15 points by MBCook 1 day ago | 5 comments
legitster 1 day ago
> The appeals court "struck down an aerial surveillance program precisely because it created record of where everyone in the city of Baltimore had gone over the past 45 days," the lawsuit against Norfolk said
The cases are principly different. A car's registration technically belongs to the state. It's the state's license plate and it's essentially illegal to drive on public streets anonymized. Meanwhile, the aerial surveillance program was tracking at the individual level on private property.
I think it would be hard to overturn precedence here, but as a compromise it might be nice to make it mandatory to log and record all of the queries police departments make in such a system. There are enough cases of bad actors and abuse here (like the officers using it to search for ex-lovers). Make it so that any searches done on the database are available by a FOIA request, and that officers could be at risk of abuse of authority. Just like they would be if they issued a BOLO for personal reasons.
CrimsonCape 1 day ago
Case law regarding license plate readers might apply when cameras cannot continuously track the movement, but the point of the lawsuit is that the cameras gather footage 24/7 and then the footage gets analyzed, mapped, etc. such that you can track the movement.
legitster 1 day ago
It's mostly going to be a semantic difference in situations with a lone driver, but if it's a shared vehicle all the drivers enjoy plausible deniability.
FireBeyond 4 hours ago
I am an ex-employee of Flock. Flock uses far, far more than registration to track vehicles. Colors, including differently colored body panels, damage, bumper stickers, trailer hitches, wheels/rims, roof racks, are all parts of their vehicle recognition, that also happen to be tied to ALPR.
zactato 1 day ago