[jerrya]

I am not a lawyer.

I found Professor Orin Kerr's discussion of United States v. Jones (2012) at the Volokh Conspiracy both enlightening and depressing. Professor Kerr's analysis there, if I recall it correctly, was that any violation occurred when the GPS device was physically placed on Jones' car violating the seizure part of unreasonable search and seizure. That the search itself was legal.

And I think that's how the government's attorney and Scalia and the Court saw it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_(2012))

But presumably according to Kerr, and I am very likely distorting his views since a) I ain't a lawyer and b) sometime has passed, that if the same tracking information against Jones was obtained by having ALPR devices mounted on city street lights, freeway overpasses and freeway ramps, then Jones (and us!) would have no more expectation of privacy than if Jones had been seen by a cop walking a beat.

I think there is a fundamental difference between a cop walking a beat recognizing a citizen and having an array of massively cheap cameras hooked into an ALPR network tracking all citizens 24x7.

[lifeisstillgood]

There is a massive difference.

But that's not the point. There is a societal benefit to tracking people this way. Well, there is expected to be one - of road pricing, congestion and crime reduction.

The handling of loss of privacy, which seems pretty much inevitable, is something we do need to deal with - just not try to stop it.