nateb2022 an hour ago

> Automobiles are highly regulated and driving is a privilege. There is no _right_ to drive a vehicle from point A to point B, in secret or not.

If we accept your premise that the government can spy on you simply because an activity is regulated, then the Fourth Amendment is effectively dead. Under that logic, the state could mandate interior cameras in every heavily regulated business, or search the backpack of every passenger using public transit without a warrant.

You have a reasonable expectation of privacy for the contents of your trunk, your backpack, and your travel history. The police cannot search your trunk without a warrant just because you are driving on public roads. They should not be able to search your travel history either.

▲ stickfigure 28 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

We probably all agree that a cellphone is closely associated with you and acts as a surrogate brain, so it gets treated as "you", at least as much as the _inside_ of your house or car.

You the right of free travel (with or without your phone). Automobiles are different. You can't take it everywhere; you can't park it everywhere; you can't move it about in secret (plates MUST be displayed, always).

You have an expectation of privacy for the inside of your car. But not the outside of your car. And even the inside... if it's visible from the windows, it's public.

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estearum 25 minutes ago | parent [-]

The reason cell tower data is excluded from Third Party Doctrine has nothing to do with the contents of a cell phone. Cell tower data doesn't have any relationship whatsoever to the contents of the phone.

The relevant factors are:

1. It creates a near-complete picture of a person's whereabouts

2. It is effectively not optional to have and carry a cell phone today

You do in fact have a reasonable expectation that the government can't reconstruct a near-perfect timeline of your daily life without a warrant... obviously.

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stickfigure 13 minutes ago | parent [-]

A cellphone is effectively you in the eyes of the law.

Any automobile may be driven by many people. Only 30% of households are single-person households.

We'll see how this plays out in courts. I'll bet the license plate readers survive. More skeptical about facial recognition though.

	▲	estearum 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> A cellphone is effectively you in the eyes of the law. No. I just laid out the reasons why cell tower data is different. It has nothing to do with whether a cellphone "is effectively you," which obviously it's not.

▲ skinfaxi 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> The police cannot search your trunk without a warrant just because you are driving on public roads. They should not be able to search your travel history either.

Can the police take pictures of every car they see and use that to determine your travel history? If the police don't have the expertise to maintain such a network can they pay a third party to do so?

▲ nateb2022 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

> Can the police take pictures of every car they see and use that to determine your travel history?

You conflate the generally unremarkable act of taking a picture of a single car in public with the indiscriminate collection of photos of all vehicles. The former is a constitutional, isolated observation. The latter is a search, since in toto it reveals personal information.

> If the police don't have the expertise to maintain such a network can they pay a third party to do so?

May the police pay a third party to execute warrantless searches?

	▲	nateb2022 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		In the 1760s there was something called a writ of assistance, which allowed British officers to search any location for smuggled goods without specific suspicion. The Framers of the Constitution drafted the Fourth Amendment in direct response to these abusive general warrants, protecting against the exact kind of arbitrary power that placed "the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer." (John Adams) Moreso, Adams maintains: Writs in their nature are temporary things. When the purposes for which they are issued are answered, they exist no more; but these live forever; no one can be called to account... But these prove no more than what I before observed, that special writs may be granted on oath and probable suspicion. The act of 7 and 8 William III that the officers of the plantations shall have the same powers, etc., is confined to this sense; that an officer should show probable ground; should take his oath of it; should do this before a magistrate; and that such magistrate, if he think proper, should issue a special warrant to a constable to search the places. As Justice Sotomayor noted in United States v. Jones, logging a vehicle's public movements "reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations." An action revealing all this is ipso facto a search; and Flock performs this search in the very absence of a specific warrant that Adams so vehemently opposed.