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To its credit, the article covers all the reasons why the Chatrie decision won’t be determinative for this case. But the headline and narrative paint a way too

To its credit, the article covers all the reasons why the Chatrie decision won’t be determinative for this case. But the headline and narrative paint a way too optimistic (if you’re anti-Flock) picture of Chatrie’s impact. In particular the search identified by Chatrie (Google’s database of expected-private location records, including movement in the home and other private spaces) has almost no analog in third-party-owned recordings of public movement.

text0404 4mo ago
But Chatrie found that the geofence was unconstitutional because of the wide dragnet which included people not suspected of crimes, not because those people were in private spaces: > The Court held that police conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they obtained Chatrie's location data, because, as the opinion put it, "an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information." The analogue with Flock is pretty clear then: > Just as important as the holding is the reasoning: the Court rejected the government's fallback argument that the search was fine because it only pulled a narrow, time-limited slice of a much larger dataset. Once the Fourth Amendment applies, the majority reasoned, it doesn't matter how small a bite investigators took out of an all-encompassing database.
- twoodfin 4mo ago
  As I understand the ruling, the Court decided these location records were akin to a diary or a personal photograph. That’s what triggered the essential element of an expectation of privacy, from which the fact of a search was established. Totally absent in this case, as far as I can tell.
  - estearum 4mo ago
    No, they argued these records are akin to a record of the person's travel history. > As Google puts it, and no one seriously disputes, Location History serves as a “diary” or map “of a person’s travels.” "Diary" is a red herring here. They're referring to a location log, just like what Flock produces.
    - stickfigure 4mo ago
      Flock produces a record of a car's travel history. Automobiles are highly regulated and driving is a privilege. There is no _right_ to drive a vehicle from point A to point B, in secret or not.
      - estearum 4mo ago
        Just like cell towers record a cell phone's travel history. Cell phones are highly regulated and having one is a privilege. There is no _right_ to carry a cell phone from point A to point B, in secret or not.
        stickfigure 4mo ago
        This is factually incorrect. You do, in fact, have a legal right to own a cellphone. Cellphone ownership is not licensed and law enforcement cannot stop you from buying a cellphone or carrying it from point A to point B. Cars are different. You must be licensed and cars must be registered with the state. Cars must display tags for the purpose of tracking. They must be inspected periodically. When driving a car on public roads, you are subject to implied consent; for example, taking a blood alcohol test on demand. As they say, "driving is a privilege, not a right". Cars are different. Ask yourself: If a US state passed a law requiring geo trackers in all automobiles, do you think it would be unconstitutional? What about drones, airplanes, boats?
      - deathanatos 4mo ago
        All government regulation still has to be balanced against whether it intrudes or not on the rights of the People. The government can regulate vehicles, including ensuring drivers have met whatever requirements a license might require — nobody is arguing against that. But Flock cameras do not help advance any reasonable state interest in that area; their sole purpose AFAICT is for law enforcement, and in a way that intrudes on any basic expectations of privacy.
      - Terr_ 4mo ago
        Justifying some control does not justify all control. Voting is a "privilege" too [0] but does that mean any state government should be recording an exact log of your ballot-choices? Surely not. [0] It should be a far stronger right than what it is right now, but that's separate big debate.
kelnos 4mo ago
Not sure I agree. The only difference I see is the idea that there's no expectation of privacy while driving on public roads. That's potentially a huge difference, certainly, but I don't think it makes the negative outcome here quite as likely as you think. Otherwise, it's the same: Google's database is a third-party-owned record of people's movements in public, and Flock's database is a third-party-owned record of people's movement in public. The ruling in Chatrie had nothing to do with an expectation of privacy, or lack thereof. It was about the dragnet nature of the surveillance. And in that respect, I don't see any meaningful difference between Flock's and Google's systems.
- twoodfin 4mo ago
  The very first holding of the majority opinion by Kagan: Held: Police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired Chatrie’s location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information. Note the possessive “his”. Crucial to the case, this was held to be the individual’s data, not the third-party’s.
  - estearum 4mo ago
    Why would the expectation of privacy be different depending on which spectrum of light the information was captured in (visible vs radio)? In both scenarios, the data is held by a private third party and a person generates this data pretty much by-default. This is the relevant bit: In Carpenter, this Court held that accessing cell-site location information (CSLI) constitutes a Fourth Amendment search because “individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of their physical movements,” 585 U. S., at 310. The Court reasoned that CSLI provides a “detailed” and “encyclopedic” portrait of a person’s whereabouts, id., at 309, and, with that, “an intimate window into a person’s life,” id., at 311. Because people “compulsively carry” their cell phones “all the time,” the Court explained, a cell phone “tracks nearly exactly the movements of its owner,” and thus “faithfully follows” him not only through “public thoroughfares [but] into private residences, doctor’s offices, political headquarters, and other potentially revealing locales.”
jmward01 4mo ago
This court has had little respect for precedent so maybe an argument here is more about the fact that rulings like this one may become more likely.
- flenserboy 4mo ago
  they have little respect for precedent which they agree is wrong, which is a far better standard than letting terrible decisions stand because tradition or because popular.
dundarious 4mo ago
Yes, while I'm not a fan of fully networked, recorded, ubiquitous license plate tracking, it is quite different than the cell phone. License plate number is a registered identifier mandated to be fully plainly visible, with that identifier tied to a registered individual; compared to cell phone which has identifiers, sure, but they're not registered to an individual necessarily, and not mandated to be plainly visible, rather only "visible" as a means of service provision.
alistairSH 4mo ago
Is Flock really 3rd party? Yes, they're a private entity, but they largely owe their existence to government contracts. They maintain their database on behalf of various governments. Their primary sales pitch is to law enforcement. It feels like something completely different than Alphabet's or Meta's databases of person/user data. I do agree that Flock is also not the same as the database of cell phone location data that Verizon or Apple or whoever else might maintain. It's somewhere in the middle, IMO. At least to my non-lawyer brain.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- FireBeyond 4mo ago
  Specifically as intended. For states where law enforcement cannot do such things directly, they can still contract with a private provider, either as an RFP, or (as in some states) "you can't RFP this butttt if some private provider just so happened to provide it, you can use it".
- kube-system 4mo ago
  Being a government contractor doesn't make you a part of the government. A lot of companies have government contracts, many more so than Flock.

