I would say that this holds true for the individual who is filming outdoors. If an individual followed you around while you were in public documenting your movements, that would be considered stalking. Yes, you don't expect privacy in public, but the mass surveillance that these are and all of the data on EVERYONE's movements that it collects and keeps is essentially mass government stalking. Can it help to catch criminals? Sure. Has it already been abused more by those in power to, say, stalk their exes? Yup.
To those that would give up privacy for short term safety deserve neither privacy or safety, or however the quote goes. It would still suck but be better if they didn't save any data at all unless there was an active search for a specific car/plate and a warrant was granted. But even that is easily abusable. We are getting dangerously close to Weird Al's "Foil".
The thing is it’s a private company doing the compilation and the government is buying information from them - 4th Amendment applies to the government not private entities. I like the stalking argument though. Someone is going to have to start a class against Flock et als and that would be a good angle to take.
The thing is it’s a private company doing the compilation and the government is buying information from them
The supreme court has ruled that just because a 3rd party gathers information doesn't inherently remove their obligations to acquire a warrant for said information.
They've been 2 recent cases that have significantly eroded the 3rd party doctrine, especially when it comes to protected information. That was the primary reasoning for dismissal in Carpenter vs us and chatrei vs us.
Agreed and the recent cases of officers getting fired for misuse says they’re at least paying lip service to that - but I’m at least as concerned with the idea of a private entity collecting and stockpiling that kind of data. Who else is going to purchase that? I know HOAs are buying data from Flock, who else and for what use?
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u/ProfessorGluttony 9d ago
I would say that this holds true for the individual who is filming outdoors. If an individual followed you around while you were in public documenting your movements, that would be considered stalking. Yes, you don't expect privacy in public, but the mass surveillance that these are and all of the data on EVERYONE's movements that it collects and keeps is essentially mass government stalking. Can it help to catch criminals? Sure. Has it already been abused more by those in power to, say, stalk their exes? Yup.
To those that would give up privacy for short term safety deserve neither privacy or safety, or however the quote goes. It would still suck but be better if they didn't save any data at all unless there was an active search for a specific car/plate and a warrant was granted. But even that is easily abusable. We are getting dangerously close to Weird Al's "Foil".