Police use of automated license-plate reader cameras is being challenged in a lawsuit alleging that the cameras enable warrantless surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The city of Norfolk, Virginia, was sued yesterday by plaintiffs represented by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public-interest law firm.
Norfolk, a city with about 238,000 residents, "has installed a network of cameras that make it functionally impossible for people to drive anywhere without having their movements tracked, photographed, and stored in an AI-assisted database that enables the warrantless surveillance of their every move. This civil rights lawsuit seeks to end this dragnet surveillance program," said the complaint filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Like many other cities, Norfolk uses cameras made by the company Flock Safety. A 404 Media article said Institute for Justice lawyer Robert Frommer "told 404 Media that the lawsuit could have easily been filed in any of the more than 5,000 communities where Flock is active, but that Norfolk made sense because the Fourth Circuit of Appeals—which Norfolk is part of—recently held that persistent, warrantless drone surveillance in Baltimore is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment in a case called Beautiful Struggle v Baltimore Police Department."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Tork on Friday October 25 2024, @04:21PM (1 child)
This is why we should have normalized mask wearing when we had the perfect opportunity.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 25 2024, @04:30PM
Mask wearing is still normalized, and practiced by both sides of the political spectrum. One side does it to address genuine health concerns, the other side does it when they load up in the backs of their pickup trucks dressed in camo and carrying assault weapons.
Early voting started here on Wednesday. I voted by mail and have already received confirmation / assurance that my vote was received by the elections office. We were at the polling place (our local library) for other reasons, didn't see any active voter intimidation happening, but you could say "there were signs" because, literally, there were several signs posted both inside and outside the 150' campaigning limit line informing the public that voter intimidation is a felony yadda yadda...
I didn't notice any Private Investigator looking people in the area, no long lenses pointing out of car windows, but if a PI is doing their job well you wouldn't notice them, and these days camera tech is far more stealthy than a 500mm mirror lens.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Friday October 25 2024, @04:24PM (15 children)
We've got this in most of the communities around here. They can track you for hundreds of miles with the network of these.
When I leave my neighborhood there are ones in both directions. All of the shopping centers have these.
The cops have said, "We don't need to chase anyone as we just track their cars and get them when they get home."
These folks aren't wrong, once these are up, between the car mounted ones and the road mounted ones, you are tracked from Point A to Point B.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 25 2024, @04:37PM (13 children)
20 years ago I was brainstorming what might be possible with digital imaging technology. One thought that came up was: high resolution stabilized telephoto cameras mounted on commercial aircraft. There are many regular flights from Florida to Los Angeles every day and night which roughly follow the route of I-10. Good cameras mounted on the bottom of those commercial airliners could literally photograph every license plate of every vehicle along nearly the entire length of I-10, and many side roads, as they pass. indexing time and location of the identifying text into a database of trivial cost to store indefinitely.
They already take US commercial aircraft offline to reinforce the floors in preparation for using them to haul tanks and other military equipment in times of need, the camera system proposed above would be far less costly to implement, and likely producing data that is "useful" every day, not just in preparation for large scale wars that haven't happened in over 70 years.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday October 25 2024, @06:03PM (12 children)
I'm skeptical a plane at cruising altitude can actually see license plates due to the viewing angle, never mind clouds (more of an issue in other places).
Much simpler to just install some cameras at periodic intervals along the highway.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday October 25 2024, @06:22PM
And ironically if you read about the business model of the company in the fine article...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 25 2024, @08:09PM (10 children)
You don't look straight down at the cars.
Yes, clouds happen, but not too often across the hundreds of desert miles that I 10 traverses.
Image stabilization is a thing and even thermal atmospheric distortions can be compensated for up to a point. I wouldn't be surprised to see a DARPA RFP for methods to enhance visibility through thin cloud cover achieve some startling improvements as well.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday October 25 2024, @09:27PM (9 children)
But what angle do you need to be looking at the cars before you can read the plates? At 30,000 ft (~9000m), the plates would vertical (tangent) to your line of sight straight down, and we both obviously agree that's pointless. They'll be perpendicular to your line of sight at the horizon - ~340km away. Which is pretty damn far even with "image stabilization being a thing". :) Of course, you can read them well before they're perpendicular... I don't feel like working through the math, but for them to be even at 25-30 degrees LOS to the aircraft, its still at a distance of ~100km. (And most captures would be oblique horizontally to some degree too.) How many megapixels would your camera need to be for the license plate to register even 1 pixel at that range, let alone enough to be readable (even with fancy multi-image sub-pixel data interpolation methods). And then through dust, atmosphere, thin clouds, and thermal distortions. Plus for a good portion of each day its dark. And for another good portion staring into the sun.
