When the government hides spy cameras on your land, fight back in court | Hacker News Reader

When the government hides spy cameras on your land, fight back in court

tennessean.com

193 pointseric_h119 comments

This article turns into a rant after the first few paragraphs, leaving me confused about the actual facts behind the story. Is it legal for the government to setup surveillance cameras on someone's land, to monitor their land? From the article, it sounds like this is exactly what was done.

> This article turns into a rant after the first few paragraphs, leaving me confused about the actual facts behind the story. Is it legal for the government to setup surveillance cameras on someone's land, to monitor their land? From the article, it sounds like this is exactly what was done.

Yeah, the linked article is garbage. You have to follow one of the links to even find the most basic facts about the case from the headline (like what agency put up the cameras and why):

https://ij.org/case/tennessee-open-fields/:

> Officers from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) routinely enter private land on a whim to search for potential hunting violations. They don’t have probable cause to believe a crime is being committed, and they don’t ask permission from either property owners or a court. Instead, they trespass, wander around as they please, and take photos and videos. They even install cameras so they can keep watching the properties 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Game wardens have shockingly broad authority. It goes back to the English common law. You don’t actually own land you just hold it fee simple and the Crown, or the State in America, actually has the right to all game. They can even enter your house without a warrant to, for example, check freezers. And if they find anything you’d have best tagged it properly.

However all the game wardens I know aren’t looking to just randomly harass people. There is usually a good reason when they go after someone, like shooting from a motor vehicle on the road.

Can you cite the legal authority that exempts game wardens from the restrictions imposed on the executive by the constitution? For example, the fourth amendment protects US citizens from warrentless searches. Does this not apply to searches of your property by game wardens?

I understand that English common law may have this notion of “lease holding” (if you buy property in the UK you’re technically renting it for 999 years from the queen). However, America is not England and in this country you actually own your property (and in many states can defend it with lethal force). So where is this authority coming from?

So, the text of the Fourth Amendment is as follows:

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 crux of the 4th Am. is reasonableness. A warrantless search of your home is presumptively unreasonable and can only be performed in very certain exigent circumstances. Most of these are emergencies. Say your house is on fire, the firepeople can enter to put it out, without a warrant, and if they see your mountain of cocaine while they are in there, you're fucked.

A game warden wanting to check your freezer is not an exigent circumstance that would bypass the warrant requirement. A game warden could easily go to a judge and get a warrant by showing the judge probable cause to believe you are doing something naughty.

So, I call bullshit.

There's a book called Who Owns the World? by Kevin Cahill. I haven't read it (I read his earlier Who Owns Britain?) though I did hear him talking about it on the radio a while back, and he said that the only place in the world he'd found where you really could own your own land, was America. The Queen, technically, owns all of the UK, Canada, and Australia. She is or was also the largest or one of the largest landowners in Manhattan.

I could be wrong in my recollections, I really should read the book. The one about Britain certainly was fascinating.

Still, on the law in question, I wouldn't be surprised if the (common) law upholds the right simply because it's never been challenged or re-legislated.

Somewhat of a nit but it's important. The Queen does not own all of the UK. She owns specific estates, such as Balmoral Castle.

Then there is the land that is in the direct possession of the "Crown". The "Crown" is just a technical legal word which means the British State, stemming from times of absolute monarchy when the State and the Monarch were one and the same. But that has been abolished over the centuries and only this vestige remains. An example of land owned by the Crown/State would be Buckingham Palace or the White House.

Lastly there is private land. This is not owned by the Queen nor is it owned by the State. Yes the law provides that the State can take back land into its possession but this right exists in both the US and UK. In the UK it is called compulsory purchase and in the US it is called eminent domain.

The main practical difference is that the US has a constitutional right of privacy whereas the UK does not. The British Parliament is unrestricted in what it can take from you but the Queen cannot simply saunter onto your land and start playing croquet.

