial evidence" does not.

You would hope.

There's no "hope" involved here. I'm talking about what the words actually mean.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#275

Post by unselect5917 »

DANmode wrote: post #268
unselect5917 wrote: post #259

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. A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION -IBM…

Also, a computer cannot be the initial entity to bring charges of a crime - in many jurisdictions.

That's how it should be. A human being must be in the loop and that human being must be accountable for actions that potent.

This is actually a new pet hypothesis I've been testing against the various horrors beyond my comprehension that keep cropping up.

Would forcing an individual person into the loop and then holding them accountable - really, not on paper - help?

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#277

Post by 01100011 »

thewebguyd wrote: post #79
malwrar wrote: post #2

It frustrates me when people call them license plate readers. I guess you need to call them something, but they are general-purpose internet connected cameras. They will do whatever their firmware tells them to do, and could be reprogrammed at any time by anyone with access. No one expected doorbell cameras to join a mass surveillance network, but later the manufacturers added that feature. Why do we treat these came…

> Why do we treat these cameras like they can do only one thing? Because its useful messaging to disarm the populace. "License plate reader" sounds less alarming than "Internet connected camera" or "Mass surveillance device." Public attitudes vary around a "license plate reader" but will be more uniformly opposed to "Widespread, automated government mass surveillance tracking your every move via camera in real time"

I'm holding a more powerful surveillance device than an Internet connected pole cam which we normally term a "smartphone". Its ability to spy on folks is widely known and almost no one seems to care enough to change their behavior. You'd be surprised what people will or won't care about. Once Trump is out of office, the folks currently obsessed with privacy will move on to the next thing...

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#278

Post by jameshart »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #254
jameshart wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a curious ‘small government’ instinct that wants government capabilities to be restricted from ever becoming efficient or scalable, even though the population and economy and complexity of the world the government is tasked with regulating scales up. But often the inverse argument is used in respect of private corporations. Obviously it would be unreasonable to expect Google to vet every ad and YouTube video up…

> Obviously it would be unreasonable to expect Google to vet every ad and YouTube video uploaded tot heir platform, and make responsible editorial decisions about which ads and content to show to children. I am actually not so sure that’s obvious. I am slowly coming around to the controversial opinion that if they can’t vet what is going up, they shouldn’t be allowed to have an infinite number of uploads/hosted conte…

I guess it wasn’t clear that I share your opinion that it is not ‘obvious’ that companies should be allowed to set aside accountability in pursuit of scale. I was lending expression to an opinion that seems to be orthodoxy, not supporting it.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#279

Post by [deleted] »

dnautics wrote: post #231
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…

> Scale actually matters. Things that are generally OK at a small scale become problematic at larger scales. A single police cruiser writing down license plates isn't able to track you in the same way a huge surveillance network is, and the opportunities for abuse are much lower. Not only this, this a precedented court opinion.

[deleted]

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#280

Post by godwinson__4-8 »

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…

As one approaches an extreme, one may find it is not so easy to distinguish between a difference in degree and a difference in kind.

They may even converge to become the same thing.

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