Probably requiring a very fancy array of cameras and fancy software. And I'd be surprised to see it installed on a commercial aircraft.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 25 2024, @10:02PM (8 children)
>30 degrees LOS to the aircraft, its still at a distance of ~100km
If the plane is 9km high, a 30-60-90 triangle has sides of 1, 2, sqrt 3, highest ratio there is 2:1, or 18km.
Rumor has it that CIA satellite fly-overs in Vietnam could read nametags on chests - I'm sure an advantageous angle and clear sky (not rainy season) was required, and stabilization isn't a problem in LEO, but the optics are certainly there for 18km distant imagery that can read a license plate looking 30 degrees down from the horizon.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 25 2024, @11:00PM (7 children)
Using magic AI to fill in the blanks, amirite? If we were using one of the Keck telescopes a 10 meter telescope at 200 km, we could resolve 4 cm. That won't be beat by a spy satellite. My take is that it'd take an interferometer with about 100 meters of separation to get the desired resolution (which incidentally the pair of Keck telescopes can do). Not impossible, but far from impossible to observe from the ground either. The ISS, for example, is barely of the necessary dimensions and there are radio surveillance satellites in geosynchronous orbit of similar size (but two orders of magnitude further away).
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 26 2024, @12:06AM (6 children)
>Using magic AI to fill in the blanks, amirite?
Go fuck yourself.
This was circulating in the 1970s, long lenses, high definition film plates (like 8 1/2" x 6 1/2") - veracity of the rumors? Hard to say... they did come from a two tours special forces recon vet with major PTSD, he definitely saw some shit and some of his briefing photos were that clear. His briefing officer may have been feeding him bullshit and the photos could have been from aircraft flyovers instead of satellite.
There's this, certainly a more practical way to capture a lot more images: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/74z6ac/til_some_of_the_first_us_spy_satellites_took/ [reddit.com] If they can achieve 1' resolution on 70mm film with faster exposures, 270mm film focused (and tracking) a high value target area could conceivably get to 1/4" resolution.
>That won't be beat by a spy satellite.
The Hubble reportedly got its mirror system from old spy satellite tech for the day.
So, yeah, maybe the rumors are similar to people looking at Google Earth imagery taken from Cessna flyovers thinking it's satellite images (Google labelling it "satellite view" would seem to encourage this misconception.)
Back to the previous discussion: reading a license plate from 18km away, with modern tech - not much of a challenge if you have a decent budget for the lens.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 26 2024, @12:22AM (5 children)
Then the briefing photos didn't come from satellite. The obvious alternative would be airplane, perhaps a U-2 [wikipedia.org]. US intelligence doesn't have a "GET OUT OF PHYSICS, FREE" card on them.
Doesn't matter. The mirror was close to perfectly formed - even the big flaw it had could be almost perfected accounted for. Keck doesn't have those flaws BTW.
I agree with that. But it would have to be a large decent budget. Maintaining thousands of cameras capable of resolving a license plate at 18 km wouldn't be cheap. What would be cheap is putting a bunch of cameras on overpasses which they've already done in many places.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 26 2024, @02:16AM (4 children)
>US intelligence doesn't have a "GET OUT OF PHYSICS, FREE" card on them.
Money can't buy you love, but it can buy really good camera gear.
I suppose they might have flown some U2 missions in 'Nam, but my impression is that we controlled the airspace well enough to fly much lower and slower most of the time, and that makes photography that much easier.
>Maintaining thousands of cameras capable of resolving a license plate at 18 km wouldn't be cheap
But it would be secure...
>What would be cheap is putting a bunch of cameras on overpasses which they've already done in many places.