> The Queen does not own all of the UK.

That depends on what you mean by “own”, and “the Queen”. The Crown, that is, the monarch in official capacity, holds ultimate title to most land in the UK (IIRC, the exceptions are some parts of the Orkney and Shetland Islands), but exercises the rights associated with that title, like many other rights and powers, on the advice of the government ministers (and in practice through government officers), rather than unilaterally, at risk of Constitutional crisis.

The monarch, as a corporation sole, owns the Crown Estate, in something more like private ownership, but for quite some time the rights of ownership of the Crown Estate have been exercised by a government-appointed body, with the monarch personally receiving a share of the proceeds and being relieved of the burden of funding government operations, for which they were previously responsible.

The monarch also has private estates, which are owned so what like typical private holdings, except the usual expectation of neutrality on legislation does not apply where legislation impacts the private estates, and so the monarch has an effective and quietly exercised veto on legislation to the extent that it impacts those estates.

The trend throughout history, starting with the Magna Carta and most recently the Supreme Court case on prorogation, has been the slow but sure loss of the monarch's personal powers and the transfer of those powers to democratic bodies either parliament or the executive.

One of the arguments in Miller II was that the monarch cannot be allocated any discretion to refuse a minister's order, because if she possessed that discretion then it would jeopardise her position as a politically neutral head of state. It is not that the monarch chooses to exercise powers on the advice of her ministers in fear of causing a constitutional crisis, but that her powers can only be lawfully exercised at ministers' direction.

As far as the monarch's veto on legislation affecting her (Queen's consent), this is not a legal power of the monarch but rather a privilege granted to the monarch by parliament. If parliament decided to rescind that privilege it could do so.

It's important to distinguish between language which describes the monarch from a symbolic point of view, and the actual constitutional reality. Symbolically the monarch is the personal manifestation of the state, but legally she is not much more than a rubber stamp for our democratic institutions.

You actually rent it from the state for a fraction of its nominal value each year. Don't pay your rent (property taxes) long enough and the state will absolutely put a lien on "your property" or confiscate it - by force if necessary.

Leaseholding and freeholding are different in the UK. Although there are some freeholds on feudal estates where the local lord can veto new developments. The Duchy of Cornwall is one example of this.

> Can you cite the legal authority that exempts game wardens from the restrictions imposed on the executive by the constitution?

This thread is teaching me a lot too, so I can’t directly answer your question as it pertains to State game wardens, but something to keep in mind with the framing of your question is that the States are not covered by Article II of the US Constitution. Article II speaks to the authority of the Executive power of the United States, which is the President, but the States are not subordinate to the President and neither are their officers and employees.

This is not exactly true. The restriction in question is the Fourth Amendment, which generally protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures --- agents of the state have to obtain a search warrant from a judge before they can search private property.

In general in the last century the Supreme Court has interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment as "incorporating" the Bill of Rights. Although the Bill of Rights was originally written to apply specifically to the federal government, the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment has been read as applying these protections to state governments as well.

In particular, in Mapp v. Ohio in 1961 the Supreme Court held that under the Due Process clause the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of arbitrary search and seizure applies to state governments as well.

Game Wardens do have more authority than typical police forces, although I don't have any specifics.

Here you go[1]. The rights it refers to are the old Common Law rights.

And no, poached game isn’t “papers and effects.”

Also land patents and allodial title[2] are virtually extinct in the USA. We all are renting our property. Stop paying your “property tax” if you’d like confirmation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title

Allodial title is one specific kind of title structure. It’s not the only form of ownership, as the phrase structure “X title” implies.

Having to pay taxes on your property invalidates the nature of property no more than paying income tax invalidates the nature of income.

Wrong. Legally speaking the State is your superior landlord. “Property tax” is legally a rent you pay to the state. The federal income tax is an entirely different creature, created by the 16th amendment. It’s completely incomparable legally.

