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Denver dumps Flock, awards contract to Axon

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Re: Denver dumps Flock, awards contract to Axon

#11

Post by ceejayoz »

tptacek wrote: post #5
downrightmike wrote: post #2

Anti-Pinkerton Fed act: Gov't may not buy services that it is not legally allowed to do themselves.

Municipal governments are extremely allowed to track license plates within their borders and have been doing so for generations.

That may change as they get more widely deployed; scale matters.

https://courthousenews.com/judge-holds-norfolks-license-plat...

> "Because rapid technological advances, such as the rise of artificial intelligence, make it impossible to predict how police surveillance will evolve, the Fourth Amendment analysis must remain nimble even as it remains grounded in founding-era traditions," the George W. Bush appointee wrote in a 51-page opinion. "Plaintiffs are unable to demonstrate that defendants' ALPR system is capable of tracking the whole of a person's movements."

> Davis drew distinctions from two significant precedents in determining that the pair's Fourth Amendment challenge lacked merit. In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court held that the government violates the Fourth Amendment when it accesses a suspect's historical cell site location information without a warrant. The Fourth Circuit ruled in Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department that the department's surveillance program, which captured and stored aerial images of nearly the entire city, violated the Fourth Amendment.

> Davis ruled that, unlike in cases where the government tracked people's movements through cellphone data and aerial photos, the collection of Flock data does not capture enough information to catalogue citizens' movements in their entirety. Davis reasoned that the 176 cameras, located in 75 clusters across the city, do not constitute a search.

Re: Denver dumps Flock, awards contract to Axon

#12

Post by tptacek »

samrus wrote: post #9
tptacek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Municipal governments are extremely allowed to track license plates within their borders and have been doing so for generations.

But do they not need a warrant to track someones movements? Alot of these tech vendors have been a way to launder data gathering to avoid neeidng to get warrants

They need a warrant to physically alter or attach things to private property to track them. They don't need a warrant to post monitors and record what they see in plain view in public spaces with no expectation of privacy. The entire concept of a license plate, universal around the world, works against the idea that the state can't monitor your car.

I'm not saying ALPRs don't pose new privacy problems and, in the long term, depending on how they're used, even constitutional problems. But clearly the Anti-Pinkerton Act doesn't get you anywhere here.

Re: Denver dumps Flock, awards contract to Axon

#13

Post by ceejayoz »

tptacek wrote: post #12
samrus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do they not need a warrant to track someones movements? Alot of these tech vendors have been a way to launder data gathering to avoid neeidng to get warrants

They need a warrant to physically alter or attach things to private property to track them. They don't need a warrant to post monitors and record what they see in plain view in public spaces with no expectation of privacy. The entire concept of a license plate, universal around the world, works against the idea that the state can't monitor your car. I'm not saying ALPRs don't pose new privacy problems and, in the lon…

> They don't need a warrant to post monitors and record what they see in plain view in public spaces with no expectation of privacy.

They do if it's done to the point where you can track individuals around the city.

https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/201495A.P.pdf

> The AIR program uses aerial photography to track movements related to serious crimes. Multiple planes fly distinct orbits above Baltimore, equipped with PSS’s camera technology known as the “Hawkeye Wide Area Imaging System.” The cameras capture roughly 32 square miles per image per second. The planes fly at least 40 hours a week, obtaining an estimated twelve hours of coverage of around 90% of the city each day, 5 weather permitting. The PSA limits collection to daylight hours and limits the photographic resolution to one pixel per person or vehicle, though neither restriction is required by the technology. In other words, any single AIR image—captured once per second—includes around 32 square miles of Baltimore and can be magnified to a point where people and cars are individually visible, but only as blurred dots or blobs.

> On the merits, because the AIR program enables police to deduce from the whole of individuals’ movements, we hold that accessing its data is a search, and its warrantless operation violates the Fourth Amendment

Re: Denver dumps Flock, awards contract to Axon

#14

Post by tptacek »

ceejayoz wrote: post #13
tptacek wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need a warrant to physically alter or attach things to private property to track them. They don't need a warrant to post monitors and record what they see in plain view in public spaces with no expectation of privacy. The entire concept of a license plate, universal around the world, works against the idea that the state can't monitor your car. I'm not saying ALPRs don't pose new privacy problems and, in the lon…

> They don't need a warrant to post monitors and record what they see in plain view in public spaces with no expectation of privacy. They do if it's done to the point where you can track individuals around the city. https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/201495A.P.pdf > The AIR program uses aerial photography to track movements related to serious crimes. Multiple planes fly distinct orbits above Baltimore, equipped wi…

The decision you're citing explicitly cites precedent for the constitutionality of warrantless mounted pole cameras.

Anyways, I'm not that interested in the broader long-term constitutional debate. I'm just interested in shutting down the glib Anti-Pinkerton cite.

Re: Denver dumps Flock, awards contract to Axon

#15

Post by thaumaturgy »

Here in Oregon, I very nearly managed to get some decent legislation drafted that would have required a number of strong data protections from ALPR vendors.

Axon interfered heavily with that process and -- after the legislative workgroup had well concluded and just a couple of hours before the Senate committee was to vote on it -- managed to neuter one of the key protections in the bill.

Axon is not "better" than Flock, they are just slightly less transparent about some aspects and slightly less radioactive.

Community groups that have formed and activated against Flock should continue to harass local governments that immediately switch to Axon as a replacement.