Yep, 'cause the powers that be always want to be able to blame Bubba with a can of Rust-Oleum for why there was no coverage of certain times and places. The reason it's cheap now is because of the ubiquitous internet access infrastructure. If you had to maintain those data links independently as part of the project a few expensive cameras on aircraft would be much cheaper than a lot of Chinese manufactured junko cameras on fixed mounts.
Also, in high value situations, aircraft can be retasked... Imagine you just kidnapped Jerome Powell's grand daughter and you think you got away clean, until 737s start popping out below the clouds all around you...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 26 2024, @05:47AM (3 children)
Not good enough gear for what you're talking about.
With a very restricted group that would have access: cops - honest and crooked, nation-states, organized crime, some big businesses, and the occasional very skilled hacker. As well as anyone with a warrant or subpoena. Hopefully secure enough to keep the script kiddies out too, but you never know with these clowns.
I hope they have a little more subtlety than that. Ideally, you'd think you got away clean right up to the point where SWAT/Secret Service moves in.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 26 2024, @01:15PM (2 children)
>With a very restricted group that would have access: cops - honest and crooked, nation-states, organized crime, some big businesses, and the occasional very skilled hacker
Pretty much the same as the current network of security cameras, except that the current network is easier to hack smaller segments of.
By the way, this thought experiment wasn't exclusively looking for utopian futures, just possible ones.
>I hope they have a little more subtlety than that. Ideally, you'd think you got away clean right up to the point where SWAT/Secret Service moves in.
Better to tip off the quarry than to lose track of them. It's more subtle than a police helicopter with a spotlight, and delivers the same message: you are not invisible, and we have decided to invest the resources necessary to capture you.
On a clear day, with cameras in over 50% of commercial aircraft, no retasking would be necessary to maintain a vehicle track, especially in high air traffic areas like Florida.
Stage two, if they can respond a helicopter before setting up a SWAT roadblock, could be to fire a GPS / RDF tracker or six into the vehicle, harpooning through the sheet metal. GPS would be easy to jam, if the perp came prepared, but RDF emitters would be much harder.
Of course this presumes that there is some reason to not take the target vehicle out with a hellfire missile, because you know: those enemies within can be easily taken care of with the national guard, or the military. Even with all the Air Force base closures I think we still have domestic fighter coverage most places within 30 minutes or less. Kinda like an expensive airborne alternative to the Dominoes pizza ground game.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 26 2024, @11:25PM (1 child)
My point indeed. It would be hard to mess with the airplane cameras directly so it is more secure in that sense. But the real time network would require wireless and that creates an attack opportunity. Then it would be stored somewhere, providing another attack opportunity. I think that combo will put it in the same class of security as a street-based surveillance system.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 27 2024, @02:12AM
>wireless and that creates an attack opportunity
They can intercept the raw signal, but if they take key management seriously it's basically impossible to hack.
Storage can always be hacked, but I suspect the crew put in charge of national surveillance in a program flying on all commercial jets would tend to take security more seriously than Bob's Quickie Marts of Mississippi.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by janrinok on Friday October 25 2024, @07:08PM
Well the counter to that in Europe is number plate (tag) cloning. Search online for a vehicle for sale matching the same year, model and colour, and then use its number plate / tag. Or they simply drive around until they find a matching vehicle and steal the plates from that!
If they get caught then you get hammered but first of all they have got to catch them.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 25 2024, @04:24PM (7 children)
Since before the battle for independence and through to today, warrantless surveillance has been both legal, and possible, for the rich. All you had to do back in the day was hire a private investigator to go skulk around in public places, preferably as stealthily as possible, and follow your targets. Nothing illegal about taking telephoto images through bedroom windows from vantage points you have legal access to.
It will be interesting to see how the courts rule in this situation. Since courts are by the rich, for the rich, I imagine they'll be limiting the rights of common folk to perform such widespread dragnet surveillance via the police.
After all, if these kinds of indiscriminate tracking systems are not only permitted but actually implemented, how will the rich realistically pay to have their data expunged from them?
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RamiK on Friday October 25 2024, @05:40PM (2 children)
Why weaken the police and judicial that you already control when you can just buy off the private contractors operating the mass surveillance networks and improve the performance while reducing the costs of what is essentially your private army?
compiling...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 25 2024, @05:56PM (1 child)
>when you can just buy off the private contractors operating the mass surveillance networks and improve the performance while reducing the costs of what is essentially your private army?
