Sorry for the length, but I think this is a great opportunity to discuss this point:
It could be argued that even in places where you have “no reasonable right to privacy”, a computerized network of thousands of cameras monitoring citizens accused of no crime in absence of probable cause and judge’s warrant constitutes an “unreasonable search”. Furthermore, I think the data analysis provided by such systems also constitutes an emergent power not delegated to the federal government by the constitution. It’s not just the cameras, it’s the information inferred by their continued use correlated automatically with other large datasets.
Security cameras that happen to catch crimes are one thing, but LPR networks are vast, specifically designed to monitor for personal identifiers, and correlated with other public data to infer where you go, when you go, who you go with, and what you’re going there for, perpetually, and then store that searchable information for long periods. Searching this information does not require a warrant, it’s used to create the justification for an arrest.
Here’s an oversimplified example: I travel past a convicted drug dealer’s house every day for work and once in a while I stop at the store next door to buy a soda. An officer sees this and starts searching for my car in an LPR frontend system, and creates an alert to pull me over and search my car.
The justification to stop and search me is unreasonable because that flimsy association is not evidence of a crime, and is based on further information circularly gathered because of that flimsy association. Furthermore, in an imperfect world, that cop just might decide he doesn’t like me, or needs to pad his arrest numbers connected to this case to keep his job. This is the sort of thing the Fourth Amendment is designed to protect against.
The reason these systems are popular with police is that they do uncover legitimate evidence of crimes, just like dragnet monitoring the Internet uncovers computer crime. But they’re also searching through large swaths of innocent citizens going about their lives, with the probable cause being someone out there is committing a crime, and I think that’s constitutes an unreasonable search.
Sorry for the length, but I think this is a great opportunity to discuss this point:
It could be argued that even in places where you have “no reasonable right to privacy”, a computerized network of thousands of cameras monitoring citizens accused of no crime in absence of probable cause and judge’s warrant constitutes an “unreasonable search”. Furthermore, I think the data analysis provided by such systems also constitutes an emergent power not delegated to the federal government by the constitution. It’s not just the cameras, it’s the information inferred by their continued use correlated automatically with other large datasets.
Security cameras that happen to catch crimes are one thing, but LPR networks are vast, specifically designed to monitor for personal identifiers, and correlated with other public data to infer where you go, when you go, who you go with, and what you’re going there for, perpetually, and then store that searchable information for long periods. Searching this information does not require a warrant, it’s used to create the justification for an arrest.
Here’s an oversimplified example: I travel past a convicted drug dealer’s house every day for work and once in a while I stop at the store next door to buy a soda. An officer sees this and starts searching for my car in an LPR frontend system, and creates an alert to pull me over and search my car.
The justification to stop and search me is unreasonable because that flimsy association is not evidence of a crime, and is based on further information circularly gathered because of that flimsy association. Furthermore, in an imperfect world, that cop just might decide he doesn’t like me, or needs to pad his arrest numbers connected to this case to keep his job. This is the sort of thing the Fourth Amendment is designed to protect against.
The reason these systems are popular with police is that they do uncover legitimate evidence of crimes, just like dragnet monitoring the Internet uncovers computer crime. But they’re also searching through large swaths of innocent citizens going about their lives, with the probable cause being someone out there is committing a crime, and I think that’s constitutes an unreasonable search.