281–290 of 423 posts
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…
Police officer can't practically write down every license plate at every intersection and recreate movement patterns of almost every citizen.
Laws are written with practical enforcement realities in mind. When those realities drastically change, the laws should be reassessed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It took 8mo for Chicago Police to review and redact bodycamera footage from a protest in Chicago. It was 95% blurred. Almost hilariously, one of the only parts that wasn't blurred was a moment where one cop commented on another cop's mustache.
So from the FOIA perspective, the public isn't able to get gobs and gobs of footage just because it's public.
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…
> 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…
> Still more fundamentally, we have never understood Fourth Amendment protections as kicking in only once an intrusion “goes too far.” Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U. S. 393, 415 (1922) (adopting that approach for regulatory takings). Where the Fourth Amendment applies, it applies—regardless of “the quality or quantity of information” the government obtains. Kyllo, 533 U. S., at 37.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
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.
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.
Being located in an area of a crime is circumstantial evidence. Any info on what drivers license plates drove by a camera is absolutely circumstantial evidence to a crime in the area that is known to have occurred, almost definitionally.
Step two look at drivers license photos for the person that most closely matches the description.
Step three take the person that most looked like the described person and ask a witness with a poor memory if that was the person.
Step four convict.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
https://github.com/ryjones/alprs
Using more vibe code:
https://github.com/ryjones/platescan
The bar is low.
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…
It needs to be both open and closed by warrant. Cars aren't people so you aren't necessarily tracking whoever is riding that car, which can be done protecting the identity of the driver, but if the car is being watched as part of a larger investigation against an individual, then it needs a warrant.