5 ms·

My money is on no, the cameras were not on his property. The article says the spy cameras were “placed the within the boundaries of where he lives, farms and hu

My money is on no, the cameras were not on his property. The article says the spy cameras were “placed the within the boundaries of where he lives, farms and hunts.” Since the column piece is written by the complainant/affiliate my guess is the cameras were close to his land but on public property around the river and pointed at his property.

dylan604 5y ago
> “placed the within the boundaries of where he lives, farms and hunts.” I recognize the words, but that is a really strained sentence structure. What are they trying to say? Placed within the boundaries sounds like my property. If I'm roaming my property and find something there that I did not put there, then I'm going to be taking it down. I'll probably even attempt to sell it.
- wslack 5y ago
  It sounds like they are trying to imply it was his land without actually stating as such (because it was likely just over the property border).
  - dylan604 5y ago
    As long as it "just" over the property line then I guess it's not really his property then? Doubt the tax assessor gives them a break on the "just" over part of it. Are we really trying to say that property lines are gray areas? If I build my fence just over the line onto my neighbor's property, that'd be okay then, right? This straining to justify the trespassing to place an illegal wiretap is just mind boggling.
    - rfrey 5y ago
      I think your parent meant "just over" in the opposite direction, e.g. just outside his property.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        i guess that could be read that way now that you mention it. totally didn't take it that way in my jumping to conclusions. so, now that we've established it could be not on your property but absolutely most definitely viewing your property, time for action. Time for a sheet of plywood blocking the view. Now, knowing that it's probably an extremely wide angle lens, that playwood probably won't block the full view. Time for a bright ass light on that board that just so happens to point at the camera. Maybe a UV LED lights to make it not as annoying in case that light is too disturbing. Or, a laser light show attached to that piece of plywood that just happnes to scan back and forth across the camera lens several times at alternating heights.
        brewdad 5y ago
        As if they can't come and move the camera. I suppose eventually you could build your plywood wall around the entire perimeter of the property. In the suburbs we call that a privacy fence. A bit more costly to build on such a large plot of land however.
        dylan604 5y ago
        Okay, so now I'm starting to wonder if I'm just a sick mind or if others are just really not very creative. So you go and move the piece of plywood. It costs the US Gov't much more money to move the thing than it will you. Stick it to the man. Plus, each time you move it, you can update the messages you've spray painted onto that piece of plywood. "Hello Mr Secret Agent Man!" "Isn't it a lovely day to be viewing my property?" "How about you go and..."
        mellavora 5y ago
        The problem with pissing off law enforcement is that they have many more resources than most people, and they care a little less about costs. I could see that if someone were to act along the lines of your cartoon, that they would be facing an obstruction of justice charge. I could also see a large number of building inspections and other checks that the landowner was following the law. And quite possibly the sheriff could start setting up a traffic stop at say, the end of the driveway, where they check all passing cars for DWI. Also raising the possibility of civil forfeiture. In Minneapolis, the police decided it was fine to fly police helicopters over residential areas at low altitudes for hours at a time, every day. This is legal, you do not own the airspace above your land. Hopefully they wouldn't notice anything suspicious, which could trigger a no-knock search of your property. All of this is just local people. If the Feds get involved, then a person could have more serious issues.
  - phrz 5y ago
    The current state of the open fields doctrine is that your home and its "curtilage" are protected, but the "open fields" beyond that are not. The wording "lives, farms and hunts" suggests that area is his curtilage because it is where he takes part in the activities of private life. Property bounds are not really relevant because 4th amendment privacy rights and property rights are not co-extensive.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    "Boundaries of where he lives, farms and hunts” makes me think they carped bombed the whole area, including a whole bunch of private property that was his and other people's. Basically nobody farms public lands. A lot of people farm their neighbor's land. And as other commenters have pointed out, there isn't a 1:1 mapping between "not your property" and "where the .gov can stick a camera without a warrant".
