I don't like it, but there's nothing stopping your neighbor or anyone else from filming your home from a public/street view. Let's not forget that even if a court decides the police need a warrant to film, a third party could do the filming and police could just buy the data legally. Again, not something I like, but that's how it goes.
There are very few details in the article. Now I'm curious how they found out about the camera, if charges were filed, etc.
I wonder who owns the pole. Most utility poles are owned by the incumbent utility, not by the government. If an ordinary citizen attached a camera to property they did not own and it was, say, pointed at a police officer's home, I think a conviction would be a near guarantee.
If an ordinary citizen cannot do it, I don't think police should ordinarily be permitted to do it; there should be a review. Given this lasted for months, there clearly wasn't immenent danger.
People have a right to be secure in their houses under the 4th amendment. People have a reasonable expectation that others will not install cameras on property they do not own for the purpose of surveiling a house the other does not own. Secretly installing a camera seems like a violation of that reasonable expectation, thus making it a search.
> I wonder who owns the pole. Most utility poles are owned by the incumbent utility, not by the government.
Who owns the utility?
In Canada, for example, it's common for the utility companies responsible for electricity transmission and/or distribution to be owned by provincial or municipal governments.
Aren't there some pretty significant electric utilities in the US that are municipally or state owned? The ones that come to my mind are in LA, Seattle, and Nebraska, if I'm not mistaken.
At least in Canada, even when a "private" company is involved, there can be significant government ownership. Hydro One in Ontario is publicly-traded, yet the Ontario Government holds nearly a majority of the shares, for example.
That's right--in the U.S., some utilities are "investor-owned." Others are cooperatives (owned by customers) and still others are owned by various local governments.
I propose that even if the government (indirectly) owns the utility pole, using them for espionage by a different government agency is still an infringement of rights.
The government also owns schools, libraries, and hospitals, yet (I would hope) we don't want that to mean the police can get your school transcripts, library or medical records, or compel hospital staff to restrain you until the police arrive, without a warrant.
In sum, the government owns far too much to be allowed to use all they own for whatever purpose they please.
> an ordinary citizen attached a camera to property they did not own and it was, say, pointed at a police officer's home, I think a conviction would be a near guarantee
Do you think a police officer would really risk his livelihood to attempt this sort of thing?
Think about all of the illegal steps an officer would need to take - from procuring the drugs to falsifying the documents (narrative, etc.) - just to "punish" you.
trespass? theft? illegal use of...? they can get very clever when it comes to being able to say you broke the law. it seems it is near impossible to go the entire day without breaking a law of some sort as if it were by design.
If you have power lines with communication utility services running lower on the poles, those communication lines are paying rent to string their lines on those poles. So they could come at you with failure to pay rent, breach of contract (can there be a breach if you didn't sign), some sort of something along those lines would allow for at least a civil suit from the pole's owner.
Whichever party owns/maintains the poles can usually grant access to additonal parties if they see fit, including private citizens, other companies, the government, etc.
Doesn't this still fall foul of existing surveillance protections, though? The police can't circumvent legislation by just paying a PI to stalk you instead. Doesn't this fall into the bucket of turning the seller into an agent of the state?
Your position is logical, but unfortunately there is by now a large body of precedent saying that that gaping loophole is fine. So for example police can’t track your movement without a warrant, but they can buy that info from the phone companies.
This could be fixed very simply by a law. The chances of such a law being passed are sadly extremely low.
Correct. This is called "third party doctrine," and the theory is that since you've voluntarily entrusted this data to the third party, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in it and a warrant is not needed.
"but they can buy that info from the phone companies"
Actually, they are starting to crack down on some of that with the recent SCOTUS case on cell location tracking. I forget the case name, but that was within the last 4 or so years.
> The police can't circumvent legislation by just paying a PI to stalk you instead.
Why would they need to? Stalking you doesn't require a warrant. Breaking into your house, for example, would require a warrant, but a PI can't do that any more legally than the police can.
There's a difference between 'no privacy from the street' and 'filming everything all the time'. Like the difference between picking an orange from a neighbor's tree, and bringing in a combine harvester.
Pedants will insist they are the 'same' somehow. But socially we know that's not true. It matters to us that we feel some sense of privacy most of the time. It's all about degree.