Schemes like that can, and do, happen- but they tend to be less stable (and often more expensive) than establishing case law via the courts / legislation.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RamiK on Friday October 25 2024, @07:28PM
I was talking in future tense about something that's already been done: The legislator outlawed doing various types of surveillance while allowing the government to buy it off private contractors to make sure the IRS and FBI don't have access to anything that will get campaign donors into trouble. e.g. Snowden wasn't a USG employee but was working for an NSA intelligence sub-contractor precisely to undermine the obligation someone taking an oath would have and to deprive employees from the protections of whistleblower status.
It's a working arrangement and I see no reason for it to change.
compiling...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Friday October 25 2024, @06:15PM (3 children)
I more or less mostly kind of agree with you however consider some things:
In the vast scope of human history we're living at the very END of the era where its easy and cheap to produce photo and video trial evidence but its not quite accepted that AI generated photo and video evidence exists and is also easy and cheap to generate (it surely is right now, but its not generally accepted... yet).
We are very close to trials no longer accepting photo, digital, or video evidence. Entire legal strategies at trials will consist of "well, you liked that footage of some dude selling meth to an undercover cop, wait until you see my 4K AI generated parody of the National Treasure movie where the prosecutor and the arresting officer steal the US Constitution in full 4K with surround sound" and some lines about the arresting officer only doing this because he's butthurt his daughter is dating the suspect's son. If the defendant cleans up well and looks good in a suit may as well not bother prosecuting if all they have is video footage of the crime in progress. We're going back to the days of trials having no or minimal evidence because it'll all be "he said she said" because anything electronic or ink on paper will be viewed by a jury who grew up asking AI for the LOLs to "generate a photo of President Washington and President Lincoln twerking at a Halloween Dance at a bowling alley" and deleting phishing emails from their gmail spam folder and they're not going to trust digital photo or video evidence at trial anymore.
My guess is the criminal justice system is going to have to evolve and I would not be surprised in a couple decades if everyone in prison is there because of the IRS, like the old Al Capone story. There will probably still be some crimes that can be documented and some he said she said crimes will go to jury and some criminals will always plea bargain instead of fight the evidence, but I bet most criminals will go to prison for IRS / SEC / money laundering violations, because that's really all they can catch anymore once there's no trustworthy digital, photo, or video evidence anymore. Entire court cases will consist of someone from Bank of America stating the defendant deposited $500K and he can't explain where it came from and its not on the defendent's income tax statement and how did the defendent's name end up on that real estate deed without tax statements explaining where the cash came from, so lock em up. How we will handle crime that's not financially profitable is a mystery, maybe we won't very well, or it'll all be he-said she-said.
This will also apply to illegal activities like blackmail. In 1970 if you had blackmail-worthy media footage that was a good as gold back then. Right now in 2024 you can ask an AI to generate a picture of something blackmail-able. Therefore not only is a fake pix worthless in 2024, a genuine picture of me doing something truthfully IRL that is blackmail-able is not valuable in 2024, anyone with a phone and internet access can create that image for free or nearly free for the asking.
I'm sure "old people"will be tone deaf about trusting digital, photo, and video evidence for decades after the youth and general public give up on those techs. Just like boomers in 2024 still believe whatever the TV tells them LOL. Or WWII generation that's still left, still subscribe to and even trust newspapers LOL the fools. But I don't think those legacy techs will be useful in general at trial. Probably by rule it won't even be admissible in a couple years or decades, like why even bother.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 25 2024, @10:26PM
I too think the justice system will have to evolve, but we already know how accurate he said she said is and the AI generation knows that too.
I believe we could already have digitally signed reliable video, but too many forces exist that don't want it standardized and accepted the way fingerprints have been. It would be more expensive than modern state of the art surveillance systems (made in China, of course...) but for a cost factor of 2-3x you could establish all kinds of independent archive and authenticity assurances - block chain even.
Most jury members wouldn't understand it any more than they understand most forensic science today, so you and I can trot out our degrees with cryptography coursework since the 1980s and get paid $500 per day to expert witness them into a comfort zone.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday October 25 2024, @11:18PM (1 child)
Nope. It will evolve to a cop swearing that "this is a true photo/video" and the jury believing them. Much the same way they do with "statements". That is just a cop writing down what someone said, yet it is accepted in court as a true account.