Title held in allod is subject to no superior landlord. That means it can’t be taxed or liened or otherwise legally encumbered.

Edit:

> And the fact that the state has a superior title in extremely limited circumstances doesn't make it a landlord.

Nah[1].

[1] https://www.cga.ct.gov/2005/rpt/2005-r-0560.htm

The problem with these tortured uses of "landlord," "taxes as rent," etc. is that they go both ways: I can observe that a superior title is still subject to the whims of The Man With The Big Stick, and that any funds you spend preparing your land for defense against The Main With The Big Stick's changing whims is a de facto tax on you.

But that's silly, because it isn't really a tax. And the fact that the state has a superior title in extremely limited circumstances doesn't make it a landlord.

I would think the difference between a tax and a rent is that taxes only apply to the same piece of property once and rent applies over and over. If I'm paid a hundred thousand dollars I pay income tax on that once and after that I can keep it in a trunk until the end of time without anyone worrying about it. Whereas if I spend a hundred thousand dollars on a parcel of land the only thing stopping me from paying an infinite amount of "rent" (taxes) on it is the fact one day I'll drop dead and then someone else will start paying the infinite amount of rent on it. That property tax on a square foot of grass totals much less than rent on a square foot of apartment seems like a difference only in amount, not in fundamental nature.

> I would think the difference between a tax and a rent is that taxes only apply to the same piece of property once and rent applies over and over.

I think that one might say that income tax taxes not money per se but income—it's, as it were, a tax on velocity (though this seems not to be quite the classic sense of "velocity of money"), on moving money rather than money at rest. Property taxes, in turn, may be viewed as taxes not on hectares (or whatever), but on hectare-years—because a hectare can't easily be valued, but a hectare-year can (comparatively). (Of course ha-yrs are not fungible, but neither are $/yr, as evidenced by different marginal tax rates at different income levels.)

Could you elaborate on 1? The phrase "common law" does not appear in that page and I do not seen how the 10th ammendement says anything that overrules protections from the 4th when game wardens are involved.

The US constitution was an agreement among the states to delegate power to a federal government. State governments had absolute power. Any powers not specifically delegated to the newly created federal government through the constitution were obviously retained by the states.

Incorporation doctrine after the 14th amendment is just an extension of the federal government saying "well if states agreed to the 14th amendment and the 14th amendment says privileges and immunities of us citizens can't be infringed, then the states are logically giving up whatever extra powers they held previously to not respect rights enumerated in the constitution". It's a bit dubious but it helped clean up the mess of slavery.

The point being that prior to Incorporation, the bill of rights was irrelevant to states. State governments didn't have to respect your right to free speech or guns or jury trials or anything (unless the constitution of that state required it to). So game wardens had plenty of power. Incorporation doctrine has had a long, messy history and it's possible that no one has specifically challenged game wardens power in the right way to trigger a review of it constitutionally.

I don't think this is true. Game wardens cannot enter your house to search it without a warrant, and you certainly don't always have to have meat tagged.

I’m afraid it is[1]. It’s straight up medieval Sheriff of Nottingham authority. Feel free to check with an attorney in your state.

[1] https://www.quora.com/Can-a-game-warden-come-into-your-house...

Trying to find an authoritative source for this claim leads to a mountain of right-wing sites asserting it to be correct, along with some sites saying it is bunk. Lacking is an actual, reputable source that addresses the question. Seems like this question is more conspiracy theory than anything.

For Texas: https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/docs/PW/htm/PW.12.htm

See section 12.102

It shows the truth is mostly "no, they can't", at least for Texas. "Residence" and "Temporary Residence" are specifically excluded. There's some room for maybe a freezer in plain view on your porch or similar.

It's standard SovCit garbage. Don't wear yourself out reading the nonsense.

As I said, call an attorney in your state and ask. I’m not offering legal advice, I’m just telling you what everyone with a hunting license knows. Poor Google search results don’t change the law.

