9 ms·

Feds nail webcam on utility pole for 10 weeks to spy on suspect

63 points by pavornyoh 11y ago

progressive_dad 11y ago
Personally, I welcome our new free webcams. Next time they're retrieved and plugged into a machine on the ATF VPN I'll immediately have all the evidence my defense team is legally entitled to for discovery.
fweespeech 11y ago
As long as its a webcam-per-suspect-per-place-of-business basis and not a mass grab to do this across entire geographical areas it seems fine. The problem is when they go nuts and try to capture "everything". The balance between the effort to keep an eye on a specific suspect in a specific case + budget/manpower/etc is reasonable vs our need for privacy.
- benmarks 11y ago
  Agreed. There is a de facto anonymity in public which is being reduced by mass surveillance. I generally eschew slippery slope arguments, but it's hard to ignore these points mid-slide.
- dsp1234 11y ago
  As long as its a webcam-per-suspect-per-place-of-business basis and not a mass grab to do this across entire geographical areas it seems fine. That's the problem right there though. The FISC has already ruled that if there is no constitutional issue with a single targeted act, then adding more and more acts together can't create a constitutional issue out of whole cloth. In other words, if it's OK to do it with one person as a target, then it's OK to do it to everyone as a target. "Put another way, where one individual does not have a Fourth Amendment interest, grouping together a large number of similarly-situated individuals cannot result in a Fourth Amendment interest springing into existence ex nihilo. "[0] [0] - http://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/BR%2013-109%20Order-1.pdf http://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/BR%2013-109... page 9, paragraph 1
- rlpb 11y ago
  > As long as its a webcam-per-suspect-per-place-of-business basis and not a mass grab to do this across entire geographical areas it seems fine. Fine without a warrant, or fine with a warrant, and why? The argument against "a mass grab to do this across entire geographical areas" tends to be that it is both unjustified (no specific suspect/specific case) and that no such warrant was (or can be) issued. Law enforcement tends to dodge the issue with a "no warrant required" claim. But if we want to make judgements about what is right or wrong, I think it's important to separate these different aspects.
cannikin 11y ago
The judge said that the webcam provided them the same view, from a public place, that agents would have had if assigned to watch the guy 24/7. (It seems to me that the view from ~30ft up is very different than one from the ground.) Is there a line where the surveillance would NOT be legal? Could they have had a drone circling his house? What about a satellite? Do you have an expectation of privacy from ABOVE your house even if you don't have it from public roads?
- binarycrusader 11y ago
  There's also the issue that no member of the public would legally be allowed to attach a camera to a utility pole like that. Nor would they be allowed to create their own temporarily-installed pole with a camera on the top. So to me, the public view argument only holds if the public was capable of it.
  - cornellwright 11y ago
    Any member of the public (with a fair amount of money) could also just charter and fly a plane over the property and watch. While persistent surveillance would be incredibly expensive, it's still possible. A neighbor could temporarily install a pole with camera or allow another individual to do so. In short, you have no expectation of privacy when it's possible to be seen from a public right of way. I really see no problem with what LE did here.
    - binarycrusader 11y ago
      Yes, a public member could charter a plane, and that would be fine. Utility poles are generally owned by a private company though or the local government and are regulated. Members of the public are not generally permitted to hang things or attach things to them, and since they are usually located on private property or property that the local government has rights to, the general public also isn't generally permitted to place things on them.
  - KirinDave 11y ago
    But if an agent with a telephoto lens on public property could have taken the shot, then the "put this camera on something nearby" would have been entirely fine. The idea that the position is privileged because it's a utility pole and it's illegal for civilians to modify them is a pretty weak argument. I'm no even sure that's true; people post bills and such on utility poles all the time. I'm tempted to nail a gopro up and see what happens. If they had just taken a metal pole or a low-altitude drone perching on a tree as a camera base, you'd be fine with it? I mean, a convicted felon was walking around with a firearm in broad daylight outside, within eyeshot of the road. The idea that this can't be observed from external perspectives by law enforcement but a civilian could legally do it is pretty weird. Weirder than the idea that law enforcement could use surveillance drones, to me.
Turbo_hedgehog 11y ago
I have no problem with this.
jonpaine 11y ago
I'm intrigued by the idea/necessity of some "non-omniscience" factor in weighing 4th amendment cases moving forward. The argument is always that they're only tracking the "same views enjoyed by passersby on public roads", attempting to create a false equivalence between a camera and a human. This has always been a pet peeve of mine, because there are factors that nullify the projected equivalence: each of these 'passersby' on the public road can only be in one place at one time. They are not omniscient. Further, there is an assumed limit to the amount of data they can collect (what can one person see from that street corner) and an assumed cost to the collection of that data (and therefore: even a government is limited in the scope of collection; they can't place an agent infront of every house on every street). These were the assumptions present in the time of the writing of the amendment. These assumptions only apply to the economics of humans, not cameras, and materially changes the effect of the law in the present day. Courts will need a mechanism to articulate that a camera is not equivalent to a passerby. It's not a question of function, it's a question of scope. Much like anti-trust laws or regulations against cornering economic markets don't differentiate based on function, but the scope of the function. When it comes to privacy - the kind that the Fourth Amendment was written to protect - yes, placing agents on corners is substantially different than placing cameras on corners.