But most people staking out your home are somewhat obvious. A car parked across the street would be noticed, as would most permanent cameras. Getting permission to put something on a utility pole that is so small as to not be noticed is different, and whether or not that makes it illegal is exactly the question at hand.
Think about it as if it was a person -- while it might be legal for me to stand on the sidewalk and look at your home, I sure would get a different reaction if I stood there for days with binoculars looking through your windows 24/7.
So yes, viewing a home from a public space is legal, the question is not only what criteria would make it illegal, but what criteria should?
When you walk down the sidewalk, and you see the home for the 30 seconds it takes you to move past where it is in view, you are "viewing" it. When you live across the street, and every once in awhile you pull back the blinds to see if the mail has come, and you incidentally see the house, that's public viewing.
When the government installs surveillance cameras aimed at the house 24/7 for the rest of eternity, they have access to details that no one could possibly know if they were "viewing a home from public space". 35 years later, they'll be able to search through the footage to see who left and at what hours of the evening for all of October 2024. We can't even know right now what they might be able to infer from the footage.
Even if an unmarked car sat out in front of the home, watching it for a week straight... that surveillance is ephemeral. No one will be able to ask the surveiller what happened 35 years later, he won't remember much. He was there for a 12 hour shift for 6 days straight. Not up for 5 month's non-stop. Not digital and losing not even a single bit of detail.
The two things aren't equivalent, not even slightly. Ephemeral and limited, versus forever and all-encompassing. That's the criteria.
where i live, any unnatural aid [eg binoculars] required or used to observe a private property creates an offense s privacy, as well if the point of focus is a bathroom, bedroom, or changing area, the offense is sexual voyuerism
Lots of things are illegal when the government does it, but not when regular people do it. That's like, a major part of the constitution. Here's what's relevant here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States
> Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the court ruled that the use of thermal imaging devices to monitor heat radiation in or around a person's home, even if conducted from a public vantage point, is unconstitutional without a search warrant.
how does SC intends to differentiate light in visible spectrum from IR or radio spectrum? this is absurd, there should be some clarity of thought on this, either you allow monitoring on all frequencies of light or none. I can understand carveouts for banned/non-public use frequencies but a blanket order must respect privacy.
Uh. Humans see in vis. You aren't protected against intrusion in vis because everyone would reasonable expect that intrusion, can easily anticipate it, and you'll be monitored by your any passers by in vis.
This is called a reasonable expectation of privacy. You don't have one in the visible spectrum for things visible outside of your property to arbitrary passers by.
Super-duper sensing devices can potentially violate a reasonable expectation of privacy.
The decision in Kyllo was pretty clearly explained by the court.
"there is a ready criterion, with roots deep in the common law, of the minimal expectation of privacy that exists, and that is acknowledged to be reasonable. To withdraw protection of this minimum expectation would be to permit police technology to erode the privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. We think that obtaining by senseenhancing technology any information regarding the interior of the home that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical "intrusion into a constitutionally protected area," Silverman, 365 U. S., at 512, constitutes a search— at least where (as here) the technology in question is not in general public use. This assures preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted. On the basis of this criterion, the
35
*35 information obtained by the thermal imager in this case was the product of a search."
> how does SC intends to differentiate light in visible spectrum from IR or radio spectrum? this is absurd, there should be some clarity of thought on this, either you allow monitoring on all frequencies of light or none.
I guess it should depend on what information is collected and how long the surveillance is. A camera picks up mostly visible light and if it's pointed at a house for months on end that's a major problem. Police can use radio waves to see through walls and track your actions inside your home from the outside, or fly overhead and see what you're doing using thermal cameras and that's much much more invasive but can take place in minutes.
> there's nothing stopping your neighbor or anyone else from filming your home from a public/street view
There is almost certainly something stopping your neighbor from mounting a camera permanently on a utility pole.
Also, just because an individual can do it does not automatically entitle the government to do it. There are many things individuals can do that the government is specifically prohibited from doing.
From the linked document:
I requested information regarding Flock security cameras from the company and spoke with their local sales rep, who provided the proposal in the packet for Board discussion. My understanding is that the library would essentially be subscribing to the data, and Flock would own and install the equipment, which would capture make, model, color and license plate data on all vehicles entering or exiting the library parking lots. This data would then be shared in
real time with any law enforcement connected to the Flock network.
libraries sure have changed! I remember when they fought back against handing the public's data over to the state. They resisted when the government demanded they turn over the reading lists of Americans, they lost, but at least they fought for us.
