> Is there any such thing as this surveillence applying to the inside of the renters bed room, bath room, filing cabinet with medical or financial documents, or political for that matter?
Yes. Entering property for regular maintenance. Any time a landlord or his agent enters a piece of property, there is implicit surveillance. Some places are more formal about this than others, but anyone who has rented, owned rental property, or managed rental property knows that any time maintenance occurs there's an implicit examination of the premises also happening...
But here is a more pertinent example: the regular comings and goings of people or property can be and often are observed from outside of a property. These can contribute to probable cause for a search of those premises even without direct observation. (E.g., large numbers of disheveled children moving through an apartment, or an exterior camera shot of a known fugitive entering the property.)
Here the police could obtain a warrant on the basis of landlord's testimony without the landlord actually seeing the inside of the unit. This is somewhat similar to the case at hand, since what Google alerted the police to a hash match without actually looking at the image (ie, entering the bedroom).
> I don't think you can reduce reality to being as simple as "owner has more right over property than renter"
But I make no such reduction, and neither does the opinion. In fact, quite the opposite -- this is contributory why the court determines a warrant is required!
> ...Google alerted the police to a hash match without actually looking at the image (ie, entering the bedroom).
Google cannot have calculated that hash without examining the data in the image. They, or systems under there control obviously looked at the image.
It should not legally matter whether the eyes are meat or machine... if anything, machine inspection should be MORE strictly regulated, because of how much easier and cheaper it tends to make surveillance (mass or otherwise).
> It should not legally matter whether the eyes are meat or machine
But it does matter, and, perhaps ironically, it matters in a way that gives you STRONGER (not weaker) fourth amendment rights. That's the entire TL;DR of the fine article.
If the court accepted this sentence of yours in isolation, then the court would have determined that no warrant was necessary in any case.
> if anything, machine inspection should be MORE strictly regulated, because of how much easier and cheaper it tends to make surveillance (mass or otherwise).
I don't disagree. In particular: I believe that the "Reasonable Person", to the extent that we remain stuck with the fiction, should be understood as having stronger privacy expectations in their phone or cloud account than they do even in their own bedroom or bathroom.
With respect to Google's actions in this case, this is an issue for your legislator and not the courts. The fourth amendment does not bind Google's hands in any way, and judges are not lawmakers.
The point of the analogy is that the contents of ones files should be considered analogous to the contents of ones mind.
Whatever reasons we had in the past for deciding that financial or health data, or conversations with attorneys, or bathrooms and bedrooms, are private, those reasons should apply to ones documents which includes ones files.
Or at least if not, we should figure out and be able to show exactly how and why not with some argument that actually holds water.
Only after that does it make any sense to either defend or object to this development.
Yes. Entering property for regular maintenance. Any time a landlord or his agent enters a piece of property, there is implicit surveillance. Some places are more formal about this than others, but anyone who has rented, owned rental property, or managed rental property knows that any time maintenance occurs there's an implicit examination of the premises also happening...
But here is a more pertinent example: the regular comings and goings of people or property can be and often are observed from outside of a property. These can contribute to probable cause for a search of those premises even without direct observation. (E.g., large numbers of disheveled children moving through an apartment, or an exterior camera shot of a known fugitive entering the property.)
Here the police could obtain a warrant on the basis of landlord's testimony without the landlord actually seeing the inside of the unit. This is somewhat similar to the case at hand, since what Google alerted the police to a hash match without actually looking at the image (ie, entering the bedroom).
> I don't think you can reduce reality to being as simple as "owner has more right over property than renter"
But I make no such reduction, and neither does the opinion. In fact, quite the opposite -- this is contributory why the court determines a warrant is required!