The difference is that your example involves physically stopping and searching people. This is not the case with Flock, which records images in public.

The government does not and never did require any warrant or justification to record people in public spaces. Not just the government, but normal people too: you can whip out four phone and start recording people in public any time you want.

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text0404 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The government does need a warrant to surveil me, though, and multiple court cases have found that using an intermediate third party doesn't absolve the government from adhering to the fourth amendment.

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Manuel_D 6 hours ago | parent [-]

The government needs a warrant to search you, your home, your vehicle, your email, etc. The government does not need a warrant to record you in public spaces.

You're correct that the government can't use a third party to circumvent privacy laws. But privacy laws never prohibited what Flock does. The government could directly set up its own cameras in public, and nothing about that violated the Fourth Amendment.

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text0404 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The government does need a warrant to surveil someone, though. Which is what is happening here: a third party surveils citizens and the government searches that data.

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Manuel_D 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Whether or not the government needs a warrant to surveil someone depends on how the government is conducting that surveillance. The government does, for instance, need a warrant to wiretap you. They do not need a warrant to record people in public spaces. Nor do they need a warrant to, say, photograph the exterior of your house.

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text0404 6 hours ago | parent [-]

But they need a warrant to follow me around, record my movements, put them into a database which is searchable by other law enforcement. They're not taking a single photograph of a car, they're creating a database of movement of people who have not committed crimes.

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Manuel_D 6 hours ago | parent [-]

No, they do not need a warrant to follow you in public. What more is there to say, besides that you're just wrong about what privacy laws protect?

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text0404 5 hours ago | parent [-]

They need a warrant if they're going to record and track my movements over the course of months.

	▲	Manuel_D 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If they're only tracking your movements in public, the no they do not. Again, you're just wrong about what privacy laws protect. They do not prohibit the police from surveilling or tracking you, they only control how the police is able to conduct that surveillance. If the police want to search your house or car, they need a warrant or at least probable cause for the latter. If they want to photograph you in public, they do not.
	▲	5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
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UncleMeat 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> The government does not need a warrant to record you in public spaces.

This is not true. The question is whether you have a "reasonable expectation of privacy." If you do, then the government needs a warrant. This is why the government can't tap a payphone without a warrant even though it is in public.

It is true that a single police officer can post up somewhere and scan license plates without a warrant. The difference here is scale. The question of whether scale affects a "reasonable expectation of privacy" has never been addressed by the supreme court, though it has been raised before and discussed in concurring opinions.

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Manuel_D 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> This is not true. The question is whether you have a "reasonable expectation of privacy." If you do, then the government needs a warrant. This is why the government can't tap a payphone without a warrant even though it is in public.

"Reasonable expectation of privacy" covers things like restrooms. Not highways, streets, parking lots, etc. This isn't relevant for Flock.

	▲	UncleMeat 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		"Reasonable expectation of privacy" covers whatever the public believes is reasonable. The original case creating this doctrine was about phone booths.

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mypalmike 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Recording equipment didn’t exist when the constitution was written.

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Manuel_D 6 hours ago | parent [-]

The Supreme Court has set precedence that video recordings of public spaces fall under the plain view doctrine: police don't need a warrant or probable cause to record things in public view.

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text0404 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure, but putting that data into a persistent database which law enforcement searches on demand is a violation of the fourth amendment.

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Manuel_D 6 hours ago | parent [-]

No? Which Supreme Court decision decided that persisting video recorded in public is a violation of the Fourth Amendment?

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text0404 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Chatrie. It's about the use of the data, not the data itself.

Law enforcement searches a database of recorded, retained, aggregated data about people who have not committed crimes: this constitutes a fourth amendment search. Go ahead and record all you want, but when law enforcement decides to use that data, they have to get a warrant.

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Manuel_D 6 hours ago | parent [-]

That case didn't cover public-facing cameras, that was about the government demanding telecoms hand over geolocation data on their users. The government was demanding that mobile providers hand over private data, akin to asking Google for your gmail contents.

This is far removed from a camera set up in a public space.

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text0404 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Chatrie held that the government conducted a fourth amendment search when it got the location data, even though the data was held by a third party. The reasoning was that the data revealed Chatrie's physical movements, not that Google itself was somehow a constitutionally private space.

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Manuel_D 6 hours ago | parent [-]

It didn't just reveal Chatrie's movements, it revealed to movements of everyone in the geofenced area. And more importantly, it revealed movements even in private not just in public.

Again, this is far removed from a camera in a public space.

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text0404 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Chatrie was not about the dragnet capturing people in private spaces. It established that LE acquisition and aggregation of location information can constitute a fourth amendment search even when the observations are made in public.

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Manuel_D 5 hours ago | parent [-]

But the observations in the Chatrie case weren't made in public. This was private information that only Google had access to, and law enforcement went and demanded that Google hand over that private information.

By contrast, a person can stand on a street corner with their phone and record everything a Flock camera records.

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text0404 5 hours ago | parent [-]

The SC's holding was that the government's acquisition of location data from a third party was itself a fourth amendment search because the individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy wrt location data. So you're kind of agreeing with me here: the data is either private and subject to a warrant, or it is in public where individuals do have a reasonable expectation of privacy wrt aggregated location information.

And again, a person standing on a street corner is constitutionally distinct from LE following and tracking individuals movement over time.

	▲	Manuel_D 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> The SC's holding was that the government's acquisition of location data from a third party was itself a fourth amendment search because the individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy wrt location data. Specifically, the GPS coordinates logged by their cellphones. > So you're kind of agreeing with me here: the data is either private and subject to a warrant, or it is in public where individuals do have a reasonable expectation of privacy wrt aggregated location information. You're missing the point: Flock camera's don't record where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy. > And again, a person standing on a street corner is constitutionally distinct from LE following and tracking individuals movement over time. Wrong: as long as law enforcement are only tracking your movements in public, they don't need a warrant or probable cause.

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6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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gothbytes 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Cool, then the Flock data should just be public and accessible to everyone since there's no expectation of privacy in public.

If not, why not?

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Manuel_D 6 hours ago | parent [-]

There's nothing stopping you from setting up a webcam pointed out your window. If you want to set up your own public-facing ALPR cameras, there's nothing stopping you.

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gothbytes 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Can I put cameras up on every street corner and on every traffic light? Doesn't answer my question anyways. I'm asking if the government via a third party can have this ability, would you have any objection to the entirety of the public from having this data and camera access? I'm assuming not since the people who advocate for this technology see nothing wrong with it.

If you do have a problem with public access to these cameras and tracking software, then it would be hypocritical.

	▲	Manuel_D 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you owned property, or otherwise got permission from the property owners to put cameras there, then yes.