[827a]

The argument I struggle to get around and would love to hear a counter-argument to: Let's say a local police department hired 175 police officers, each being told "Go stand on this particular intersection with a pad of paper and write down every license plate you see". This would be a stupid use of resources, but is not outside the realm of something a well-funded police department could do. Every night they take their reports back to HQ, and file them away.

This is a modestly different situation than one concerning warrantless tracking of phone locations, if for no other reason than my phone oftentimes in my pocket. It is not always visible to onlooking bystanders. And even if it isn't, externally there is no reliably way to differentiate one iPhone from another. In comparison: license plates, when in public, are always visible, and very easy to discern from one-another (different state-unique numbers); so in my mind the expectation of privacy is far lower.

I abhor what Flock does, but I'm not sure I see a constitutional argument for why what they do is unconstitutional.

[twosdai]

I would say the purposeless capture of information is the correct counter argument here.

Specifically, even if a county hired all those officers and did what you suggest if there is no purpose other than recording all this information. I believe it would be a constitutional violation. A person has the right to reasonable privacy outside of their home. License plates can and should be recorded when there is a relevant purpose to it. Such as toll collection, or a scoped traffic watch done by a police officer or a traffic camera. The dragnet collection of data for "maybe its useful" or "we don't know when it will be useful, but it might" has generally been struck down when brought to the supreme court.

For Flock's case, they don't operate as far as I know as ticket issuing traffic cameras which have a much tighter level of control of how they operate. IE: Traffic cameras have clear signs near them notifying the drivers of their usage, in some states the issuing of the citation cannot be considered criminal (Civil issuance) and must not capture faces of drivers.

[nateb2022]

> In comparison: license plates, when in public, are always visible, and very easy to discern from one-another (different state-unique numbers); so in my mind the expectation of privacy is far lower.

According to Carpenter:

  A person does not surrender all Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into the public sphere. To the contrary, 'what [a person] seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.'

Being present in plain view isn't equivalent to a total surrender of privacy.

[ncallaway]

> but is not outside the realm of something a well-funded police department could do

One officer would absolutely not be able to record on that piece of paper every single license plate that passed through a busy intersection. Not even close.

The number of officers that _would_ be required to do so would absolutely be "outside the realm of possibility" for even a well-funded police department.

That's why flock is different. It's a level of scale that was previously—despite your assertions—impossible.

[827a]

The constitution does not really care about scale, though, and that’s my point. It’s a reason why the legislature should care about Flock, but not why the judicial should.

[maxlybbert]

The Supreme Court mentioned your question in 2012 in US v. Jones ( https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/565/400/ ), without giving an actual answer:

“This Court has to date not deviated from the understanding that mere visual observation does not constitute a search. See Kyllo [v US]. ... We accordingly held in [US v] Knotts that ‘[a] person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another.’ ... Thus, even assuming that the concurrence is correct to say that ‘[t]raditional surveillance’ of Jones for a 4-week period ‘would have required a large team of agents, multiple vehicles, and perhaps aerial assistance,’ ... our cases suggest that such visual observation is constitutionally permissible. It may be that achieving the same result through electronic means, without an accompanying trespass, is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, but the present case does not require us to answer that question.”

The fourth amendment is supposed to address invasive and inconvenient general warrants and search warrants. And that’s “inconvenient” from the point of view of the person being investigated. I don’t understand the view that all’s fair as long as the police do a certain amount of busywork, but that does seem to be popular even among some judges.

[hwillis]

Scale obviously does not make this more okay; watching many intersections or cell towers is obviously less reasonable than a single intersection or tower.

> In comparison: license plates, when in public, are always visible, and very easy to discern from one-another (different state-unique numbers); so in my mind the expectation of privacy is far lower.

Legally, overhearing a conversation is not different. If you are loudly talking about your drug deals in public in front of an officer, they can use that as evidence. A police department could hire officers to stand everywhere in public and listen to every conversation nearby.

Or, more specifically, they could stand conspicuously close to every payphone and listen. The phones are in public; the officers don't need to be uniformed. Practically speaking this is not at all different from wiretapping. That's what the police did in Katz- wiretap a public payphone.

Flock cameras are not in any meaningful sense different from having officers follow around everyone and record everywhere they go. Its irrelevant whether one officer is following one person or if many people are following them, each within their own small area. That would absolutely not be legal without a warrant. The only difference is a private company is doing it and selling it to the police, something that should clearly not be legal.

[827a]

The constitution does not really care about scale, though, and that’s my point. It’s a reason why the legislature should care about Flock, but not why the judicial should.

[ChiperSoft]

The collection of the data is not whats of concern here. The issue is the use of the data in legal proceedings. Flock can gather all they want, but police accessing it and using it as evidence is where it rubs against the constitution.

[xboxnolifes]

Do flock cameras only store license plates and nothing else at all?

[bigbuppo]

Flock is a tech company. The cameras almost certainly being used for marketing and advertising purposes.