- Chris2048 11y ago
  Nothing a regular passerby nailed to a utility pole couldn't observe.
  - HCIdivision17 11y ago
    That right there may be the most succint and acerbic summary of the issue I've ever heard.
    - s_q_b 11y ago
      With privacy, a change in quantity is a change in quality.
  - jliptzin 11y ago
private_citizen 11y ago
As a private citizen, can I go around nailing up cameras on utility poles? I assume the federal government does not own the pole, so it would require the permission of the pole owner and/or the municipality, no?
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  No and yes. You just need to rent the pole from the utility or municipality.
  - private_citizen 11y ago
    Did the ATF rent the pole from the public utility? The article was unclear on that point.
    - dsp1234 11y ago
      FTA: "at the direction of the ATF and without a warrant, the utility company installed a surveillance camera on a public utility pole located roughly 200 yards from Leon’s trailer." The utility company installed the camera voluntarily.
      - gknoy 11y ago
        When the ATF asks you do to do something without a warrant, is doing it really "voluntary"? What business owner would say no?
        dsp1234 11y ago
        is doing it really "voluntary"? Of course. Most utility companies have a large number of lawyers. Lawyers which advise them on actions. Sometimes those lawyers are going to say "just do it, it'll be easier", but it's still voluntary. What do you think the effect of saying "Our lawyers are pretty sure that this type of surveillance would require a warrant. Do you have one of those?" would be? It's not like they are going to shoot up the utility. What business owner would say no? There appears to be no evidence that the ATF told the utility that they would take any adverse action if they did not install the camera. This is just like if the police come to your door and say "Can we come in?". Let them in after they ask, and that is voluntary. Even if most people would not want to say no (which is something that state and federal officers rely on). Many companies that get requests from local and federal agencies will tell them that their request is deficient and to provide proper documentation (ex: facebook and twitter have sent back requests or tried to squash subpoenas that they deem to be insufficient). My guess is that we don't hear about this very often because it's supremely easy for the agency to just go get the warrant (it's not a high barrier at all) or find someone more amenable. It's just easier for the agency if the company voluntarily complies.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
And in this case (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/cops-illegally-nailed-webcam-to-utility-pole-for-6-weeks-to-spy-on-house/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/cops-illegally-na...) the camera video was ruled inadmissible. I expect this to get to the Supreme Court given the constitutional argument but I really have no idea how they might come down on the issue.
- colechristensen 11y ago
  Most likely in a very narrow decision which does not put the issue to rest because, like many things, surveillance technology now is quite a bit different than the authors of laws could have imagined – making sweeping decisions in either direction would very likely have broad and ridiculous consequences.
  - ChuckMcM 11y ago
    I would hope that they come down on requiring a warrant to install additional surveillance. I can see the argument that if the cameras at the convenience store just happen to record what goes up and down your driveway, that is fair game, but if they go out of their way to install an additional camera to watch? For me that sounds like an easy to implement standard which is reasonable.
charonn0 11y ago
> The lower court ruled in Houston's case that, even if the long-term warrantless surveillance breached Houston's Fourth Amendment rights, the video evidence of his carrying weapons on the property would not be excluded at trial because the authorities said they held a good-faith belief that the spying was constitutional. Ignorance of the law is no defense, unless your job is to defend the law?
- rhino369 11y ago
  The purpose of the exclusionary rule and the "fruit of the poisonous tree" is to prevent the police from purposely violating the 4th amendment. There is no other reason why illegally obtained evidence shouldn't be used to convict a criminal. So the good-faith exemption exists to make sure technical violations that occurred during a good faith attempt at following* the constitution don't result in a criminal going free. Think about it. If your mom gets murdered and the cops get a warrant that for some reason wasn't technically valid, would you want the murderer to get off scott free? How that that serve justice. I think the court may be misapplying the good-faith exemption. In my jurisdiction it only applies only in situations where there was a defective search warrant. But each state may be different. TL;DR; it doesn't make it legal, but it also doesn't give you a get out of jail free card.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    >If your mom gets murdered I wouldn't be happy if the police screwed up for any reason. But violating rights in one case makes it more likely that rights will be violated in other cases. Better to let one guilty person go free than to injure and possibly lock up a hundred innocent people.
    - rhino369 11y ago
      >But violating rights in one case makes it more likely that rights will be violated in other cases. So find another way to punish it. Why should that get some off of a criminal charge. Most of world has no such rule. And the point of a good-faith exemption is because allowing good-faith fucks up to be used as evidence doesn't increase (much) the likelihood of violations. >Better to let one guilty person go free than to injure and possibly lock up a hundred innocent people. But throwing out ill gotten evidence after it was obtained doesn't decrease the chances of locking up innocent people.
