5 ms·

This is an end-run around the fourth amendment by using a private party to do a law enforcement function; namely finding "criminals" which has historically been

This is an end-run around the fourth amendment by using a private party to do a law enforcement function; namely finding "criminals" which has historically been the job of the police. I find it interesting that the supreme court recently ruled that GPS trackers are a form of search. I suspect that in a few years this will go before them, but given the differences (namely that nothing is attached to your vehicle) I'm a lot less confident that they'll rule against it. I REALLY hope they will, but I'm a bit doubtful.

fweespeech 12y ago
GPS trackers were only a form of search [and a violation of the 4th amendment] because they were placed by Government agents if I recall correctly. The collection of GPS records from your phone is still quite legal and this would be the license plate scanning equivalent.
- berberous 12y ago
  Yes, Jones avoided the hard fourth amendment issues and said, if the government _physically_ places a tracker on your, that is definitely a search. Even in the absence of a trespass, however, Supreme Court precedence recognizes a search when the government violates a subjective expectation of privacy that society recognizes as reasonable. So, if the Government monitors your location by enlisting factory or owner-installed vehicle tracking devices or GPS-enabled smartphones, that could well be a search, but it's still a fuzzy and undecided area of the law. Sotomayor's concurring opinion in U.S. v. Jones is well worth a read if you are interested in this sort of thing.
  - lemonlyman87 12y ago
    Yes, the concurrance is fantastic in general, and really hits the nail on the head of why location data needs 4th Amendment protections today: "[Location data] generates a precise, comprehensive record of a person’s public movements that reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations ... trips to the psychiatrist, the plastic surgeon, the abortion clinic, the AIDS treatment center, the strip club, the criminal defense attorney, the by-the-hour motel, the union meeting, the mosque, synagogue or church, the gay bar and on and on. The Government can store such recordsand efficiently mine them for information years into the future. And because GPS monitoring is cheapin comparison to conventional surveillance techniques and,by design, proceeds surreptitiously, it evades the ordinary checks that constrain abusive law enforcement practices: limited police resources and community hostility. "Awareness that the Government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms. And the Government’s unrestrained power to assemble data that reveal private aspects of identity is susceptible to abuse. The net result is that [location tracking] making available at a relatively low cost such a substantial quantum of intimate information about any person whom the Government, in its unfettered discretion, chooses to track may alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.
- briandear 12y ago
  Could you copyright your license plate and then use a DCMA takedown notice against the private company storing your plate number? Just get a personalized plate; thus you are the 'author' and you've given the state a license to 'publish' your plate. Data mining by a private company of your copyrighted material would not constitute fair use, especially since they are using it for economic gain.
  - msandford 12y ago
    I doubt it because the text is too small to be copyrightable I suspect. Otherwise I'd just copyright a bunch of individual words and then make everyone stop writing or talking at all. But it's a nice idea!
- kd5bjo 12y ago
  I suspect the issue here would be the requirement to place a tracking device (license plate) on your vehicle, not the installation of detectors for that device.
ams6110 12y ago
Not sure. One does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in one's travels on a public street. Anyone (including police) can follow you, record where you go, photograph you, etc. When it comes to large-scale, untargeted, collection and retention by traffic cameras, etc. then it may come into the realm of what is "reasonable."
- parineum 12y ago
  You're right that there is no real expectation of privacy when you're in public but I think the difference between tracking/storing movements and seeing your neighbor at the bank is you expect the loss of privacy to end when you get home. The data something like this collects is so vast that it actually encroaches into the parts of your life you would reasonably expect to be private. For instance, you could determine that I'm seeing a psychiatrist, that I'm cheating on my wife or that I have cancer. That's private information you don't expect to be exposed by simply driving around. To push the limit of the broad interpretation of your public data, consider the following scenario. Imagine in the not-to-distant future that a technology exists that allows people to scan, from a distance, the electromagnetic field produced by your brain and use that data to map your thoughts and memories. Would me simply stepping into public be a tacit agreement between me and the government to forfeit that privacy?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- ssmoot 12y ago
  > One does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in one's travels on a public street. Anyone (including police) can follow you, record where you go, photograph you, etc. I think people definitely do have a reasonable expectation that they aren't being followed everywhere they travel, and if you framed it in that way many would see it as a violation of privacy.
- CWuestefeld 12y ago
  But traditionally one would have an expectation of privacy - not absolute, but in general - simply due to scalability. Even if you're walking down the street, there aren't enough police or other government agents to be able watch everyone. Technology fundamentally changes this. Taking the point a bit farther - we have no expectation of privacy for the exterior of our homes. Does this, then, make it OK for the government to use audio recording devices that can pick up sound waves based on the vibrations of the home's panes of glass (because this can actually be done in some cases)? Similarly, the exterior IR signature of our home is theoretically in public view, but should we let the government monitor which rooms are occupied based on changes in the heat signature of the walls?
rhino369 12y ago
Private companies working on behalf of the government are subject to the 4th amendment too. The real reason this is probably allowable is that you have no expectation of privacy while driving around. People see you. Cops can tail you everywhere you go. What we really need is some sort of anti dragnet amendment.
- briandear 12y ago
  So what are alternative ways to catch criminals? Wait for them to show up at the police station? There's a big difference between mass surveillance and surveillance. I want cops to be able to do their job. I don't want my information collected to be used against me in a crime I haven't yet committed. This is the NSA debate: warrants should be required for a suspect that is under suspicion; but not everyone should be mass surveilled "just in case." I would feel better about this if the license plate readers simply pinged law enforcement on a real-time match. The storage and potential data mining aspects are where it crosses the line. Stasi stuff there.
  - tracker1 12y ago
    Or, make a warrant required, and only enable collection of data where a proper warrant for a specific plate is in place start collection, in a granularity of N-days (being as few as one and as many as say 30, without another warrant). The system should be unable (by design) to store information on plates without warrant.. as you mention, in terms of a ping... No historical logging of data outside that scope. Cops are able to start following someone... they aren't able to go back in time and start following someone three weeks ago.
    - mahyarm 12y ago
      That design is way too easy to switch into full recording mode. It feels like as much of a solution that DRM is.
      - tracker1 12y ago
        True... and barring fictional "investigations" could be challenged in court. The problem is, we're rapidly reaching a point close to 1984 in terms of privacy (or lack of).
Shivetya 12y ago
the end run is instead of going up against individuals they have separated us from our property and assigned it a whole different set of rights. Hence they no longer have to worry about many rights enshrined in law or the Constitution as they are charging things instead of individuals.