Many libraries now use, and heavily promote, third party ebook services that are also collecting the reading habits of card holders where it can be sold to the government or to anyone else willing to pay for it.
If a third party is paid by the police to film you then they are an arm of the
government too.
Otherwise yes some cameras are already there and may be pointing at your home, but that doesn’t mean it is OK for the police to stick a poll cam up and spy on you.
A police poll cam could pan and zoom as needed to get the questionable probable cause. So it is way more dangerous than a ring bell next door (ring bells don’t pick up much really)
While someone could privately conduct the surveillance and sell it to the police... they then become agents of the police, given that the police are the only reasonable market for such recordings. (The other possible market is hoping that stalkers want to buy it for select locations... after the first incident, legislation would quickly shut it down.)
Others in the past have noted that the police would be permitted to stake out the address in person, without warrant or much oversight. But the number of cops is finite, there are natural limits to how often and how long they can do that. There is no limit to how many cameras that police departments might collectively buy. There are plausible scenarios where multiple cameras are aimed at every address in the country. All of this can be stored indefinitely.
I imagine if cameras and IoT devices continue to miniaturize, one day they'll float on the wind like a dandelion puff. Folks could spread them around like dust. Helicopters could crop-dust them over entire cities.
In future we'll have to come up with some social rules about ubiquitous surveillance. Because it will become the norm.
Doesn't seem there's any possible way to avoid that scenario.
Sure we can still have privacy. I hear what goes on behind a bathroom door, but I pretend I don't. It would be the height of boorishness to say anything. Similarly, to admit you know anything about someone you learned from 'remote viewing' could be appalling manners etc.
People are very adaptable. Come from a line of people who lived in tiny villages and knew everybody's business. And yet here we are.
The difference is the police have extraordinary rights to search and seize your property with established probable cause, and the ability to violently detain, even kill you, if they observe anything that might give suspicion of a crime. Your neighbor can’t use footage they acquire for any purpose without your permission of you in your private life without running afoul privacy laws. But the crucial aspect is the extraordinary powers and rights the police are conferred to basically destroy your life on suspicion alone.
They did specify at a high level several cases and that at least in some charges were filed in the article, at least I read it that way:
“a result, the government targeted the home of a community pillar — a lawyer, respected judicial clerk, devoted church member, and a grandmother raising her grandkids — to cherry-pick images from months of unceasing surveillance in an effort to support unwarranted criminal charges against an innocent person.”
>Perhaps at the moment, but there's no moral reason why the law cannot constraint and regulate this space, especially if it harms the common good.
The legal problem is: do you now arrest a parent taking a picture of their child on a public street and your house happens to be in the frame? Of course not, but how do you legally differentiate the two?
More subtle differentiations than that are made by law and handled routinely by courts. Remember it's not (yet) an algorithm that has to be precisely specified. Things like intent and effect can be considered and judgement applied in court by a person whose title reflects their responsibility to do exactly that.
So tell me how you would write it where it's actually effective and a person surveilling you can't hack it, like having a child or dog, or any exception with them in the frame all the time. A person can call themselves "press," and be constitutionally correct; press can't be defined and credentialed by the state and be "free." I can't think of a way personally, but I'm open to ideas.
>Remember it's not (yet) an algorithm that has to be precisely specified.
Yes, but the more vague the more prone to state abuse and the more likely to be struck down.
Freedoms carry burdens, but the freedoms outweighs the burdens in nearly all cases.
I'm not a lawyer or a legislator it's not my responsibility to write law phrasing to your satisfaction. This would be handled the same way other plausibly deniable things like fraud and harassment are handled. By evaluating the context, subpoenaing records and conversations, questioning under oath, looking at the effects and history of actions of the individuals involved.
I wasn't trying to be combative, I just thought you had an idea that I hadn't thought of that would satisfy the privacy concerns with the freedom to photograph in public concerns.
>By evaluating the context, subpoenaing records and conversations, questioning under oath, looking at the effects and history of actions of the individuals involved.
So a lady gets arrested for photographing her child with your house in the background, she would now have to be interrogated, give a deposition under oath and go trial and go through all that?