Zikes 11y ago
> "Moreover, if law enforcement were required to engage in live surveillance without the aid of technology in this type of situation, then the advance of technology would one-sidedly give criminals the upper hand. The law cannot be that modern technological advances are off-limits to law enforcement when criminals may use them freely." Nobody said you can't use webcams for surveillance, just that you need a warrant because that's how the law works. At least, that's how the law is supposed to work.
- ewindisch 11y ago
  Right, this is a matter of the rule of law. Criminals may do quite a number of things that law enforcement cannot because criminals do not follow the law. Rulings like this could drive us even further into a surveillance society where the Feds become comfortable putting cameras on every street corner (and some may say they're already started doing this).
  - knorby 11y ago
    Chicago, as an example, does have cameras on streets in certain areas. Evidence gathered by these is considered admissible without a prior warrant, and no one in the state really debates that, ACLU included (http://www.aclu-il.org/chicago-sun-times-aclu-raises-red-flag-over-traffic-cameras-360-degree-view/ http://www.aclu-il.org/chicago-sun-times-aclu-raises-red-fla...). There are a lot of stronger counter arguments against this approach that don't have to do with warrants. Cameras don't stop crime, they can only document it and possibly alert to something happening. It is better to just make arguments about the practice of mass surveillance and police priorities than to hope court rulings will knock out cameras placed on public land as unconstitutional.
tzs 11y ago
> "There is no Fourth Amendment violation, because Houston had no reasonable expectation of privacy in video footage recorded by a camera that was located on top of a public utility pole and that captured the same views enjoyed by passersby on public roads", Judge John Rogers wrote for the unanimous court [...] There are two big differences between passersby and unobtrusive fixed cameras. • Passersby are generally easily noticeable. • Passersby pass by. A level of care that would make one safe with a high probability against being seen by passersby might fail completely against unobtrusive fixed cameras, so I'm not sure that the passersby-could-see standard should be the one used for cameras. For example at a house my family had when I was a kid we were out in the country in a flat valley. From the end of our driveway I could see far enough up and down the road to see any potential passersby a minute away and postpone anything sensitive I wanted to do in the front yard until they had passed by. On the other hand, I suppose that even if we decide not to allow law enforcement to use unobtrusive fixed cameras in situations like this it won't stop private parties from using them. Any private property that has a view into your private property could be a place where someone has decided to do some video voyeurism and is recoding. Maybe the technological cat is out of the bag and we are just going to have to accept that if you don't want something seen you need to do it somewhere where there is no visibility from anywhere outside your property.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  3. Passersby don't do so from the top of public utility poles. >Maybe the technological cat is out of the bag and we are just going to have to accept that if you don't want something seen you need to do it somewhere where there is no visibility from anywhere outside your property. Can we just skip the song and dance and say that privacy is only for those who can afford it?
- ThrustVectoring 11y ago
  There's another big difference as well - Passersby have distinct, human-fallible memory, while fixed cameras can have the information they record stored and combined. There's a gigantic difference between having a bunch of people see you in various places as you go about your day, and a searchable database of every place your face has been seen in public over the last two years.
Spooky23 11y ago
This isn't a new thing. In the old days, a guy in a Verizon van would wire up a cctv on a pole to a nearby storefront or apartment and record the goings on. I think the only difference here is the rural nature of the location.
aksquestions 11y ago
Isn't the real story here that this guy was acquitted of murdering a police officer and was thus targeted by law enforcement for retribution? His 2010 felony conviction was for "evading arrest", which is what led to him being deprived of his 2nd amendment rights and thus set the tripwire for this violation. But what would you do if you knew law enforcement had it out for you for killing one of their own?
DannyBee 11y ago
The court makes a pretty bad argument here, and one that if it went to the supreme court, would get torn apart (regardless of how they ruled) : ""Moreover, if law enforcement were required to engage in live surveillance without the aid of technology in this type of situation, then the advance of technology would one-sidedly give criminals the upper hand. The law cannot be that modern technological advances are off-limits to law enforcement when criminals may use them freely."" Except, nobody has argued it's off limits, instead, they argue that using that technology should require a warrant. The argument that criminals can use the technology freely is also pretty much a non-starter. The whole point of the 4th amendment is to say that law enforcement can't freely do searches even if others could. By ignoring this point, the court makes the opinion a lot weaker than it could have been.
godgod 11y ago
America...is dead.
arprocter 11y ago
Something doesn't make sense to me: Guy became a felon in 2004, but is involved in a shooting in 2006, and now the feds suspect he might have illegal access to firearms (because felons aren't allowed guns) - how did he not get popped for that after the shooting in 2006?
newman314 11y ago
I won't repeat the points others have made on this thread but I find the following pretty insane. That judge should not be permitted to give LE what amounts to a mulligan. -- Writing separately, Judge Thomas Rose said that the authorities had enough probable cause to get a warrant, and that their failure to do so was "harmless."

