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A slowly boiled frog...

A slowly boiled frog...

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This thread topic concerns the government surveillance state. In the wake of 9/11 I remember we had serious discussions as a society whether it was ok or not for the government to maintain warrantless surveillance on citizens. The general consensus was "nope, there's a lot of potential harm in that approach."

But it's slowly creeped in anyway. There's a NYT article today about Flock cameras. There are 120,000 of them in the USA, officially contracted through 40% of all law enforcement agencies in the country, rapidly growing and linked together through various jurisdictions so your local mall cop could access all of them nationwide at the same time. Your license plate is obviously linked to your vehicle registration, and the DMV database can then be used to find out basically everything about you. Technically, law enforcement needs a reason to check but this could be suspicion not a specific legal evidence of wrongdoing.

Are you ok with that? I'm not. Unlimited surveillance of citizens who aren't suspects in crimes creates enormous potential for blackmail, coercion, discrimination and possibly theft. Surveillance of any individual at any time by government should be first subjected to a judge for review of evidence and issuance of a warrant. Otherwise, we're all just waiting for the water to boil.

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@wildgrass said
This thread topic concerns the government surveillance state. In the wake of 9/11 I remember we had serious discussions as a society whether it was ok or not for the government to maintain warrantless surveillance on citizens. The general consensus was "nope, there's a lot of potential harm in that approach."

But it's slowly creeped in anyway. There's a NYT article today ...[text shortened]... view of evidence and issuance of a warrant. Otherwise, we're all just waiting for the water to boil.
for once we agree

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@wildgrass said
This thread topic concerns the government surveillance state. In the wake of 9/11 I remember we had serious discussions as a society whether it was ok or not for the government to maintain warrantless surveillance on citizens. The general consensus was "nope, there's a lot of potential harm in that approach."

But it's slowly creeped in anyway. There's a NYT article today ...[text shortened]... view of evidence and issuance of a warrant. Otherwise, we're all just waiting for the water to boil.
The Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The Fourth Amendment should cover this. SCs in the past have argued that there must be a "reasonable expectation of privacy".

This is from https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt4-3-3/ALDE_00013717/

"Following Olmstead v. United States and Goldman v. United States, the Court determined in May 1967 that "[t]he premise that property interests control the right of the government to search and seize has been discredited" and that "the principal object of the Fourth Amendment is the protection of privacy rather than property." Overruling Olmstead and Goldman in December 1967, the Court dispensed with the requirement of actual physical trespass because the Fourth Amendment "protects people, not places" to make electronic surveillance subject to the Amendment’s requirements.

"The test, the Court propounded in Katz v. United States, examined the expectation of privacy upon which one may "justifiably" rely. The Court stated: "What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected." That is, the "capacity to claim the protection of the Amendment depends not upon a property right in the invaded place but upon whether the area was one in which there was reasonable expectation of freedom from governmental intrusion." "

This is why courts must provide "probable cause", to prevent "unreasonable searches and seizures". You can't just film everybody everywhere and then go fishing for violations. Warrantless surveillance on citizens is expressly forbidden by the wording of the Fourth Amendment. ... "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

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the bigger question is who owns the data?

lets say china hacked into the system, they knew a person they suspected to be a us spy...they could easily track them down.

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@Mott-The-Hoople said
the bigger question is who owns the data?

lets say china hacked into the system, they knew a person they suspected to be a us spy...they could easily track them down.
The Fourth Amendment says this is illegal.

They should not be able to have the "data" derived from a "warrantless search and seizure". "They", primarily meaning the government, which is what this is.

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@wildgrass said
This thread topic concerns the government surveillance state. In the wake of 9/11 I remember we had serious discussions as a society whether it was ok or not for the government to maintain warrantless surveillance on citizens. The general consensus was "nope, there's a lot of potential harm in that approach."

But it's slowly creeped in anyway. There's a NYT article today ...[text shortened]... view of evidence and issuance of a warrant. Otherwise, we're all just waiting for the water to boil.
Also, there is a website you can check for Flock cameras (or any other ALPRs) in your area (or any area, within the US).