    - dylan604 5y ago
      There's actually legal government documents that quite literally state where your property is. Any property that is not defined as your property is not your property. It's really not a hard topic.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        You don't get it. Just because it's not your property doesn't mean the .gov can plop a camera there without a warrant. They can't stick a camera on a pole in an empty lot directly across from your house for the purposes of surveilling your house without a warrant. Of course they can try and weasel around that but that's for the court to determine.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    either that or if they wrote it themselves they thought, man these jerks don't know who they're dealing with! I am going to write so smart here they'll be sorry they ever messed with me! It takes an extremely disciplined mind to write well when angry about the thing one is writing about, otherwise you risk being completely unclear.
- chaircher 5y ago
  might be to articulate the privacy issues. As in, the cameras aren't just technically on his property but they're filming his whole life
mod 5y ago
I had the opposite takeaway from the text; that is, that the cameras were, in fact, on his property. The quote you cited is just referencing his property, I think they said 163 acres.
stefan_ 5y ago
Surely we can just resolve this by looking at the actual complaint instead of trying to divine sense from some words like it's a party manifesto from Xi? Here it is, then: https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Tennessee-Open-Fields-Complaint-Final.pdf https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Tennessee-Open-Fie... The graphic on page 11 seems to indeed show the camera on the property.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Interesting that he filed this only under his State's constitution in State court. I don't see why he couldn't have made a 4th Am. challenge under federal law too, and filed in federal court. Although they may have passed on the State law aspect if they deemed it too complex. A county court judge is woefully under-skilled and will almost certainly side with authorities and bump this to the appellate courts for a more in-depth legal examination. Do we know if he has a collateral federal case?
  - antognini 5y ago
    Some states have stronger protections in their state constitutions than the federal constitution provides. Montana, for instance, explicitly provides a right to privacy, whereas a "right to privacy" is at best implicit in the US Constitution. I don't know anything about the Tennessean Constitution to say if that's the reason though.
    - kingcharles 5y ago
      I looked at it real quick, it's not one of the states that copy-pastes the 4th Am like a lot do, but it also doesn't seem to offer up any extra protections like some states do, as you mention.
- saberdancer 5y ago
  That graphic is quite bad. Not all markers follow the same logic. For the "Terry's Gate" the white line seems to point to the location of the gate, while when showing homes they do not point to homes but use the icon to designate location. Depending on what they used for TWRA Camera the camera may or may not be located on the property. I am leaning toward not on the property as there is no real reason why they would point outside of the property with the white line unless they wanted to show where it actually was.
judge2020 5y ago
Even if something is placed on government-owned land (eg. a river), they're still bound by the fourth amendment and they can't use security cameras that surveil where the owner/person has a 'reasonable expectation of privacy'. Whether or not that means the owner of the land has such expectation on hundreds of acres depends on how secure the location is; you could make the argument "anyone could legally boat down the river and see them, therefore there is not an expectation of privacy", or you could make the argument that cameras installed at an unreasonably high elevation (eg. the top of a tree on the river) would be surveilling land that nobody not trespassing could see. This is also assuming you have a legal fence/barrier that informs anyone trespassing isn't allowed, otherwise it'd be harder to claim treading the land and setting up 'wildlife cameras' is trespassing.