63 points by pavornyoh 11y ago

Personally, I welcome our new free webcams. Next time they're retrieved and plugged into a machine on the ATF VPN I'll immediately have all the evidence my defense team is legally entitled to for discovery.

fweespeech 11y ago

As long as its a webcam-per-suspect-per-place-of-business basis and not a mass grab to do this across entire geographical areas it seems fine. The problem is when they go nuts and try to capture "everything". The balance between the effort to keep an eye on a specific suspect in a specific case + budget/manpower/etc is reasonable vs our need for privacy.

benmarks 11y ago
Agreed. There is a de facto anonymity in public which is being reduced by mass surveillance. I generally eschew slippery slope arguments, but it's hard to ignore these points mid-slide.
dsp1234 11y ago
As long as its a webcam-per-suspect-per-place-of-business basis and not a mass grab to do this across entire geographical areas it seems fine. That's the problem right there though. The FISC has already ruled that if there is no constitutional issue with a single targeted act, then adding more and more acts together can't create a constitutional issue out of whole cloth. In other words, if it's OK to do it with one person as a target, then it's OK to do it to everyone as a target. "Put another way, where one individual does not have a Fourth Amendment interest, grouping together a large number of similarly-situated individuals cannot result in a Fourth Amendment interest springing into existence ex nihilo. "[0] [0] - http://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/BR%2013-109%20Order-1.pdf http://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/BR%2013-109... page 9, paragraph 1
rlpb 11y ago
> As long as its a webcam-per-suspect-per-place-of-business basis and not a mass grab to do this across entire geographical areas it seems fine. Fine without a warrant, or fine with a warrant, and why? The argument against "a mass grab to do this across entire geographical areas" tends to be that it is both unjustified (no specific suspect/specific case) and that no such warrant was (or can be) issued. Law enforcement tends to dodge the issue with a "no warrant required" claim. But if we want to make judgements about what is right or wrong, I think it's important to separate these different aspects.

