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Recording equipment didn’t exist when the constitution was written.
by mypalmike 7d ago
Recording equipment didn’t exist when the constitution was written.
- Manuel_D 7d agoThe 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.
- text0404 7d agoSure, but putting that data into a persistent database which law enforcement searches on demand is a violation of the fourth amendment.
- Manuel_D 7d agoNo? Which Supreme Court decision decided that persisting video recorded in public is a violation of the Fourth Amendment?
- deleted 7d ago[deleted]
- text0404 7d agoChatrie. 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.
- Manuel_D 7d agoThat 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.
- text0404 7d agoChatrie 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.
- Manuel_D 7d agoIt 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.
- text0404 7d agoChatrie 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.
- Manuel_D 7d agoBut 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.
- text0404 7d agoThe 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.