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Define criminal ? In the USA Under laws like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and 1850, an enslaved human who escaped was considered a criminal.

Sheltering humans running away from slavery was also a crime .

It was illegal for black Americans to learn to read and write. Seeking education made them a criminal.

Buying or selling a beer made you a criminal during prohibition.

Do you see how easy it is to make someone a criminal?

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I don't follow that... posting a police officer in everyone's house is pretty much a Third and Fourth Amendment violation and not primarily constrained by finances.
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Youre the one that made the intellectually dishonest argument that scale is about cost and efficiency while the discussion was about scale of the surveillance.

from your point, nothing is cheaper and more efficient then mandating an app on all phones through which the governments can track everyone, and consequently whoever doesnt have it would be a criminal. it completely tracks from your argument. You may need to make the app stop tracking while theyre in the home, but thats a technicality. voila. no longer an issue according to your point

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No it doesn’t track. In his example, observing license plates is perfectly legal without a warrant. Looking in your phone is not. These are not at all alike.
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Then it should be legal for citizens to deploy their own network that allows anybody to track any license plate?
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Of course? We already have private entities doing this today. Private toll road operators such as United Bridge Partners already administers camera systems that collect license plates for toll payments. I would assume parking lot operators also do this, and private citizens could create a nonprofit network too if they wanted.

Are you suggesting that people couldn’t do that for some reason?

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The challenge here is to ensure that any controls that apply to law enforcement operating their own hardware for this purpose would also apply to them obtaining this information from a third party. We don't need the mayor setting up "Totally Not The Cops, LLC" that collects this data and "sells" it to his police department to bypass warrant requirements.
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Is there a law against that?
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Here's my rebuttal: I don't want police sitting down and writing every license plate down 24/7 on every street corner tracking my every movement. That's bad. And they don't do that now, so saying "it happens today" is false.

It isn't possible for them to do that without sensors and AI everywhere. That's why using this technology is a red line.

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