MESSAGE
| DATE | 2025-08-14 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Fighting the Survalence state and the 4th
|
https://nypost.com/2025/08/13/opinion/big-brother-is-watching-you-how-one-homeowner-fought-back/
ast month, Charlie Wolf attended a meeting of the Greers Ferry, Ark.,
city council to complain about a license-plate camera that he said was
violating the Fourth Amendment by regularly taking pictures of his
driveway and front yard.
Greers Ferry Police Chief Kallen Lacy acknowledged Wolf’s “distress” but
rejected his legal analysis, saying “over 5,000 cities” across the
country use such cameras, “so there is no constitutional violation there.”
Despite Lacy’s assurance, the widespread acceptance of automated
license-plate readers as a crime-fighting tool only magnifies the
privacy concerns they raise.
They enable routine surveillance of a sort that would have troubled the
Fourth Amendment’s framers.
“Unlike red-light cameras or speed cameras that are triggered by
specific violations,” the Institute for Justice notes, ALPRs “photograph
every vehicle that drives by and can use artificial intelligence to
create a profile with identifying information that then gets stored in a
massive database.
“Once that happens, officials can search the database for any vehicle
they wish, all without a warrant.”
Worse, “departments around the country are automatically sharing data
with each other, making it simple for police anywhere to track drivers’
movements.
“All of this arbitrary discretion threatens people’s privacy, security
and freedom of movement by creating an atmosphere where everyone knows
they are being watched and tracked whenever they hit the road.”
Wolf’s experience crystallizes these concerns.
As he noted at the city council meeting, the camera that was installed
across the street from his house on May 13 was photographing “our yard,
curtilage and vehicles” whenever a car passed by.
“We’re being photographed and entered into a database without consent or
violation of any law,” Wolf said.
The camera captured images of Wolf and his wife whenever they left their
home or returned to it.
The camera also documented the comings and goings of the Wolfs’
visitors, including their friends, children and grandchildren.
Depending on the vagaries of traffic, it might record trips to the
mailbox, kids playing in the yard or anything else happening in front of
the house.
Local officials initially were unfazed by the Wolfs’ complaints,
insisting that the camera, one of five installed in the tiny town under
a contract with the ALPR company Flock Safety, would stay where it was.
But they reconsidered after receiving a letter from Institute for
Justice attorney Joshua Windham, who explained why the couple’s
objections deserved more respect than they had received.
In 2018, Windham noted, the Supreme Court held that the FBI violated the
Fourth Amendment when it collected cellphone location data without a
warrant supported by probable cause.
That ruling, he explained, was based on the principle that the Fourth
Amendment “must preserve at least as much privacy as Americans would
have enjoyed when it was adopted.”
Back then, Windham observed, “police lacked the means to create a
historical record of people’s physical movements” because “they simply
did not have the manpower or the technology to do so.”
He noted that a federal judge in Iowa and two state supreme courts have
recognized that “the placement of a surveillance camera in front of a
home,” like tracking someone’s movements via cellphone data, “may
violate a reasonable privacy expectation.”
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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