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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

#321

Post by fluidcruft »

estearum wrote: post #310
fluidcruft wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have to like it to know it's perfectly legal.

You should go read the United States v Jones concurrence and try to figure out why five Justices disagree with you. Have some curiosity about the world! You can also read Carpenter v United States for some background thoughts on why it's not as simple as Justice Fluidcruft condescendingly imagines it to be. In fact if you're really curious, you could even look at the state cases that are bubbling their way up like Co…

idk how installing a GPS tracker is even remotely comparable to taking photographs of publicly visible license plates in plain view in public but please do go on refusing to engage facts.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#322

Post by madrox »

A warrant is not required for an AMBER alert, which amounts to poor man's mass surveillance of license plates. We're basically fine with an incredibly intrusive push notification to get people to do the work without hand-wringing about privacy. I think I would rather AMBER alerts take advantage of mass surveillance than require AMBER alerts to get a warrant, but obviously there's lots of nuance to it.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#324

Post by malwrar »

jameshart wrote: post #10
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…

This amounts to an argument against ever using general purpose computing devices to accomplish anything. You could say the same about literally any privately operated device. ‘I don’t know why they call these things cell towers. They do whatever they are programmed to and can be reprogrammed by anyone with access’ Heck the same applies to non electronic things too ‘why do they call it a house? It’s a general purpose…

Interesting perspective.

As others have noted, I believe the brightline is less “general purpose computer…” and more “…that is remotely accessible & modifiable effectively anywhere in the world”. I worry not just about OEMs and cops, but also criminals, foreign intelligence agencies, etc. Honestly potentially anyone at this point, now that folks have figured out you can use LLMs to do analysis.

This is a sound foundation for concern by itself, don’t you think?

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#325

Post by malwrar »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #152
wiseleo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always define them as "Remotely managed, field-upgradeable, multi-interconnected computing devices with full spectrum cameras and other sensory capabilities. Information is monitored in real-time by increasingly capable AI technology. They have edge AI capability for intelligent classification. They can be upgraded without announcement at any time. They can be replaced in the field with higher capabilities at any t…

That's cute and technically accurate but doesn't help when having conversations with the public. "Warrantless mass surveillance technology" creates a category into which these and similar devices can be aggregated together where people's concerns tend to be about the same. That phrase was suggested by a local chief of police while we were having discussions on policy.

Thanks for this term, I’ll try using it!

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#326

Post by Xirdus »

estearum wrote: post #267
dnautics wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is not the case. It is not about effort: The court has ruled that single point of time monitoring is fine, but continuous monitoring (a covertly placed gps tracker, e.g.) is a violation of privacy.

Neither of you are correct. It's about how costly (in time, energy, money) is it to build how complete of a picture based on what level of prior suspicion?

Needing more people directly translates to needing more energy and money and to having less complete picture. So reducing it to the simple "how much a single person can do" is very useful I'd say.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#327

Post by macintux »

01100011 wrote: post #317
macintux wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were all the smartphones in the country constantly recording video to a central location for surveillance purposes, you’d have a point.

They don't need to. They know where you've been, where you're going, and what your intentions are. It's a far more intimate and effective surveillance tool. As a bonus, it's also a propaganda vehicle and an implement of mass psychological manipulation.

And yet it’s (mostly) voluntary. You can leave your smartphone at home, and it’s generally not spying on people around you.

Smart glasses obviously change that equation quite a bit.

But they can’t come close to the panopticon of video cameras everywhere, all the time, capturing everything for years of record-keeping.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#328

Post by themaninthedark »

01100011 wrote: post #317
macintux wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were all the smartphones in the country constantly recording video to a central location for surveillance purposes, you’d have a point.

They don't need to. They know where you've been, where you're going, and what your intentions are. It's a far more intimate and effective surveillance tool. As a bonus, it's also a propaganda vehicle and an implement of mass psychological manipulation.

And you require a warrant to get access to that data...

Supreme Court recently ruled that you need a warrant for even the geofence data lookup from 3rd party recently.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#329

Post by dredmorbius »

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…

Scale fucking matters.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13548498>

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