cannikin 11y ago

The judge said that the webcam provided them the same view, from a public place, that agents would have had if assigned to watch the guy 24/7. (It seems to me that the view from ~30ft up is very different than one from the ground.) Is there a line where the surveillance would NOT be legal? Could they have had a drone circling his house? What about a satellite? Do you have an expectation of privacy from ABOVE your house even if you don't have it from public roads?

binarycrusader 11y ago
There's also the issue that no member of the public would legally be allowed to attach a camera to a utility pole like that. Nor would they be allowed to create their own temporarily-installed pole with a camera on the top. So to me, the public view argument only holds if the public was capable of it.
- cornellwright 11y ago
  Any member of the public (with a fair amount of money) could also just charter and fly a plane over the property and watch. While persistent surveillance would be incredibly expensive, it's still possible. A neighbor could temporarily install a pole with camera or allow another individual to do so. In short, you have no expectation of privacy when it's possible to be seen from a public right of way. I really see no problem with what LE did here.
  - binarycrusader 11y ago
    Yes, a public member could charter a plane, and that would be fine. Utility poles are generally owned by a private company though or the local government and are regulated. Members of the public are not generally permitted to hang things or attach things to them, and since they are usually located on private property or property that the local government has rights to, the general public also isn't generally permitted to place things on them.
- KirinDave 11y ago
  But if an agent with a telephoto lens on public property could have taken the shot, then the "put this camera on something nearby" would have been entirely fine. The idea that the position is privileged because it's a utility pole and it's illegal for civilians to modify them is a pretty weak argument. I'm no even sure that's true; people post bills and such on utility poles all the time. I'm tempted to nail a gopro up and see what happens. If they had just taken a metal pole or a low-altitude drone perching on a tree as a camera base, you'd be fine with it? I mean, a convicted felon was walking around with a firearm in broad daylight outside, within eyeshot of the road. The idea that this can't be observed from external perspectives by law enforcement but a civilian could legally do it is pretty weird. Weirder than the idea that law enforcement could use surveillance drones, to me.

Turbo_hedgehog 11y ago

I have no problem with this.

jonpaine 11y ago

I'm intrigued by the idea/necessity of some "non-omniscience" factor in weighing 4th amendment cases moving forward. The argument is always that they're only tracking the "same views enjoyed by passersby on public roads", attempting to create a false equivalence between a camera and a human. This has always been a pet peeve of mine, because there are factors that nullify the projected equivalence: each of these 'passersby' on the public road can only be in one place at one time. They are not omniscient. Further, there is an assumed limit to the amount of data they can collect (what can one person see from that street corner) and an assumed cost to the collection of that data (and therefore: even a government is limited in the scope of collection; they can't place an agent infront of every house on every street). These were the assumptions present in the time of the writing of the amendment. These assumptions only apply to the economics of humans, not cameras, and materially changes the effect of the law in the present day. Courts will need a mechanism to articulate that a camera is not equivalent to a passerby. It's not a question of function, it's a question of scope. Much like anti-trust laws or regulations against cornering economic markets don't differentiate based on function, but the scope of the function. When it comes to privacy - the kind that the Fourth Amendment was written to protect - yes, placing agents on corners is substantially different than placing cameras on corners.

Chris2048 11y ago
Nothing a regular passerby nailed to a utility pole couldn't observe.
- HCIdivision17 11y ago
  That right there may be the most succint and acerbic summary of the issue I've ever heard.
  - s_q_b 11y ago
    With privacy, a change in quantity is a change in quality.
- jliptzin 11y ago

private_citizen 11y ago

As a private citizen, can I go around nailing up cameras on utility poles? I assume the federal government does not own the pole, so it would require the permission of the pole owner and/or the municipality, no?

