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Discussion (82 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Isn't there some level of expectation if for your whole life these mass networks didn't exist and you could go to the grocery store without being locked in database prison?
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.
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.”
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.
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".
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.
The fourth amendment does not say “private conversations,” so when police started tapping phones, the courts focused on whether the phone tap physically intruded on somebody’s house, papers, or effects. Police apparently could tap phone conversations by watching reflections on a nearby window, and the fourth amendment didn’t apply because there was no physical intrusion. The “reasonable expectation of privacy” test come from Katz v. US ( https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/389/347/ ) where the Supreme Court realized that whether there was a physical intrusion was irrelevant.
This is a modestly different situation than one concerning warrantless tracking of phone locations, if for no other reason than my phone oftentimes in my pocket. It is not always visible to onlooking bystanders. And even if it isn't, externally there is no reliably way to differentiate one iPhone from another. In comparison: license plates, when in public, are always visible, and very easy to discern from one-another (different state-unique numbers); so in my mind the expectation of privacy is far lower.
I abhor what Flock does, but I'm not sure I see a constitutional argument for why what they do is unconstitutional.
According to Carpenter:
Being present in plain view isn't equivalent to a total surrender of privacy.One officer would absolutely not be able to record on that piece of paper every single license plate that passed through a busy intersection. Not even close.
The number of officers that _would_ be required to do so would absolutely be "outside the realm of possibility" for even a well-funded police department.
That's why flock is different. It's a level of scale that was previously—despite your assertions—impossible.
> In comparison: license plates, when in public, are always visible, and very easy to discern from one-another (different state-unique numbers); so in my mind the expectation of privacy is far lower.
Legally, overhearing a conversation is not different. If you are loudly talking about your drug deals in public in front of an officer, they can use that as evidence. A police department could hire officers to stand everywhere in public and listen to every conversation nearby.
Or, more specifically, they could stand conspicuously close to every payphone and listen. The phones are in public; the officers don't need to be uniformed. Practically speaking this is not at all different from wiretapping. That's what the police did in Katz- wiretap a public payphone.
Flock cameras are not in any meaningful sense different from having officers follow around everyone and record everywhere they go. Its irrelevant whether one officer is following one person or if many people are following them, each within their own small area. That would absolutely not be legal without a warrant. The only difference is a private company is doing it and selling it to the police, something that should clearly not be legal.
“This Court has to date not deviated from the understanding that mere visual observation does not constitute a search. See Kyllo [v US]. ... We accordingly held in [US v] Knotts that ‘[a] person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another.’ ... Thus, even assuming that the concurrence is correct to say that ‘[t]raditional surveillance’ of Jones for a 4-week period ‘would have required a large team of agents, multiple vehicles, and perhaps aerial assistance,’ ... our cases suggest that such visual observation is constitutionally permissible. It may be that achieving the same result through electronic means, without an accompanying trespass, is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, but the present case does not require us to answer that question.”
The fourth amendment is supposed to address invasive and inconvenient general warrants and search warrants. And that’s “inconvenient” from the point of view of the person being investigated. I don’t understand the view that all’s fair as long as the police do a certain amount of busywork, but that does seem to be popular even among some judges.
Specifically, even if a county hired all those officers and did what you suggest if there is no purpose other than recording all this information. I believe it would be a constitutional violation. A person has the right to reasonable privacy outside of their home. License plates can and should be recorded when there is a relevant purpose to it. Such as toll collection, or a scoped traffic watch done by a police officer or a traffic camera. The dragnet collection of data for "maybe its useful" or "we don't know when it will be useful, but it might" has generally been struck down when brought to the supreme court.
For Flock's case, they don't operate as far as I know as ticket issuing traffic cameras which have a much tighter level of control of how they operate. IE: Traffic cameras have clear signs near them notifying the drivers of their usage, in some states the issuing of the citation cannot be considered criminal (Civil issuance) and must not capture faces of drivers.
It's basically a continuous rebalancing of private vs government power, and new technologies cause more rebalancing.
You can still pay your use tax and be a good citizen, and in fact, its probably a better demonstration of your duties as a citizen to protect the right to privacy and say to your local governments that have a history of abusing and selling vehicle registration data to 3rd parties that you do not tolerate that.
Happy to share more, the sites for Montana registration can be shady but the dirt legal one is great.
I'd be surprised if most other states don't have similar vehicle laws.
1) Garaging a vehicle, for x days or more.
2) Driving a vehicle, for x days or more.
Have you looked into what the specifics are, and how they are triggered?
Poking some holes at this:
- Are you on the hook to register vehicles you don't own for actions (1) or (2)?
Consider two examples:
(a) you rent a vehicle,
(b) you drive or choose to house a friends' vehicle.
From what you've stated, logically, anytime you rent a vehicle or operate or house a friends', you now are asked to register it.
Do you think this is accurate? And if so, do you think it would hold in court of law?
(a) you rent a vehicle,
(b) you drive or choose to house a friends' vehicle.
in both cases, the vehicle would already be registered in the state (by the rental company or by the friend).
it is not clear to me why you think the vehicles would need to be re-registered.
During the investigation the investigating officer had become worried that the assailant would use police resources to further track and harass the victim.
Luckily the guy was driving a company vehicle that did not track to his address.
Depends on the state, in my former state, Virginia, it is tax evasion. This is not unique to Virginia BTW, Georgia has similar laws. By law in VA, all cars that are garaged in state for longer than 90 days must pay the car tax. Only reason Montana LLC registered cars get away from it is most counties find out who must pay the tax from Virginia DMV so these cars are missed.
I mean, it’s both, right? You’re definitely getting a tax advantage compared to a lot of areas of the country. And how is insurance going to work?
Insurance is a bit tricky though I've heard it's simple. Most companies don't ask or inquire about where the cars registered, and neither do repair shops or parts of the claim process inquire into this. If you're uncomfortable with this, you can DYOR and check what happened for claims if a driver who's personally insured is driving a vehicle registered under an LLC/company. I think it isn't true that just because a vehicle is registered by a company, it cannot be used for personal purposes or that insurance companies would make claims more difficult (though check yourself and I'm happy to know what you find)
Even if you are able to register a vehicle legally in another state, that does not necessarily exempt you from obligations in your own state... even if it would for non-residents passing through.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/california-is-done-with-rich-g...
> One defendant texted that another conspirator “made me provide a fake bill of lading which cost $200 but did allow me to pickup the Urus.”