The idea is that the length and amount of surveillance is invasive.
You expect when you walk out of the house a neighbor might see what you’re doing. Hard to call it invasive if that happens a few times a week.
But if your neighbors take turns sitting on their porch, watching every move you make - if you can never come and go without them watching - and they’re taking notes and pictures of every visitor, every package, etc. - that would feel invasive for many people.
That’s the argument. Do you have a expectation of privacy in public? No. Do you have an expectation of constant surveillance? Also no.
"You expect when you walk out of the house a neighbor might see what you’re doing. Hard to call it invasive if that happens a few times a week."
I mean, maybe that's the expectation/argument from the 19th century. Cameras have been around a long time and are increasing in popularity among the general population (Ring etc). It might feel invasive, but there's no reasonable expectation of privacy legally.
"but there's no reasonable expectation of privacy legally."
Um. Isn't that what this case is trying to establish? It's unclear what the legal expectation is or isn't.
Just because we have the technology to do something doesn't mean it immediately follows that erodes a given right. The government can tap just about any call, but courts have restricted that substantially (at least in theory...). If you have not, I recommend watching The Wire and checking out all the hoops that the police have to jump through to establish cause and perform wire taps. Technology is very dated now, but it gives an interesting view. (It is also, I'll add, a damn good show...)
Here, the ACLU is trying to establish that constant camera surveillance of a house is a violation of your rights. Nobody is arguing it's not technically possible, nor is anybody arguing that my neighbor can't have a Ring camera that happens to have my house in its field of view.
But the state planting a camera specifically to surveil a house for months at a time is, arguably, a violation without showing any cause or getting a warrant to do so.
"Um. Isn't that what this case is trying to establish? It's unclear what the legal expectation is or isn't."
Not really. The general terms are quite settled that it is fine for a person to film stuff from a public area, even if they are able to see a private area. The question is about whether police can also do that or if the 4th amendment prohibits it. Based on the long standing decisions that you don't have an expectation of privacy of being filmed from a public location and that the reasonable expectation of privacy is all that prohibits a "search", then it's a pretty logical outcome. Unless, again, they want to change the longstanding test. So it would not be about establishing anything, but rather changing something.
Most people install cameras to monitor their own property. That is where reasonableness begins. If some installed a camera to surveil their neighbor on their own property, and that was the end of it, no one would know. But if as a result of that surveillance, one neighbor began harassing another, it would be problematic. This seems to be exactly what happened here, only the spying neighbor worked for the government and used the power of the state to conduct such harassment.
It depends on what you consider harassment since the article doesn't detail that. Even in your example, the filming isn't the problem, just the harassing. If your neighbor catches you on video committing a crime and turns you in based on that legally obtained video, there's no legal issue with that. The question here is should the government be held to stricter rules? The current test for whether something violates 4th amendment rights is if there wasa reasonable expectation of privacy. If your neighbor can legally video you, then that's pretty plainly demonstrated that you do not have the expectation of privacy. That's what this is really all about.
When every car has a camera for liability reasons and every house is assumed as well. Anything outside is assumed fair game to record IMO. I never expect privacy in public, only countries with fairly draconian laws of privacy have minor expectation and even than only if the person feels like making the video public. (Japan for instance has privacy laws on public placement of unconsenting public photos)
A while back, there was a leak of some sort whereby many of these pole cameras in Massachusetts became accessible to the public. While this is anecdotal, it seemed to me at the time that the cameras were more than capable of peering through windows, as though someone were standing on the sidewalk with binoculars. The cameras themselves were concealed so they looked like utility equipment.
I think there is a significant disconnect between a simple, consistent "theoretical" view on camera privacy and actual human sensibilities: I am very confident that humans in general are absolutely not comfortable with being the target of video recording; this became very evident with the whole google glass fiasco, when people wearing those were sometimes straight up banned from restaurants for making people uncomfortable- while surveillance cameras are less "targeted", less visible and at least provide marginal utility, it seems very clear to me that most humans consider it not appropriate to "video record" in every place that you could be "watched" by a bystander (and even just looking at people can drift into offensiveness- consider younger attractive persons veing creepily stared at).
I personally believe that cameras in public places should not be blanket banned, but that individuals should have a viable avenue to get them removed if they care to expend some (legal?) effort.
A utility pole is not public property, it's government property. A member of the public is not legally allowed to just mount whatever equipment they want on the pole.