toomuchtodo 11y ago
No and yes. You just need to rent the pole from the utility or municipality.
- private_citizen 11y ago
  Did the ATF rent the pole from the public utility? The article was unclear on that point.
  - dsp1234 11y ago
    FTA: "at the direction of the ATF and without a warrant, the utility company installed a surveillance camera on a public utility pole located roughly 200 yards from Leon’s trailer." The utility company installed the camera voluntarily.
    - gknoy 11y ago
      When the ATF asks you do to do something without a warrant, is doing it really "voluntary"? What business owner would say no?
      - dsp1234 11y ago
        is doing it really "voluntary"? Of course. Most utility companies have a large number of lawyers. Lawyers which advise them on actions. Sometimes those lawyers are going to say "just do it, it'll be easier", but it's still voluntary. What do you think the effect of saying "Our lawyers are pretty sure that this type of surveillance would require a warrant. Do you have one of those?" would be? It's not like they are going to shoot up the utility. What business owner would say no? There appears to be no evidence that the ATF told the utility that they would take any adverse action if they did not install the camera. This is just like if the police come to your door and say "Can we come in?". Let them in after they ask, and that is voluntary. Even if most people would not want to say no (which is something that state and federal officers rely on). Many companies that get requests from local and federal agencies will tell them that their request is deficient and to provide proper documentation (ex: facebook and twitter have sent back requests or tried to squash subpoenas that they deem to be insufficient). My guess is that we don't hear about this very often because it's supremely easy for the agency to just go get the warrant (it's not a high barrier at all) or find someone more amenable. It's just easier for the agency if the company voluntarily complies.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

And in this case (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/cops-illegally-nailed-webcam-to-utility-pole-for-6-weeks-to-spy-on-house/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/cops-illegally-na...) the camera video was ruled inadmissible. I expect this to get to the Supreme Court given the constitutional argument but I really have no idea how they might come down on the issue.

colechristensen 11y ago
Most likely in a very narrow decision which does not put the issue to rest because, like many things, surveillance technology now is quite a bit different than the authors of laws could have imagined – making sweeping decisions in either direction would very likely have broad and ridiculous consequences.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  I would hope that they come down on requiring a warrant to install additional surveillance. I can see the argument that if the cameras at the convenience store just happen to record what goes up and down your driveway, that is fair game, but if they go out of their way to install an additional camera to watch? For me that sounds like an easy to implement standard which is reasonable.

charonn0 11y ago

> The lower court ruled in Houston's case that, even if the long-term warrantless surveillance breached Houston's Fourth Amendment rights, the video evidence of his carrying weapons on the property would not be excluded at trial because the authorities said they held a good-faith belief that the spying was constitutional. Ignorance of the law is no defense, unless your job is to defend the law?

rhino369 11y ago
The purpose of the exclusionary rule and the "fruit of the poisonous tree" is to prevent the police from purposely violating the 4th amendment. There is no other reason why illegally obtained evidence shouldn't be used to convict a criminal. So the good-faith exemption exists to make sure technical violations that occurred during a good faith attempt at following* the constitution don't result in a criminal going free. Think about it. If your mom gets murdered and the cops get a warrant that for some reason wasn't technically valid, would you want the murderer to get off scott free? How that that serve justice. I think the court may be misapplying the good-faith exemption. In my jurisdiction it only applies only in situations where there was a defective search warrant. But each state may be different. TL;DR; it doesn't make it legal, but it also doesn't give you a get out of jail free card.
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  >If your mom gets murdered I wouldn't be happy if the police screwed up for any reason. But violating rights in one case makes it more likely that rights will be violated in other cases. Better to let one guilty person go free than to injure and possibly lock up a hundred innocent people.
  - rhino369 11y ago
    >But violating rights in one case makes it more likely that rights will be violated in other cases. So find another way to punish it. Why should that get some off of a criminal charge. Most of world has no such rule. And the point of a good-faith exemption is because allowing good-faith fucks up to be used as evidence doesn't increase (much) the likelihood of violations. >Better to let one guilty person go free than to injure and possibly lock up a hundred innocent people. But throwing out ill gotten evidence after it was obtained doesn't decrease the chances of locking up innocent people.

Zikes 11y ago

> "Moreover, if law enforcement were required to engage in live surveillance without the aid of technology in this type of situation, then the advance of technology would one-sidedly give criminals the upper hand. The law cannot be that modern technological advances are off-limits to law enforcement when criminals may use them freely." Nobody said you can't use webcams for surveillance, just that you need a warrant because that's how the law works. At least, that's how the law is supposed to work.