Effectively it is not whether or not something could be faked, but whether the court will believe it was. And the police would never lie in court.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 26 2024, @12:26AM
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2024, @05:03PM (8 children)
If that's the case, then just don't drive your car. Use public transport instead. Or borrow your mother in-law's car. Or steal a car. Or drive a truck.
Yes, this is snark. I wish it wasn't, but most places in the US are so unfriendly to public transport, it's very difficult to do stuff without driving one's (or someone else's) vehicle. And more's the pity.
Yes, ALPRs [wikipedia.org] are absolutely a privacy issue.
Yes, we should invest more in public transportation.
Yes, the government (and we're talking about local/state governments here -- as they're the ones purchasing and installing such devices) should be enjoined [merriam-webster.com] from implementing such things and ordered to remove them where they are already deployed.
What's more, the voters (that's you, assuming you're a US citizen) can absolutely have an impact at the local/state level. So get up off your fat asses and do something about it!
Yes, there are a raft of other issues with ALPRs and automated police surveillance in general. And no, those betrayals of the populace at large do not make us safer or catch more "criminals."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Friday October 25 2024, @05:31PM (1 child)
Extraordinary claims would seem to require extraordinary evidence, and everything out there seems to imply crooked cops keep right on being crooked its just now their behavior is being documented in website access logs and auditing reports so they get caught more often unlike the old days. Also the companies entire marketing campaign seems to be focused around documentation of caught criminals.
Ironically I think I agree with part of your claim, I think. Post 2020 the widespread technologies that enable computer networks and social media and "work at home" mean there is no longer any privacy in public. Its a false sense of security to pretend there is privacy in public and "big brother" will protect us. No amount of complaining will roll back the technological clock, the genie is out of the bottle.
The best way to handle this is harm minimalization. Cop use of the search bar for this tech should be audited and logged to hell and back. Make it a felony for cops to "cyberstalk" an ex-girlfriend or whatever when when get caught doing it. People who had entire lifestyles depending on not being noticed in public better get used to that being an obsolete way of looking at the world.
For example, the legal system had a check-and-balance set up where minor infractions got overly severe punishments because practically nobody EVER gets caught. The average drunk driver supposedly drives well over 25K miles while drunk before getting busted in my state and the punishment regime is set up to punish 25K miles of drunk driving when they get convicted; now a days with computer surveillance networks the odds of not getting caught are just about zero for some crimes; punishment for drunk driving should reflect the average drunk only getting a mile or two of drunk driving instead of 25K miles of drunk driving before getting caught. I'm not saying 1/25000th the current punishment but some adjustment is necessary.
Another example, a HOA used to only enforce grass height rules if someone committed the crime of offending a Karen or egregariously violated the rule by over a foot or for several months. Now, to "generate revenue" a drone could fine every homeowner daily if they're even one millimeter over the rule. So, for social stability punishment is going to have to be lowered.
Another example is speeding. Generally most speeders speed about 100K miles between speeding tickets and punishments when they finally get caught reflect 100K miles of violation. I haven't been caught in over 300K miles and I speed generally whenever conditions permit. Remember in my state literally even 1 MPH over the posted limit is a tickable offense your state may vary. My point being that it being possible to ticket everyone every single time they exceed the limit would seem to imply we need new limits and new punishments. Perhaps we will no longer have speed limits only "speed suggestions" and very aggressive enforcement of reckless driving laws. I probably haven't driven recklessly since I was a teenager so I would be immune to tickets despite having driven 76 in a 75 zone while keeping up with traffic just this morning.
People who want to do crimes or do "wrongs" or do something they're ashamed of in public, might just have to get used to the idea of not doing that anymore. There's no way for civilization to whack-a-mole every possible violation so may as well decriminalize wide-spread surveillance and route around it.
People with mental illnesses whom have severe main character syndrome (mostly, but not entirely, social media types) might actually benefit mentally from being forced to face the fact that nobody really cares about them. No matter how paranoid they screech about "someone knows they went to a pr0n shop" the sad fact is everyone goes at least once and nobody cares and the "evidence" is only as useful as their paranoia lets it be useful. So there may be (minimal) positive mental health effects of forcing acceptance of surveillance.