Deflock Maps: https://maps.deflock.org/

There's a link on that page to download the Deflock app.


(ALPR = automated license plate reader)

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@Suzianne said
Also, there is a website you can check for Flock cameras (or any other ALPRs) in your area (or any area, within the US).

Deflock Maps: https://maps.deflock.org/

There's a link on that page to download the Deflock app.


(ALPR = automated license plate reader)
That's quite scary. Chicago and LA have one of those things on nearly every street corner. In other words, the government knows where every citizen in those cities are at all times.

How is that justifiable?

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@wildgrass said
That's quite scary. Chicago and LA have one of those things on nearly every street corner. In other words, the government knows where every citizen in those cities are at all times.

How is that justifiable?
Seeing as how it is against the Fourth Amendment, it should be a slam-dunk for the SC to put this scam out of business. But they won't, probably because this company has a LOT of money invested, and the SC has long ago proved they are sluts for big business.

Normally I'd advise people to complain to their city councils, but cities across America are probably getting kickbacks, so probably not gonna change anything.

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@Mott-The-Hoople said
the bigger question is who owns the data?

lets say china hacked into the system, they knew a person they suspected to be a us spy...they could easily track them down.
The company owns the data and provides it to the government. The company that owns the 120,000 surveillance cameras is just one of many surveillance services that governments use to stitch all your data together. Obviously the big social media giants are also complicit in this.

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@wildgrass said
The company owns the data and provides it to the government. The company that owns the 120,000 surveillance cameras is just one of many surveillance services that governments use to stitch all your data together. Obviously the big social media giants are also complicit in this.
Even more startling, zoom out and the US is the only place this is happening.

We are shackling ourselves.

This is WHY Madison wrote the Bill of Rights, and we ignore these amendments at our peril. No one is doing this to us. We're doing it to ourselves.

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@Suzianne said
Even more startling, zoom out and the US is the only place this is happening.

We are shackling ourselves.

This is WHY Madison wrote the Bill of Rights, and we ignore these amendments at our peril. No one is doing this to us. We're doing it to ourselves.
Another story out today alleges that the government has been accessing financial records of private businesses without warrants. How is that not illegal?

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@wildgrass said
Another story out today alleges that the government has been accessing financial records of private businesses without warrants. How is that not illegal?
When Trump was first elected and hit the WH running in 2017, he fired all the watchdogs and all the ethics people. And Musk got rid of the few that remained. There's no one left to watch the henhouse.

And nothing will change unless the citizens insist upon it. Maybe not even then.

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@Suzianne said
When Trump was first elected and hit the WH running in 2017, he fired all the watchdogs and all the ethics people. And Musk got rid of the few that remained. There's no one left to watch the henhouse.

And nothing will change unless the citizens insist upon it. Maybe not even then.
"When Trump was first elected and hit the WH running in 2017, he fired all the watchdogs and all the ethics people. And Musk got rid of the few that remained.'

And just like that the DNC is broke

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/dnc-drowning-in-nearly-16m-of-debt-and-pointing-fingers-as-failed-2024-

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@Suzianne said
When Trump was first elected and hit the WH running in 2017, he fired all the watchdogs and all the ethics people. And Musk got rid of the few that remained. There's no one left to watch the henhouse.

And nothing will change unless the citizens insist upon it. Maybe not even then.
There's a bill in congress to get rid of third party loopholes for government data collection, where they would need a warrant prior to accessing anyone's data or looking you up on the Flock cameras to find your whereabouts. That should help if it ever gets voted on.

But even then there's still FISA courts and other ways for them to snoop on us.

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@Mott-The-Hoople said
"When Trump was first elected and hit the WH running in 2017, he fired all the watchdogs and all the ethics people. And Musk got rid of the few that remained.'

And just like that the DNC is broke

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/dnc-drowning-in-nearly-16m-of-debt-and-pointing-fingers-as-failed-2024-
Meanwhile the RNC just rips off US citizens to make up their shortfall.