ewindisch 11y ago
Right, this is a matter of the rule of law. Criminals may do quite a number of things that law enforcement cannot because criminals do not follow the law. Rulings like this could drive us even further into a surveillance society where the Feds become comfortable putting cameras on every street corner (and some may say they're already started doing this).
- knorby 11y ago
  Chicago, as an example, does have cameras on streets in certain areas. Evidence gathered by these is considered admissible without a prior warrant, and no one in the state really debates that, ACLU included (http://www.aclu-il.org/chicago-sun-times-aclu-raises-red-flag-over-traffic-cameras-360-degree-view/ http://www.aclu-il.org/chicago-sun-times-aclu-raises-red-fla...). There are a lot of stronger counter arguments against this approach that don't have to do with warrants. Cameras don't stop crime, they can only document it and possibly alert to something happening. It is better to just make arguments about the practice of mass surveillance and police priorities than to hope court rulings will knock out cameras placed on public land as unconstitutional.

tzs 11y ago

> "There is no Fourth Amendment violation, because Houston had no reasonable expectation of privacy in video footage recorded by a camera that was located on top of a public utility pole and that captured the same views enjoyed by passersby on public roads", Judge John Rogers wrote for the unanimous court [...] There are two big differences between passersby and unobtrusive fixed cameras. • Passersby are generally easily noticeable. • Passersby pass by. A level of care that would make one safe with a high probability against being seen by passersby might fail completely against unobtrusive fixed cameras, so I'm not sure that the passersby-could-see standard should be the one used for cameras. For example at a house my family had when I was a kid we were out in the country in a flat valley. From the end of our driveway I could see far enough up and down the road to see any potential passersby a minute away and postpone anything sensitive I wanted to do in the front yard until they had passed by. On the other hand, I suppose that even if we decide not to allow law enforcement to use unobtrusive fixed cameras in situations like this it won't stop private parties from using them. Any private property that has a view into your private property could be a place where someone has decided to do some video voyeurism and is recoding. Maybe the technological cat is out of the bag and we are just going to have to accept that if you don't want something seen you need to do it somewhere where there is no visibility from anywhere outside your property.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago
3. Passersby don't do so from the top of public utility poles. >Maybe the technological cat is out of the bag and we are just going to have to accept that if you don't want something seen you need to do it somewhere where there is no visibility from anywhere outside your property. Can we just skip the song and dance and say that privacy is only for those who can afford it?
ThrustVectoring 11y ago
There's another big difference as well - Passersby have distinct, human-fallible memory, while fixed cameras can have the information they record stored and combined. There's a gigantic difference between having a bunch of people see you in various places as you go about your day, and a searchable database of every place your face has been seen in public over the last two years.

Spooky23 11y ago

This isn't a new thing. In the old days, a guy in a Verizon van would wire up a cctv on a pole to a nearby storefront or apartment and record the goings on. I think the only difference here is the rural nature of the location.

aksquestions 11y ago

Isn't the real story here that this guy was acquitted of murdering a police officer and was thus targeted by law enforcement for retribution? His 2010 felony conviction was for "evading arrest", which is what led to him being deprived of his 2nd amendment rights and thus set the tripwire for this violation. But what would you do if you knew law enforcement had it out for you for killing one of their own?

DannyBee 11y ago

The court makes a pretty bad argument here, and one that if it went to the supreme court, would get torn apart (regardless of how they ruled) : ""Moreover, if law enforcement were required to engage in live surveillance without the aid of technology in this type of situation, then the advance of technology would one-sidedly give criminals the upper hand. The law cannot be that modern technological advances are off-limits to law enforcement when criminals may use them freely."" Except, nobody has argued it's off limits, instead, they argue that using that technology should require a warrant. The argument that criminals can use the technology freely is also pretty much a non-starter. The whole point of the 4th amendment is to say that law enforcement can't freely do searches even if others could. By ignoring this point, the court makes the opinion a lot weaker than it could have been.

godgod 11y ago

America...is dead.

arprocter 11y ago

Something doesn't make sense to me: Guy became a felon in 2004, but is involved in a shooting in 2006, and now the feds suspect he might have illegal access to firearms (because felons aren't allowed guns) - how did he not get popped for that after the shooting in 2006?

newman314 11y ago

I won't repeat the points others have made on this thread but I find the following pretty insane. That judge should not be permitted to give LE what amounts to a mulligan. -- Writing separately, Judge Thomas Rose said that the authorities had enough probable cause to get a warrant, and that their failure to do so was "harmless."