(Score: 2) by Skwearl on Saturday October 26 2024, @03:38AM
This is a very heady subject.
Currently, everyone does minor crime, and rarely if ever gets caught/punished, with the majority of punishments being a fine.
This arrangement works.
With the poisoning of image/audio/video by AI, and the corruption of the facts this brings to criminal proceedings, the system as it sits currently will not work.
We are already seeing a wash of corrupt politicians, with no accountability, destroying our institutions.
I don't have the answers, but this topic does require some deep thought. Can any sitting judges weight in?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2024, @05:54PM (2 children)
> Or steal a car.
How to shut down the local crack house:
Step 1) Steal a car
2) fill a 55 gallon drum with gasoline - paid for in cash, while masked
3) fit a lawn sprinkler head to the top of the sealed drum.
4) Steal a full SCUBA tank and regulator - cut off the 2nd stage of the regulator and plumb the 1st stage into the drum with a "quick dump" valve to hold the pressure in the tank until ready
5) rig a vacuum suction system to enable lighting a whole pack of cigarettes mechanically - no DNA
6) twist open rotary valve on SCUBA tank to the 1st stage
7) drive stolen car to crack house, maybe park on the lawn - definitely with sprinkler facing the house
8) mechanically ignite cigarettes and toss around in the field of spray
9) throw dump valve and walk calmly away like nothing is happening
10) once out of sight, dump outer layer of clothing - maybe ignite it just to be sure
11) board public transportation
12) disembark at waiting 2nd stolen car
13) drive far far away, dumping next set of clothes somewhere discrete along the way
14) park 2nd stolen car somewhere discretely far enough from your personal vehicle (parked in a public place that wouldn't notice it being there for several hours) to walk to it
15) drive back home and resume your normal life, probably stop to gawk at the smoldering embers with your neighbors and tell how you're just returning from a trip.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2024, @06:12PM (1 child)
Dafuq is wrong with you? You can't say this shit here! Wise up, asshole!
Discrete [merriam-webster.com]:
Discreet [merriam-webster.com]:
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 26 2024, @12:10AM
1. Get the shit together that you need to burn down a crack house.
2. ???
3. Profit!
And yea, misspell "discrete" while you're at it to show that you care about not getting arrested for multiple counts of arson and attempted(?) murder.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Friday October 25 2024, @06:39PM (1 child)
While I don't claim to know much about public transportation in Norfolk, Virginia, I would bet they are somewhat similar to how things are elsewhere. Buses, Subways, Trains etc are loaded with cameras. Indoors, outdoors, the station areas, some of the stops etc. Don't try to escape the every watchful eye of big brother, he doesn't like it. You don't have anything to hide citizen! Do you?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday October 25 2024, @11:29PM
Public transport here insists that you "swipe on and swipe off" a card every time you use it. You can buy the card, and top it up, with cash, but every trip it takes is still tracked. And most people link it to their phone and use applepay or googlemoney or whatever to pay.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2024, @11:32PM
Why not remove the number plates instead?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Friday October 25 2024, @05:08PM (11 children)
https://archive.ph/cWhyy [archive.ph]
Back in June, a circuit court judge in an armed robbery case in Norfolk rejected evidence from the cameras, THAT is probably part of why they're targeting Norfolk. They have a judge in town who's already opposed to how they're currently being used.
The specific argument was warrantless tracking devices are unconstitutional and warrantless call phone GPS history gathering is unconstitutional so implementing a clone or emulation of those unconstitutional activities using cameras would also be unconstitutional without a warrant from a judge. So if A and B are illegal then an emulation of A and B, admittedly different in behind the scenes technical details, would also be unconstitutional. Much like if a judge found it was illegal for a cop to shoot a felon in the back with a revolver, that does NOT imply that its legal to shoot a felon in the back with a .45 or a 9 mm or if the police purchase some .308 rifles that would magically make it open season.
I don't see much of a plausible defense. The entire purpose of the product seems to be to avoid getting a warrant for a GPS tracker by using a network of webcams.
