What is being searched and/or seized? The entire point of a license plate is that it's publicly readable, and US federal courts have consistently held that the exteriors of cars (and parts visible through windows) are not considered private spaces for the purposes of warrant requirements.
That isn't to say that you can't make a good civic argument against increased public surveillance; only that the current practices are not meaningfully disputed as unconstitutional.
> A researcher who focuses on a range of surveillance technologies, Maass said he has a particular problem with license plate readers because every driver needs a tag to get on the road. It’s a requirement, he said, “that was not designed for this purpose.” “There’s not a lot you can do to protect yourself from them other than just stop driving,” Maass said. “They’re set up in this way that, in order for you to get to work and to travel freely, you have to submit to your data being monetized by a private company and then sold to law enforcement.”
There's a few videos on the youtubes where perfectly law-abiding citizens were pulled out of their vehicles at gunpoint due to false positives from systems like this.
> The entire point of a license plate is that it's publicly readable
Sure. By eyeballs.
But when you install technology that makes the license plate a tracking device where they can map out your movements minute by minute as if you had some radio beacon hidden under the bumper, they're not "publicly reading" it. Why would the radio beacon be illegal without a warrant, but this be legal without it? They accomplish the same.
So in terms of concern about the enforcement of bad laws surely the correct way to deal with those is in the legislative process, rather than on relying on gaps in human enforcement later on?
Otherwise why artificially make law enforcement more inefficient?
> So in terms of concern about the enforcement of bad laws surely the correct way to deal with those is in the legislative process, rather than
In emergency situations, you rely on whatever mechanisms are still partially functional. We're 0.003 milliseconds into the fatal crash, and here you are saying "but are we really going to rely on the airbags, shouldn't we fix the seat belts"? If this is what passes for insightful and mature for you, we're all fucking doomed.
>Otherwise why artificially make law enforcement more inefficient?
How exactly does one grow up thinking that the measurement they want to optimize for in law enforcement, above all others, is "efficiency"?
> How exactly does one grow up thinking that the measurement they want to optimize for in law enforcement, above all others, is "efficiency"?
Because one, it all comes from the same pot of money. What happens to training and selection budgets that weed out the racists, misogynists, bullies and the like. Those available for responding to violent crime, investigation of rapes and homicides etc when Police forces have to routinely expend their resources catching speeders and/or checking number plates?
And two, because to name a few of the more well known dictators; Hitler, Stalin, Mao and more recently the Kim's, all did, or do just fine without number plate readers. If the technology is available, how much notice of any laws preventing its use are future dictators going to take anyway?
Collectively wasting energy trying to ban number plate readers and the like will make zero difference to whether we end up living in dictatorships/police states. And in the meantime it is better to hold off society pushing in that direction by spending the money on things people care about.
>And two, because to name a few of the more well known dictators; Hitler, Stalin, Mao and more recently the Kim's, all did, or do just fine without number plate readers.
We're all doomed.
>What happens to training and selection budgets that weed out the racists, misogynists, bullies and the like.
No such mechanisms exist. They were talked about during any planning sessions, they weren't requested or required by the legislators. They weren't designed, tested, or implemented. In fact, police academies and similar systems probably select for bullies, racists, and misogynists. I don't say this lightly, the few anecdotes that come out of those places certainly support the idea, and the results don't seem to contradict it in the slightest.
Only a deliberately cultivated naivete and some serious distance from these institutions could have one believing such mechanisms exist.
I have wondered about this. Would anyone feel differently — or should the law apply differently — to a system that enables remote workers to watch a video feed and write down all of the license plate numbers they see?
That would cost a lot and therefore be limited in scale. Scale matters.
Also, do you mean literally written down on paper, or entered into a database as an instantly searchable, permanent and AI analyzable record? The two are very different.
U.S. v. Jones and Riley v. California aren't that clear cut.
IIRC they both said that mass surveillance that would "out" people's private lives (e.g. going to a gay club) might cross the boundary into an unreasonable search.
There is a notion that the government has to justify their intrusions on the privacy of the public as we are a government "of the people, by the people, for the people".
Setting up security camera at a public park to investigate crimes: OK
Setting up security camera at a public park to track citizens through facial recognition: Not OK
The legality issue is really about warrantless searches and not the ability of a private company to lease public utility poles to place cameras.
It is clearly legal for a company to willingly share data with law enforcement, a restriction on that would be a First Amendment violation. It is clearly legal for the government to compel a company to provide data as means of investigating crimes "upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The question is whether the government, in cahoots with a company, can perform mass warrantless searches on every citizen under the plain-view doctrine when they have no reasonable articulable suspicion that a crime has been committed.
Back to the point. I don’t believe most jurisdictions find this illegal. You can go down the path of a sovereign citizen but the point remains, most jurisdictions do not find Flock cameras illegals.
Sure, it isn't "illegal" as it hasn't been challenged in court (to the best of my knowledge). Doesn't actually say much as everything is by default legal until it is found (or legislated) illegal.
