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Comment by ericmay

1 day ago

I don't really care too much one way or the other about these cameras, and generally think it's probably bad to have more surveillance but could you help me understand what exactly is "unconstitutional" or even nefarious with these cameras provided they are bought and installed on property that is owned by the installer or an entity such as the government which presumably has legal justification for installing them?

I'm genuinely asking since I'm a bit out of touch with this latest controversy, but how are they any different than a dash cam, doorbell camera, or my alley camera, for example such that they deserve special consideration?

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ericmay

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ThrustVectoring  1 day ago

It's the database query, not the physical cameras. In the pre-digital age where privacy was considered in constitutional law, tracking people's and vehicle's movements was horrendously expensive - you'd need multiple detectives doing things by hand per person of interest. This meant that it was reserved for when the government already had pretty strong reason to believe in some sort of wrongdoing. Even with a personal, non-internet-connected doorbell camera, the police would need to identify what cameras exist for a location and contact the owners in order for the footage to do anything.

With automated license plate readers, they can simply collect everything with a reasonably affordable network of cameras, then query the database when they want to find a particular pattern of activity. The police have already detained people for frequent border-crossing between marijuana-legal and illegal states. This gets exacerbated by granularity and extensiveness - imagine an anti-choice state pointing cameras at every maternity care parking lot in the state and tracking who visits them for cross-referencing with visits to pro-choice states.

And with the existence of parallel construction, there's no reasonable way short of dismantling the ALPR system to avoid abuse against the citizenry.

  • ericmay  1 day ago

    Please correct my understanding if this is not the case... so the issue isn't the cameras themselves it's that you believe (and I am sympathetic toward) that they are easily searchable without a warrant and so it's something akin to a 4th Amendment violation? Less so to do with surveillance state which we might consider a separate issue? I mention that just because the surveillance state with just cameras could include consumer cameras, drones, highway traffic cams, the damn automated plate reader and tracking camera that gave me a $100+ ticket in London for driving through a congestion zone and... those bast.... and... (jk - well sort of it, I mean it is part of the group here)

    I'm not sure I'm on board with the efficiency argument but those are always interesting ones.

    • ThrustVectoring  1 day ago

      The privacy violation is that the database exists, full stop. I don't think a warrant requirement would be a meaningful barrier, since the data is already part of the camera network operators' database and all sorts of informal or backdoor agreements would easily happen.

      Like, all a warrant requirement does is make it so that the police have to talk to a judge before making the searched data part of the evidence against you. It would do nothing to stop the police from fabricating some other pretext to lawfully stop and investigate you - say, parking a police cruiser at the border into the state and whenever the ALPR in that car hits a list of vehicles, stop them for going 0.1 MPH over the limit and the officer says they smell weed.

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snazz  1 day ago

It’s an interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, which is loosely supported by Supreme Court precent in Carpenter and Jones. See my previous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46359826

Edit: To be more clear, the issue courts have considered is warrantless searches of ALPR databases (and whether that evidence should be excluded), not whether it’s constitutional to put up cameras.

harimau777  1 day ago

The constitution forbids unreasonable search and seizure. Tracking people's movements without specific reason the believe that they are a criminal has generally been regarded, at least by the public, as a classic example of government overreach.

Brian_K_White  1 day ago

I can only assume this question is disingenuous.

"What is so wrong with having your house burn down? It's just a chemical process that happens all the time."

  • ericmay  1 day ago

    That's a bad assumption and incorrect in this case. Instead of assuming you should just ask. I also did my best to communicate that I was genuinely interested in learning more about what was the crux of the issue.