I honestly don't think the outcome of this legal maneuvering will have nearly as much effect as some are gleefully cheering; in the June case the judge is mad the cops entered a license plate number in a search field without getting a rubber stamped warrant from a judge before pressing "enter" key. My interpretation of the June case is the judge seems solely concerned about the lack of a warrant.
Overall I think that's probably a good idea as searches online seem to indicate cops have been caught going "fishing" doing personal searches for non-police business. Requiring every search to be attached to a warrant would maximally preserve privacy while still solving crimes.
What's interesting about TFA story is this is the first case I know of mentioning "enables the warrantless surveillance" that's trying to shut it ALL down. Previously, no one out there seemed to be doing legal work to ban the cameras if a warrant is involved. I'm surprised they didn't try to ban warrant-less use first, instead going for a complete shut-down.
I'm not sure how they would implement a complete shut-down. I think they'd have to somehow force the cops not to own the cameras outright, then force them to stop sharing data, then force them to not contract with other people to do all of it for them (like hire a PI firm to enter the search terms). The details are kind of important, on one hand I don't think anyone but the criminals want to ban business CCTV or personal ownership of unlicensed camcorders or try to ban video recording in public, on the other hand if they don't go far enough in precise detail then they'll just do some legal slight-of-hand and continue BAU.
I think they would have been MUCH better off trying to ban use of the cams without a warrant. They've already got judges mad about that, it would have a very high odds of success. By aiming for the moon and missing, probably nothing at all will be done, which might be the intended outcome LOL.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 25 2024, @06:00PM (10 children)
> By aiming for the moon and missing, probably nothing at all will be done, which might be the intended outcome LOL.
This was clearly the $30K/citizen/year UBI proposal strategy in Switzerland a few years back.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by VLM on Friday October 25 2024, @06:19PM (9 children)
I can one up that, Finland tried 560 euro a month for 24 months for a very small percentage of people, and then the "usual suspects" drew infinite predetermined conclusions based upon that utterly awful data.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2024, @07:08PM (8 children)
data > feelz.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 25 2024, @11:23PM (7 children)
So did the data support the feelz?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2024, @12:11AM (6 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 26 2024, @12:28AM (5 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2024, @12:34AM (4 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 26 2024, @12:51AM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2024, @01:03AM (2 children)
i really don't know what's bugging you, aren't you typically anti-hysteria?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 26 2024, @01:10AM (1 child)
Posters who say nothing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2024, @01:24AM
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Saturday October 26 2024, @07:50PM
Have these people not been aware how their "pocket computers" work? This hasn't changed in 30 years and allows for very precise tracking. Technically, it will remain as-is for foreseeable future as there are no alternatives. And tracking your phones is far more individual than tracking cars.
These people need to relax about their car license plates.
(Score: 2) by Username on Sunday October 27 2024, @01:40AM (3 children)
Large cities have had camera systems for years. About 10 years ago driving home from work, at about three in the morning in the winter, I slid through an intersection and hit the curb, cracking my rim. The police came about five minutes later. I asked him how they knew, since there was no other traffic. Said they saw it on their camera feed, and decided to come check if I was OK.
Why is this now illegal? This has been every security guards tool for decades.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by weirsbaski on Sunday October 27 2024, @01:52PM (2 children)
It's illegal if you read the 4th amendment as "watching everybody 100% of the time when they're out of their house" constitutes an unreasonable search.
As far as "now" illegal, if it's illegal now then it was illegal 10 years ago also. Even if there used to be less push to call it as such.
False equivalence. Private companies watching their own property is not equivalent to the government installing cameras everywhere to watch everyone.
(Score: 2) by Username on Sunday October 27 2024, @03:48PM (1 child)
I still don't get. Maybe I'm retarded. A cop on every corner is legal. But camera watched by cops isn't? A public camera that can be watched by anyone in a public area paid for by the public is illegal because it's an unreasonable search? I don't see how someone can expect privacy while out in public. They're not even going through your pockets like muggers do.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday October 27 2024, @04:42PM
I agree with you. That is exactly the argument that is used in Europe. If you are in a public place then you have no expectancy of privacy. A camera in your home would be an intrusion. However, a camera watching traffic, and thus aiding in the control of traffic, is a useful aid for many organisations, including the emergency services.
The same people who complain about cameras probably have a mobile phone in their pocket which tells everybody where they are.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]