text0404 4mo ago

But Chatrie found that the geofence was unconstitutional because of the wide dragnet which included people not suspected of crimes, not because those people were in private spaces: > The Court held that police conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they obtained Chatrie's location data, because, as the opinion put it, "an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information." The analogue with Flock is pretty clear then: > Just as important as the holding is the reasoning: the Court rejected the government's fallback argument that the search was fine because it only pulled a narrow, time-limited slice of a much larger dataset. Once the Fourth Amendment applies, the majority reasoned, it doesn't matter how small a bite investigators took out of an all-encompassing database.

twoodfin 4mo ago
As I understand the ruling, the Court decided these location records were akin to a diary or a personal photograph. That’s what triggered the essential element of an expectation of privacy, from which the fact of a search was established. Totally absent in this case, as far as I can tell.
- estearum 4mo ago
  No, they argued these records are akin to a record of the person's travel history. > As Google puts it, and no one seriously disputes, Location History serves as a “diary” or map “of a person’s travels.” "Diary" is a red herring here. They're referring to a location log, just like what Flock produces.
  - stickfigure 4mo ago
    Flock produces a record of a car's travel history. Automobiles are highly regulated and driving is a privilege. There is no _right_ to drive a vehicle from point A to point B, in secret or not.
    - estearum 4mo ago
      Just like cell towers record a cell phone's travel history. Cell phones are highly regulated and having one is a privilege. There is no _right_ to carry a cell phone from point A to point B, in secret or not.
      - stickfigure 4mo ago
        This is factually incorrect. You do, in fact, have a legal right to own a cellphone. Cellphone ownership is not licensed and law enforcement cannot stop you from buying a cellphone or carrying it from point A to point B. Cars are different. You must be licensed and cars must be registered with the state. Cars must display tags for the purpose of tracking. They must be inspected periodically. When driving a car on public roads, you are subject to implied consent; for example, taking a blood alcohol test on demand. As they say, "driving is a privilege, not a right". Cars are different. Ask yourself: If a US state passed a law requiring geo trackers in all automobiles, do you think it would be unconstitutional? What about drones, airplanes, boats?
    - deathanatos 4mo ago
      All government regulation still has to be balanced against whether it intrudes or not on the rights of the People. The government can regulate vehicles, including ensuring drivers have met whatever requirements a license might require — nobody is arguing against that. But Flock cameras do not help advance any reasonable state interest in that area; their sole purpose AFAICT is for law enforcement, and in a way that intrudes on any basic expectations of privacy.
    - Terr_ 4mo ago
      Justifying some control does not justify all control. Voting is a "privilege" too [0] but does that mean any state government should be recording an exact log of your ballot-choices? Surely not. [0] It should be a far stronger right than what it is right now, but that's separate big debate.