fweespeech 12y ago

GPS trackers were only a form of search [and a violation of the 4th amendment] because they were placed by Government agents if I recall correctly. The collection of GPS records from your phone is still quite legal and this would be the license plate scanning equivalent.

berberous 12y ago
Yes, Jones avoided the hard fourth amendment issues and said, if the government _physically_ places a tracker on your, that is definitely a search. Even in the absence of a trespass, however, Supreme Court precedence recognizes a search when the government violates a subjective expectation of privacy that society recognizes as reasonable. So, if the Government monitors your location by enlisting factory or owner-installed vehicle tracking devices or GPS-enabled smartphones, that could well be a search, but it's still a fuzzy and undecided area of the law. Sotomayor's concurring opinion in U.S. v. Jones is well worth a read if you are interested in this sort of thing.
- lemonlyman87 12y ago
  Yes, the concurrance is fantastic in general, and really hits the nail on the head of why location data needs 4th Amendment protections today: "[Location data] generates a precise, comprehensive record of a person’s public movements that reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations ... trips to the psychiatrist, the plastic surgeon, the abortion clinic, the AIDS treatment center, the strip club, the criminal defense attorney, the by-the-hour motel, the union meeting, the mosque, synagogue or church, the gay bar and on and on. The Government can store such recordsand efficiently mine them for information years into the future. And because GPS monitoring is cheapin comparison to conventional surveillance techniques and,by design, proceeds surreptitiously, it evades the ordinary checks that constrain abusive law enforcement practices: limited police resources and community hostility. "Awareness that the Government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms. And the Government’s unrestrained power to assemble data that reveal private aspects of identity is susceptible to abuse. The net result is that [location tracking] making available at a relatively low cost such a substantial quantum of intimate information about any person whom the Government, in its unfettered discretion, chooses to track may alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.
briandear 12y ago
Could you copyright your license plate and then use a DCMA takedown notice against the private company storing your plate number? Just get a personalized plate; thus you are the 'author' and you've given the state a license to 'publish' your plate. Data mining by a private company of your copyrighted material would not constitute fair use, especially since they are using it for economic gain.
- msandford 12y ago
  I doubt it because the text is too small to be copyrightable I suspect. Otherwise I'd just copyright a bunch of individual words and then make everyone stop writing or talking at all. But it's a nice idea!
kd5bjo 12y ago
I suspect the issue here would be the requirement to place a tracking device (license plate) on your vehicle, not the installation of detectors for that device.

