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by neodymiumphish2 hours ago |
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upvoteby drtz1 hours ago|
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I think the issue of what your average citizen can or cannot do is a relatively minor.

The bigger problem is law enforcement's use of private business as end-around to dodge 4th amendment.

Google and Apple, Verizon and AT&T, auto manufacturers, Flock, and every other business that scoops up our data has a trove of information that would be unquestionably illegal for law enforcement to collect directly due to 4th amendment protections against government mass surveillance. So, instead, the businesses conduct the mass surveillance and then law enforcement gets to access that information -- either with a warrant as is the case for Google and Apple, or with some sort agreement as with Flock.

Businesses (or individuals) that deliver surveillance data to the government, compelled by warrant or otherwise, should be subject to the same constitutional restrictions as the government itself.

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upvoteby gruez2 hours ago|
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That's not a good argument against ALPRs because citizens can theoretically set up an ALPRs too.
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upvoteby cmiles82 hours ago|
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True, but I’d imagine if a few techies in the community setup an open-ALPR network and started a website “where is the police chief and all his family vehicles .com” that the police department’s views towards the free and open use of such data without a warrant would change quite quickly. So long as that data was only collected on public streets it would be perfectly legal.
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upvoteby jmalicki2 hours ago|
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And do! A lot of newer home security cameras have ALPRs so you can set up rules like "if a car with a plate number not on this whitelist pulls up on my driveway send me an SMS"
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upvoteby Scion90661 hours ago|
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It's already prohibited in a number of states and I'd bet that if citizens tried to do that at any scale, then laws would be quickly passed to make the state and its corporate partners the only ones allowed to do so everywhere else.
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upvoteby baby_souffle2 hours ago|
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I actually have set up a few! On my property, not every major intersection in town, though.
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upvoteby trollbridge2 hours ago|
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"we weren't allowed to use equipment that wasn't common for normal people to use."

Is it common for normal people to set up and use ALPRs?

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upvoteby TheCoelacanth2 hours ago|
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Citizens can theoretically use long-distance microphones too. The criteria is whether they commonly do, not whether it's possible.
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upvoteby convolvatron2 hours ago|
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a single person can't set up a fine-grained nationwide network of cameras with a unified search interface that lets one track everyones daily movements.
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upvoteby gruez2 hours ago|
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So by that logic, nation-wide ABPs are also illegal, because a single person can't rally the entire country's law enforcement to find someone?
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upvoteby etdznots2 hours ago|
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It’s not that police can’t use tools that arent available to the general public. It’s that in the US we have the plain view doctrine which defines the boundary between the things that can be plainly observed in public, which don’t constitute a search and thus don’t trigger the 4a protections, and observations that are not plain view observations and which are a search and trigger 4a protections
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upvoteby gruez1 hours ago|
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OP's contention is that private citizens don't have access to a network of cameras to look for license plates and therefore it isn't "plain view", but I don't see how that's different than law enforcement being able to muster the entire nation's cops to look for a suspect.
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upvoteby trollbridge2 hours ago|
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A nationwide APB is not an investigative activity.
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upvoteby gruez1 hours ago|
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Neither is writing down license plates.
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upvoteby trollbridge8 minutes ago|
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Yes it is.

Non-investigating would be tasks like:

- counting the number of vehicles going by - radar’ing every car to produce a report on how many people are speeding and how much - checking all licence plates for valid registrations to produce a report on what percentage of cars have expired tags on the road.

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upvoteby TaLiTr29 minutes ago|
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Yes, it is. If you were investigating a business or building, you would document vehicles coming and going.
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