Just like police using infrared cameras peering into people's homes to find marijuana grows was "legal" until the courts found it to be a Forth Amendment violation.
And why is someone who believes the constitution actually means something labeled "a sovereign citizen"? Were the people during the civil right's movement wrong because they believed the government could do a better job?
This is a good point, and the infrared camera case is the one that came to my mind as well. That case can be easily distinguished on the grounds that Flock doesn’t use any super-human abilities (i.e., infrared sensors) to see the license plates. The Court would have to interpret it broadly, to prohibit use of technology that allows for rapid/broad collection of data at a scale that was not possible by human efforts alone. That may come, but it’s far from certain when (or what side of the line Flock would fall on).
> My understanding of the rule that has emerged from prior decisions is that there is a twofold requirement, first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as "reasonable".
as people knowingly expose their licence plates in public places, as this is a legal requirement for the use of highways, they also reasonably believe they have an expectation of privacy against a constant and continuous search because "the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places".
Of course, you know, this is just my opinion, man.
Agree on that point. It has yet to be challenged but my mind suspects it would be difficult to go far in that direction. Plates are in public view and unlike gps trackers are not planted in your personal property. The only challenge afaik is due to their issues with permits and utilizing state property. They are atm not allowed in two states but not for the reasons you have listed.
It's actually pretty crazy that when I walk to work I illegally search and seize everyone I lay my eyes on. So far I've gotten away with it every day. Sometimes I even do it at work. Illegally searched and seized my coworker's cat the other day, but he just illegally searched and seized me and then meowed.
> I illegally search and seize everyone I lay my eyes on
This is where you need to keep in mind that there's a spectrum and a balance. Ultimately it's up to the Supreme Court to decide where the cut-off points are. To take your example and riff on it a bit:
- There's you walking to work and mentally taking note of everyone you walk past
- There's you walking to work with a video camera and casually recording everyone you walk past
- There's you walking to work with a video camera and getting into people's personal space to make sure your video accurate captures enough of their facial features to make a positive biometric identification
- There's you walking to work, seeing someone in particular, and following them to their destination while recording the entire time
- There's you putting up a high-resolution camera in front of your house to record everyone walking past, whether or not you're watching it at the time
- There's you putting up time-synchronized high-resolution cameras on every light post in your neighbourhood
- There's taking your network of time-synchronized high-resolution cameras and adding facial/person recognition to it so that you automatically get a timestamped path of where everyone walked at what time
- There's expanding your network of time-synchronized high-resolution cameras with person recognition to cover your entire city and selling access to person-location data
Figuring out where the acceptable/unacceptable cutoff line is for private citizens, corporations, and governments is going to be an interesting question that'll have to be answered in the near future.
You don't seem to understand the implications of systems like these so let me give you a scenario of something in the near future that can happen:
A 33-year-old woman became pregnant due to a failure in her birth control but is not looking to have a child and is looking to have an abortion. She goes to her OBGYN and finds out that the fetus is around 7 weeks of gestation, and therefore, cannot have an abortion in her state.
She schedules an abortion procedure with a doctor out of state that does allow abortions after 6 weeks. She drives to the airport, flies out to the state, has the procedure, and then flies back home. Per her state's law (let's say it's Texas) she did not utilize the highways or drive through a town like Amarillo to receive the abortion.[1]
Systems such as these, selling user data to both state and federal agencies bought data that included her travel patterns in it. The system (recognizing her license plate, vehicle make and model, and the state having that plate registered in her name) shows that she has traveled to a clinic in the state, then later to the airport (with TSA facial identification indicating she did indeed fly), she was then spotted at a clinic in another state by their Flock cameras, then flew back home and drove home. But also, the government agencies bought data from a period tracker and it also had her information in there. With GPS, IP Address, and other data they were able to attribute data to her that showed that she was late on her period.[2]
The state then charges her with the crime of receiving an abortion out of state, even though she did not break any law. She did not receive an abortion in the state, nor travel through a city that prohibits that. But good luck explaining that to an Attorney General who decides to follow the "spirit of the law" in this case rather than the text of the law.
This is what people are afraid of. No human being would ever be allowed to conduct this level of spying on anyone without violating their right to privacy. But because we allowed this data to be collected and shared for commercial purposes, it's somehow legal and okay? We are becoming a police state where who you know, where you go, what you do, your patterns, your habits, your scrolling, your fitness tracking, your purchases, and the amount of time you spend walking around Walmart are now all available to a government. These aren't systems you can "opt" out of. Facebook tracks and sells your data through their Pixel whether you have an account or not. These Flock cameras track and sell your location data whether you're driving, walking, riding a bike, etc. There is no opting out, there is no not participating, there is no way to protect your privacy and continue to exist in this world.
These are very real fears that people have, and all it takes is for a government to get through its bureaucracy once to determine how to process this deluge of information and then there is no turning back.
