Agree.
The system as it is currently used is a 4th Amendment violation, IMO. The police need a court order to install a tracking device on your vehicle, and yet this does essentially the same thing with no court order. Someone needs to take this to the SCOTUS.
I believe the current defense against that is that a tracker tracks you, it physically follows you from place to place. Flock cameras are a bunch of individual cameras. It’s like the difference between some guy following you around taking pictures of your car all day long versus random security cameras all over town taking your picture. I’m not sure why the meshed (is that the right word) nature of these cameras isn’t taken into consideration. To go back to my example, ISTM it makes more sense to compare flock cameras not to a bunch of random cameras around town taking your picture, but to that guy following you around paying everyone in town with a camera to forward any pictures of you or your car over to him.
IIRC, I got that from this video (I didn’t rewatch it, so I may be misremembering). I think part of the argument against it is that, even if you have no right to privacy when out in public, being required, by law, to display identifying info (your license plate) changes that.
Even though no one technically has any right of privacy in public, we’ve long been accustomed to an effective degree of anonymity in that we didn’t have an omniscient state observing and remembering our every move. Do we really want to live in a world in which no one has any privacy beyond the four walls of their dwelling?
Not even there, if you count the various flavors of “convenience” appliances that are capable of listening to and capturing every word and sound made in your house.
As for license plate readers, I’m expecting any day now for some technology to come out where your license plate is not readable by camera but only by the human eye.
That technology is usually made illegal ASAP.
Various license plate covers claiming that have been around for a very long time. The idea is usually that they reflect the flash to blind the camera, or are polarized, or whatever. I’m not convinced they work, but I’ve not sought out unbiased (or even biased) tests.
Doesn’t really matter though, because the cameras can also track you from the unique addresses of your tire pressure monitors, bluetooth or wifi that is part of the car, phones that happen to be in the car, and just the unique appearance of the car.
ETA: there are also various dazzle patterns that claim to confuse the AI used to analyze the photos. Problem is that even if the pattern works, it’s just one software update away from not mattering.
That ship has sailed, a long time ago. There is available some sort of penetrating radar or whatever now that can even peer into homes, by the way. I don’t know how widespread it is, but I’m sure it’s used when it is available or thought necessary.
And like the smoke/tint covers, anything meant to stop a flock camera from reading your plate will become a violation and give the police a reason to pull you over.
I’d go so far as to say that should also be illegal, at least/especially, without a warrant.
We’ve plenty of laws on the books that are ignored, adding more won’t matter.
It matters to your defense attorney.
Do prosecutors claim that any technology that simply passively detects anything emanating from a property such as sound or far infrared is fair game? Or have courts struck this down? Snooping with parabolic microphones for example.
That’s a good question. There is some controversy around cell phone “pings”, if they really want to, law enforcement can determine who was in a given area at a certain time. That is, if they are carrying their phone. I don’t really have a problem with it, but it has been challenged.
One of the standards used in the law is a “reasonable expectation of privacy”. If you’re in your own home with your curtains closed, it’s reasonably expected that you’re in private, and so anything that intrudes on that privacy (without proper warrant etc.) is legally questionable.
I’ve wondered how that squares with windshield tinting laws. I know cars are on public highways, but there are a few reasons to have dark or even mirrored windows on a car, none of them particularly nefarious. It does make it more hazardous for LEOs to approach a car, but it’s the equivalent to having the shades drawn at home, more or less.
I think the bigger issue with laws concerning tinted car windows is road safety, in that they impede the driver’s vision. At least some such laws permit tinting on other windows, but prohibit it on the front windshield.
Yeah, but there are all sorts of percentages of tint allowed and not allowed and the rest of it. Besides, current technology means they could have adjustable road-tinting for the windshield. Nice and dark during the day, nice and clear at night or inclement weather.
My point is that there is no expectation of anybody opening their curtains if they need to visit someone’s home. I get it, I wouldn’t want to make traffic stops in this day and age either.
Pysher’s father, Glen Pysher, said his son and his friends had visited several bars earlier in the evening and were splitting up to spend the night in two homes when his son took a wrong turn in the woods. Based on what he has been told by his son’s friends, Pysher believes his son mistakenly tried to enter what he thought was his friend’s house. His son wasn’t carrying any weapons, just a phone and backpack containing clothing and a few beers, he said.
“He tried to open the doorknob and obviously startled the homeowner,” he said. “From what we understand, he announced, ‘Hey! Open the door!’ because he thought he was at his friend’s house.”
Pysher then sat down on the back porch and contacted his friends, who realized he was in the wrong place and set out to find him. But minutes later, they saw police and emergency vehicles and figured their friend would be arrested for public drunkenness. Instead, he was shot.
Sitting on the back porch and he was killed?
Updates. The man’s name has been released.
Also released is the information that the man was deaf. And the family relayed this fact to the police when they called 911 about him being suicidal.
The man was also naked at the time the police shot him, which eliminates any possibility that he had a concealed firearm.
The bodycam footage also shows that the police shot the man within ninety seconds of entering the room.
You’ve heard of getting swatted, now you also have to worry about getting “Flocked”.
This is still only on Facebook so far, but it will probably gain traction, and it is almost entirely certain that the worthless shit-stain cop will get away with it.