ams6110 12y ago

Not sure. One does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in one's travels on a public street. Anyone (including police) can follow you, record where you go, photograph you, etc. When it comes to large-scale, untargeted, collection and retention by traffic cameras, etc. then it may come into the realm of what is "reasonable."

parineum 12y ago
You're right that there is no real expectation of privacy when you're in public but I think the difference between tracking/storing movements and seeing your neighbor at the bank is you expect the loss of privacy to end when you get home. The data something like this collects is so vast that it actually encroaches into the parts of your life you would reasonably expect to be private. For instance, you could determine that I'm seeing a psychiatrist, that I'm cheating on my wife or that I have cancer. That's private information you don't expect to be exposed by simply driving around. To push the limit of the broad interpretation of your public data, consider the following scenario. Imagine in the not-to-distant future that a technology exists that allows people to scan, from a distance, the electromagnetic field produced by your brain and use that data to map your thoughts and memories. Would me simply stepping into public be a tacit agreement between me and the government to forfeit that privacy?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ssmoot 12y ago
> One does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in one's travels on a public street. Anyone (including police) can follow you, record where you go, photograph you, etc. I think people definitely do have a reasonable expectation that they aren't being followed everywhere they travel, and if you framed it in that way many would see it as a violation of privacy.
CWuestefeld 12y ago
But traditionally one would have an expectation of privacy - not absolute, but in general - simply due to scalability. Even if you're walking down the street, there aren't enough police or other government agents to be able watch everyone. Technology fundamentally changes this. Taking the point a bit farther - we have no expectation of privacy for the exterior of our homes. Does this, then, make it OK for the government to use audio recording devices that can pick up sound waves based on the vibrations of the home's panes of glass (because this can actually be done in some cases)? Similarly, the exterior IR signature of our home is theoretically in public view, but should we let the government monitor which rooms are occupied based on changes in the heat signature of the walls?

rhino369 12y ago

Private companies working on behalf of the government are subject to the 4th amendment too. The real reason this is probably allowable is that you have no expectation of privacy while driving around. People see you. Cops can tail you everywhere you go. What we really need is some sort of anti dragnet amendment.

briandear 12y ago
So what are alternative ways to catch criminals? Wait for them to show up at the police station? There's a big difference between mass surveillance and surveillance. I want cops to be able to do their job. I don't want my information collected to be used against me in a crime I haven't yet committed. This is the NSA debate: warrants should be required for a suspect that is under suspicion; but not everyone should be mass surveilled "just in case." I would feel better about this if the license plate readers simply pinged law enforcement on a real-time match. The storage and potential data mining aspects are where it crosses the line. Stasi stuff there.
- tracker1 12y ago
  Or, make a warrant required, and only enable collection of data where a proper warrant for a specific plate is in place start collection, in a granularity of N-days (being as few as one and as many as say 30, without another warrant). The system should be unable (by design) to store information on plates without warrant.. as you mention, in terms of a ping... No historical logging of data outside that scope. Cops are able to start following someone... they aren't able to go back in time and start following someone three weeks ago.
  - mahyarm 12y ago
    That design is way too easy to switch into full recording mode. It feels like as much of a solution that DRM is.
    - tracker1 12y ago
      True... and barring fictional "investigations" could be challenged in court. The problem is, we're rapidly reaching a point close to 1984 in terms of privacy (or lack of).

Shivetya 12y ago

the end run is instead of going up against individuals they have separated us from our property and assigned it a whole different set of rights. Hence they no longer have to worry about many rights enshrined in law or the Constitution as they are charging things instead of individuals.