dylan604 5y ago

> “placed the within the boundaries of where he lives, farms and hunts.” I recognize the words, but that is a really strained sentence structure. What are they trying to say? Placed within the boundaries sounds like my property. If I'm roaming my property and find something there that I did not put there, then I'm going to be taking it down. I'll probably even attempt to sell it.

wslack 5y ago
It sounds like they are trying to imply it was his land without actually stating as such (because it was likely just over the property border).
- dylan604 5y ago
  As long as it "just" over the property line then I guess it's not really his property then? Doubt the tax assessor gives them a break on the "just" over part of it. Are we really trying to say that property lines are gray areas? If I build my fence just over the line onto my neighbor's property, that'd be okay then, right? This straining to justify the trespassing to place an illegal wiretap is just mind boggling.
  - rfrey 5y ago
    I think your parent meant "just over" in the opposite direction, e.g. just outside his property.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      i guess that could be read that way now that you mention it. totally didn't take it that way in my jumping to conclusions. so, now that we've established it could be not on your property but absolutely most definitely viewing your property, time for action. Time for a sheet of plywood blocking the view. Now, knowing that it's probably an extremely wide angle lens, that playwood probably won't block the full view. Time for a bright ass light on that board that just so happens to point at the camera. Maybe a UV LED lights to make it not as annoying in case that light is too disturbing. Or, a laser light show attached to that piece of plywood that just happnes to scan back and forth across the camera lens several times at alternating heights.
      - brewdad 5y ago
        As if they can't come and move the camera. I suppose eventually you could build your plywood wall around the entire perimeter of the property. In the suburbs we call that a privacy fence. A bit more costly to build on such a large plot of land however.
        dylan604 5y ago
        Okay, so now I'm starting to wonder if I'm just a sick mind or if others are just really not very creative. So you go and move the piece of plywood. It costs the US Gov't much more money to move the thing than it will you. Stick it to the man. Plus, each time you move it, you can update the messages you've spray painted onto that piece of plywood. "Hello Mr Secret Agent Man!" "Isn't it a lovely day to be viewing my property?" "How about you go and..."
        mellavora 5y ago
        The problem with pissing off law enforcement is that they have many more resources than most people, and they care a little less about costs. I could see that if someone were to act along the lines of your cartoon, that they would be facing an obstruction of justice charge. I could also see a large number of building inspections and other checks that the landowner was following the law. And quite possibly the sheriff could start setting up a traffic stop at say, the end of the driveway, where they check all passing cars for DWI. Also raising the possibility of civil forfeiture. In Minneapolis, the police decided it was fine to fly police helicopters over residential areas at low altitudes for hours at a time, every day. This is legal, you do not own the airspace above your land. Hopefully they wouldn't notice anything suspicious, which could trigger a no-knock search of your property. All of this is just local people. If the Feds get involved, then a person could have more serious issues.
- phrz 5y ago
  The current state of the open fields doctrine is that your home and its "curtilage" are protected, but the "open fields" beyond that are not. The wording "lives, farms and hunts" suggests that area is his curtilage because it is where he takes part in the activities of private life. Property bounds are not really relevant because 4th amendment privacy rights and property rights are not co-extensive.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  "Boundaries of where he lives, farms and hunts” makes me think they carped bombed the whole area, including a whole bunch of private property that was his and other people's. Basically nobody farms public lands. A lot of people farm their neighbor's land. And as other commenters have pointed out, there isn't a 1:1 mapping between "not your property" and "where the .gov can stick a camera without a warrant".
  - dylan604 5y ago
    There's actually legal government documents that quite literally state where your property is. Any property that is not defined as your property is not your property. It's really not a hard topic.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      You don't get it. Just because it's not your property doesn't mean the .gov can plop a camera there without a warrant. They can't stick a camera on a pole in an empty lot directly across from your house for the purposes of surveilling your house without a warrant. Of course they can try and weasel around that but that's for the court to determine.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  either that or if they wrote it themselves they thought, man these jerks don't know who they're dealing with! I am going to write so smart here they'll be sorry they ever messed with me! It takes an extremely disciplined mind to write well when angry about the thing one is writing about, otherwise you risk being completely unclear.
chaircher 5y ago
might be to articulate the privacy issues. As in, the cameras aren't just technically on his property but they're filming his whole life

mod 5y ago

I had the opposite takeaway from the text; that is, that the cameras were, in fact, on his property. The quote you cited is just referencing his property, I think they said 163 acres.

stefan_ 5y ago

Surely we can just resolve this by looking at the actual complaint instead of trying to divine sense from some words like it's a party manifesto from Xi? Here it is, then: https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Tennessee-Open-Fields-Complaint-Final.pdf https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Tennessee-Open-Fie... The graphic on page 11 seems to indeed show the camera on the property.

kingcharles 5y ago
Interesting that he filed this only under his State's constitution in State court. I don't see why he couldn't have made a 4th Am. challenge under federal law too, and filed in federal court. Although they may have passed on the State law aspect if they deemed it too complex. A county court judge is woefully under-skilled and will almost certainly side with authorities and bump this to the appellate courts for a more in-depth legal examination. Do we know if he has a collateral federal case?
- antognini 5y ago
  Some states have stronger protections in their state constitutions than the federal constitution provides. Montana, for instance, explicitly provides a right to privacy, whereas a "right to privacy" is at best implicit in the US Constitution. I don't know anything about the Tennessean Constitution to say if that's the reason though.
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    I looked at it real quick, it's not one of the states that copy-pastes the 4th Am like a lot do, but it also doesn't seem to offer up any extra protections like some states do, as you mention.
saberdancer 5y ago
That graphic is quite bad. Not all markers follow the same logic. For the "Terry's Gate" the white line seems to point to the location of the gate, while when showing homes they do not point to homes but use the icon to designate location. Depending on what they used for TWRA Camera the camera may or may not be located on the property. I am leaning toward not on the property as there is no real reason why they would point outside of the property with the white line unless they wanted to show where it actually was.

judge2020 5y ago

Even if something is placed on government-owned land (eg. a river), they're still bound by the fourth amendment and they can't use security cameras that surveil where the owner/person has a 'reasonable expectation of privacy'. Whether or not that means the owner of the land has such expectation on hundreds of acres depends on how secure the location is; you could make the argument "anyone could legally boat down the river and see them, therefore there is not an expectation of privacy", or you could make the argument that cameras installed at an unreasonably high elevation (eg. the top of a tree on the river) would be surveilling land that nobody not trespassing could see. This is also assuming you have a legal fence/barrier that informs anyone trespassing isn't allowed, otherwise it'd be harder to claim treading the land and setting up 'wildlife cameras' is trespassing.