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There must be some wrinkle of copyright law that offers a (legal) defense against this sort of unrestrained mass surveillance. It's my cynical take that courts will be far more respectful of property rights than privacy rights/civil liberties.

Something akin to the laws that (on paper at least) forbids people from taking photos of the eiffel tower at night or commercial photos of mount rushmore.

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The article barely hints at blackmail as a method of getting around those laws. Near the end, it says:

>Did his company retain video of the Baltimore officials who could approve or thwart its return?

To me, I read that and think they probably began surveillance much earlier than they let on. After collecting dirt on people who could stop it, then they approached them and got their cooperation. I could be wrong of course, but that's my 2 cents.

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