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?
replyIt’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
replyOP'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.
replyA nationwide APB is not an investigative activity.
replyNeither is writing down license plates.
replyYes it is.
replyNon-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.
Yes, it is.
If you were investigating a business or building, you would document vehicles coming and going.
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