kelnos 4mo ago

Not sure I agree. The only difference I see is the idea that there's no expectation of privacy while driving on public roads. That's potentially a huge difference, certainly, but I don't think it makes the negative outcome here quite as likely as you think. Otherwise, it's the same: Google's database is a third-party-owned record of people's movements in public, and Flock's database is a third-party-owned record of people's movement in public. The ruling in Chatrie had nothing to do with an expectation of privacy, or lack thereof. It was about the dragnet nature of the surveillance. And in that respect, I don't see any meaningful difference between Flock's and Google's systems.

twoodfin 4mo ago
The very first holding of the majority opinion by Kagan: Held: Police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired Chatrie’s location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information. Note the possessive “his”. Crucial to the case, this was held to be the individual’s data, not the third-party’s.
- estearum 4mo ago
  Why would the expectation of privacy be different depending on which spectrum of light the information was captured in (visible vs radio)? In both scenarios, the data is held by a private third party and a person generates this data pretty much by-default. This is the relevant bit: In Carpenter, this Court held that accessing cell-site location information (CSLI) constitutes a Fourth Amendment search because “individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of their physical movements,” 585 U. S., at 310. The Court reasoned that CSLI provides a “detailed” and “encyclopedic” portrait of a person’s whereabouts, id., at 309, and, with that, “an intimate window into a person’s life,” id., at 311. Because people “compulsively carry” their cell phones “all the time,” the Court explained, a cell phone “tracks nearly exactly the movements of its owner,” and thus “faithfully follows” him not only through “public thoroughfares [but] into private residences, doctor’s offices, political headquarters, and other potentially revealing locales.”

jmward01 4mo ago

This court has had little respect for precedent so maybe an argument here is more about the fact that rulings like this one may become more likely.

flenserboy 4mo ago
they have little respect for precedent which they agree is wrong, which is a far better standard than letting terrible decisions stand because tradition or because popular.

dundarious 4mo ago

Yes, while I'm not a fan of fully networked, recorded, ubiquitous license plate tracking, it is quite different than the cell phone. License plate number is a registered identifier mandated to be fully plainly visible, with that identifier tied to a registered individual; compared to cell phone which has identifiers, sure, but they're not registered to an individual necessarily, and not mandated to be plainly visible, rather only "visible" as a means of service provision.

alistairSH 4mo ago

Is Flock really 3rd party? Yes, they're a private entity, but they largely owe their existence to government contracts. They maintain their database on behalf of various governments. Their primary sales pitch is to law enforcement. It feels like something completely different than Alphabet's or Meta's databases of person/user data. I do agree that Flock is also not the same as the database of cell phone location data that Verizon or Apple or whoever else might maintain. It's somewhere in the middle, IMO. At least to my non-lawyer brain.

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
FireBeyond 4mo ago
Specifically as intended. For states where law enforcement cannot do such things directly, they can still contract with a private provider, either as an RFP, or (as in some states) "you can't RFP this butttt if some private provider just so happened to provide it, you can use it".
kube-system 4mo ago
Being a government contractor doesn't make you a part of the government. A lot of companies have government contracts, many more so than Flock.