My comment while driving is a privilege following all people is not a government power.
Are Automatic License Plate Scanners Constitutional?
[2024.10.23] An advocacy groups is filing a Fourth Amendment challenge against automatic license plate readers.
“The City of Norfolk, Virginia, has installed a network of cameras that make it functionally impossible for people to drive anywhere without having their movements tracked, photographed, and stored in an AI-assisted database that enables the warrantless surveillance of their every move. This civil rights lawsuit seeks to end this dragnet surveillance program,” the lawsuit notes. “In Norfolk, no one can escape the government’s 172 unblinking eyes,” it continues, referring to the 172 Flock cameras currently operational in Norfolk. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures and has been ruled in many cases to protect against warrantless government surveillance, and the lawsuit specifically says Norfolk’s installation violates that.”
They are probably Flock cameras. The city of Wichita has them and they are very good.
My son is a police officer there and he told this story. A guy runs into a convenience, leaves his car running. It gets stolen. He calls the police. He can’t remember his full tag number, only 3 letters. He describes the make, color of his car. They run it through the Flock system, and it returns a report that gives the intersections that cars of that description have passed through. This is all in less than 15 minutes. The car is immediately found.
There was also a carjacking with a young child in the back seat. The police were able to locate the car very quickly since the Flock system was able to monitor it’s travels.
I get the privacy claim, but we have gotten to the point now with technology that you can’t expect privacy when you are on a public road.
So we have the postal system. Can you expect privacy for your person if the government knows your physical address? Of course you can. The government is not supposed to target all addresses with monitoring.
But my physical address is my private property. I expect privacy within the walls of my house. I would like it within the boundaries of my outside property but realize that sight and sound travel across property lines.
iirc, a court ruled, some years ago, that USians have no expectation of privacy if they are outside of their own home. So, yup, being tracked by monitoring your cell phone, the navi in your car, using CCTV, or scanning your license plate is all good in the eyes of Big Brother.
Ownership is irrelevant. You (and pretty much everyone) expects their address to be known. Otherwise, no deliveries or anything else to your “owned residence” (no power, nat gas, mail, package delivery, etc).
The Supreme Court case United States v. Jones established that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in their movements, and that GPS tracking of a person constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.
Here are some other Supreme Court cases related to privacy and automobiles:
Riley v. California (2014)
The Supreme Court recognized that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of their cell phones.
Carpenter v. United States (2018)
The Supreme Court recognized that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their historical location information.
The Fourth Amendment protects a person’s privacy in general, so an officer needs to have specific facts to suspect that a crime is taking place. These facts are called probable cause or reasonable suspicion.
My comments
Monitoring for probable cause is entrapment and a breach of the 4th amendment.
Yes the police can take notice of your traveling. That does not give them the right to follow you endlessly across town.
I agree, in the case of content of cell phones, as that would seem to come under the “papers” part of the prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure.
On the other hand, the First Circuit held that Carpenter was a narrow decision and did not overturn Bucci.
Some more reading on the topic.
In contrast, people have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public spaces where their actions, possessions can be seen or conversations heard, again whether the content at issue is physical or virtual. Some examples of such places are public sidewalks, venues hosting sporting events and public parks. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in discarded garbage left in the street. Electronically, there is also no reasonable expectation of privacy in phone numbers dialed, in the GPS location of a vehicle, electronic bank records, communications via the Internet, including e-mail, chat room or social media, in files accessible through file sharing software, in information provided by customers to Internet providers, including identifying address information.[4]
That does not mean endless monitoring is permitted.
The Bucci case involved a surveillance camera, placed on a pole, outside the perp’s home, without a warrant, for the purpose of recording the comings and goings at his home 24/7
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
If there is no application for a warrant, there is no need to show probable cause. If the activity is in public, there is no need for a warrant, because there is no “expectation” of being “secure”, as the forth says.