Re: Denver dumps Flock, awards contract to Axon

#16

Post by ceejayoz »

tptacek wrote: post #14
ceejayoz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't need a warrant to post monitors and record what they see in plain view in public spaces with no expectation of privacy. They do if it's done to the point where you can track individuals around the city. https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/201495A.P.pdf > The AIR program uses aerial photography to track movements related to serious crimes. Multiple planes fly distinct orbits above Baltimore, equipped wi…

The decision you're citing explicitly cites precedent for the constitutionality of warrantless mounted pole cameras. Anyways, I'm not that interested in the broader long-term constitutional debate. I'm just interested in shutting down the glib Anti-Pinkerton cite.

> The decision you're citing explicitly cites precedent for the constitutionality of warrantless mounted pole cameras.

And explicity notes that it's the relative scarcity of them that matters.

> Decades later, in United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), location-tracking technology crossed the line from merely augmenting to impermissibly enhancing. There, police used a GPS-tracking device to remotely monitor and record a vehicle’s movements over 28 days. Id. at 402–04. Although the case was ultimately decided on trespass principles, five Justices agreed that “longer term GPS monitoring . . . impinges on expectations of privacy.” See id. at 430 (Alito, J., concurring); id. at 415 (Sotomayor, J., concurring). Based on “[t]raditional surveillance” capacity “[i]n the precomputer age,” the Justices reasoned that “society’s expectation” was that police would not “secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual’s car for a very long period.”

> Thus, Carpenter solidified the line between short-term tracking of public movements—akin to what law enforcement could do “[p]rior to the digital age”—and prolonged tracking that can reveal intimate details through habits and patterns.

Put enough of them up, and the software to track between them, and you're in "enables police to deduce from the whole of individuals’ movements" territory.

Re: Denver dumps Flock, awards contract to Axon

#17

Post by tptacek »

ceejayoz wrote: post #16
tptacek wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decision you're citing explicitly cites precedent for the constitutionality of warrantless mounted pole cameras. Anyways, I'm not that interested in the broader long-term constitutional debate. I'm just interested in shutting down the glib Anti-Pinkerton cite.

> The decision you're citing explicitly cites precedent for the constitutionality of warrantless mounted pole cameras. And explicity notes that it's the relative scarcity of them that matters. > Decades later, in United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), location-tracking technology crossed the line from merely augmenting to impermissibly enhancing. There, police used a GPS-tracking device to remotely monitor and…

Maybe! I'm skeptical. Either way: Anti-Pinkerton doesn't come into it.

I'll tell you what's not going to happen, with certainty: we're not going to get to a point with ALPRs where it becomes so abusive that the Supreme Court decides municipalities can't track cars at all.

Re: Denver dumps Flock, awards contract to Axon

#18

Post by tptacek »

reactordev wrote: post #8
fusslo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AXON seems to be really good about not pushing things too far. I don't know if they lobby/amplify the need for police body cameras, however. Even that, IMO, doesn't have the stench of evil They must be making huge profits, assuming every bodycam needs some kind of recurring revenue (for evidence.com, maintenance, replacements). BUT as far as I can tell, they are also taking the judicial requirements very seriously. U…

AXON wrote the book that Flock put into practice. They have really great lobbyists that shield them from any news.

And yet you can see on this thread people saying this is a good thing, because Axon is the good kind of ALPR company and Flock is the bad kind. This is just WWF rooting interests, not public policy.

Re: Denver dumps Flock, awards contract to Axon

#19

Post by mminer237 »

samrus wrote: post #9
tptacek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Municipal governments are extremely allowed to track license plates within their borders and have been doing so for generations.

But do they not need a warrant to track someones movements? Alot of these tech vendors have been a way to launder data gathering to avoid neeidng to get warrants

It depends on how. The Fourth Amendment prohibits warrantless searches, not any information itself. The police can always just have an officer tail you 24/7, and it's perfectly legal. Placing a GPS tracker on your car physically invades your property and therefore counts as a search though. Generally any public photography is not a search, so they're free to record and keep records however they legally can.

Though at some point, even SCOTUS just does whatever feels right, regardless of what the law says. In Carpenter, SCOTUS ruled 5-4 that your cellular company voluntarily handing over historical cell data also counts as a government search. An appellate court has held that if photography is extensive enough, it becomes a search. SCOTUS has held before that uncommon photographic equipment can constitute a search. That logic honestly doesn't really make sense, but it is what it is now. I wouldn't be surprised that the courts rule against it, but that's not what the law really says.

Re: Denver dumps Flock, awards contract to Axon

#20

Post by ceejayoz »

tptacek wrote: post #17
ceejayoz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The decision you're citing explicitly cites precedent for the constitutionality of warrantless mounted pole cameras. And explicity notes that it's the relative scarcity of them that matters. > Decades later, in United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), location-tracking technology crossed the line from merely augmenting to impermissibly enhancing. There, police used a GPS-tracking device to remotely monitor and…

Maybe! I'm skeptical. Either way: Anti-Pinkerton doesn't come into it. I'll tell you what's not going to happen, with certainty: we're not going to get to a point with ALPRs where it becomes so abusive that the Supreme Court decides municipalities can't track cars at all.

> we're not going to get to a point with ALPRs where it becomes so abusive that the Supreme Court decides municipalities can't track cars at all

Sure. But they may get restricted somewhat, as they are if they want to demolish my house without my consent.

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