No I'm just trying to avoid that classic HN situation of being talked into making specific assertions outside my expertise and then technical flaws being used to dismiss the broader point I'm making.
Writing good laws is hard sure but you're approaching this having already accepted the framing that the only way to prevent this police overreach is to restrict everyone from doing similar things. We can just prevent the police from doing this. We don't need to write a perfectly generalizable restriction on everyone's ability to take pictures or whatever. The cops aren't the public and should be subject to additional restrictions beyond what the public is subjected to.
>having already accepted the framing that the only way to prevent this police overreach is to restrict everyone from doing similar things.
My position is people should be free to photograph in public anything they can see. That's currently how the law is written. I don't think it's perfect, but I can't think of a better alternative (thus this discussion).
>The cops aren't the public and should be subject to additional restrictions beyond what the public is subjected to.
I agree as an ideal, but in practice there are a lot of barriers.
- They can legally arrest you, even if you didn't break any laws and aren't required to even know the law.
- They aren't legally required to help anybody.
- They have blanket qualified immunity granted by the SCOTUS.
- Each police department and sheriff's department is their own jurisdiction, so any blanket restraint would need to be done at the federal level.
- They have one of, if not the strongest unions in the country.
- They have strong political support that is just now eroding a bit in blue states.
We are having a hard time just managing police brutality and unnecessary force currently.
An interesting irony is that the more laws / restrictions we ask the government to put on people, the broader jurisdiction the police have over our everyday lives.
An old example is jaywalking. Since jaywalking became a crime, the police can stop / detain you, legally require you to identify (and arrest / charge you if you refuse) and possibly Terry frisk you just because you walked across the street in a certain way.
Because of this, when people propose making a law to prevent people from doing something not-egregious, like say smoking at the beach, I'm against it. It's not worth the intrusion for me and my kids and my kids' kids, etc.
Anyway, I've gotten way off topic. Thanks for the discussion.
Yeah I mean yes this is a small & compromised step on the path towards the necessary goal of completely eliminating the police. They are wholly incompatible with any conception of freedom or justice.
Sure, it is hard. But there's a gigantic middle ground between "no photographs ever that contain any part of your house" and "permanent digital video camera whose footage is invisibly passed on to the government". It is far from impossible to write some rules that balances these things. Yes, there will be loopholes: a criminal who wants to photograph your house could come by with their nephew and stage a photoshoot. But we live with those kinds of exceptions already: as giraffe_lady said, the law is not an algorithm.
>"permanent digital video camera whose footage is invisibly passed on to the government".
I'd be fine with regulating / banning without a warrant the second half of that sentence. I don't want to prevent people from having security cameras outside their home, those are pretty useful.
The current loophole is police asking the same 3rd parties that host your data for that data and those 3rd parties can comply without your consent. We'd need some type of data ownership laws for that sort of thing. I'd certainly support that. There are laws around NIL (name, image likeness) and ownership thereof. I'l like to see those applied to third party data storage vendors, but like dragon_lady mentioned, it's a step.
Of course, that wouldn't prevent the police asking your neighbor or local business for locally stored footage.
>the law is not an algorithm
Laws should be as specific and un-vague as possible to prevent abuse, mainly from the government itself.
By saying the government isn't allow to video or photo surveil someone's home without a warrant.
A parent is not the government, and even though warrants are easy enough to get in most places at least they're following the letter of the law if not the spirit by getting one.
> I don't like it, but there's nothing stopping your neighbor or anyone else from filming your home from a public/street view
This is not a natural occurrence, not a law of physics like gravity. It’s the result of large corporations normalizing surveillance. Recall that some Germans rebelled against Google Street View, and the government made them stop putting photos people’s homes on the web. But the cold logic and power of surveillance capitalism prevailed, and even the nominally “privacy protecting” corporation Apple now does the same.
“That’s how it goes” implies it can’t be stopped. It can. Through laws. This branch of government just decided they’re not the ones to do it.
I've long thought about vandalizing red light cameras because they're a burden on the poor and statistically increase accidents. Vandalize like "cut it down with a sawzall" in a way that doesn't electrocute me. But high power laser makes a lot more sense and damages the most expensive part.
If you know that the laser will damage the camera, probably (destruction of property). If you believe it will just prevent recording of anything but the laser light, probably not.
There are very few details in the article. Now I'm curious how they found out about the camera, if charges were filed, etc.