Edit: Imagine thinking that acknowledging an odious but legal government power is “SovCit garbage.” By all means, mess with a game warden and see what happens. It’s about as stupid as sassing customs.

Can you provide a documented example of this actually happening--of a game warden coming into someone's house and looking in their fridge without a warrant and without the owner's consent?

This might vary by state. I looked up for my state, Louisiana, and the law[1] is worded fairly broadly and it doesn't specifically list homes but it seems to me it could easily be interpreted that way.

I found one case of searching on private property without a warrant where initial trial court said it was a Fourth Amendment + Louisiana Constitution violation but the appeal court reversed the decision[2] and the state supreme court denied the review request[3].

I think it's probably nuanced? Like if a game warden sees you unload game from your truck them maybe they can go into your home without a warrant? But they probably couldn't legally pick a random house and search it for no reason without a warrant? I am not a lawyer, not legal advice, etc etc.

[1] http://legis.la.gov/legis/Law.aspx?d=105379

[2] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/la-court-of-appeal/1491867.html

[3] https://calculators.law/caselaw/decisions/x5yN6QjJe3Z0/cason...

>I think it's probably nuanced? Like if a game warden sees you unload game from your truck them maybe they can go into your home without a warrant?

so just like if a cop sees you unloading dead people from your truck they can go into your home without a warrant.

The cop needs probable cause, which seeing you transporting corpses clearly is.

However, the game warden only needs suspicion. That’s a considerably lower bar to clear. He definitely doesn’t need to see the poached animals.

This isn't true though. Police can search with reasonable suspicion in all kinds of circumstances, Terry v Ohio for instance allows for the police to stop and frisk someone on reasonable suspicion of them being involved in a crime and armed. I haven't seen any citation that a game warden can enter your home and search your freezer on reasonable suspicion and all you've linked in a Quora answer by some guy who's qualification is "published author" not a lawyer or a legal opinion. If a game warden has reasonable suspicion that you are committing a crime they can pretty clearly search say a cooler you have with you when fishing, trying to say this means they can enter your house and search it is an unfounded leap.

I get that you don’t like it. I don’t like it either, but it’s still the law in most if not all states.

I assume you don’t hunt. As I’ve said already, you don’t have to believe me. Talk to a game warden or an attorney who is familiar with conservation law and they will confirm that game wardens have expansive warrantless search powers.

We're on the internet, if this is such a simple thing to certify by asking a lawyer or a game warden then it should be reasonably easy to provide an authoritative link.

The closest I can find is this https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/california-case-law/scotu...

To Quote: "The California Supreme Court ruled that a game warden who reasonably believes that a person has recently been fishing or hunting, but lacks reasonable suspicion that the person has violated an applicable fish or game statute or regulation, may stop the suspect's vehicle to demand the person display all fish or game the person has caught or taken."

This is obviously more power in some ways than a police officer has , but in some ways also very limited. If you can provide something more authoritative, extensive and to the point than that I think you should.

Here's the best I can find[1]. It very much depends on the state, but that constitutional analysis says that it's possible the relaxed search rules could even apply to individual hunters or fishers. I can't find any definitive court rulings either way on specifically searching a freezer inside a house, but in other cases the courts have generally been deferential to the state's interest in protecting its wildlife. Plenty of hunters have experienced such searches, so it's a real problem.

Why then have these interior searches never been challenged? One reason might be that these abuses virtually exclusively affect low income suburban and rural white men. They don't have the resources to take a case to the SCOTUS. The prestige media is uninterested in advocating for them and the ACLU and other pro bono law firms don't prioritize that demographic either. Given the choice of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket to litigate or pleading to a misdemeanor and paying a $1,000 fine, so far everyone has chosen the latter.

[1] https://repository.uchastings.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl....

It boils down to: 'environmental'/game officers have sometimes very shocking levels of power because of the nature of their job, but the article is correct that the supreme court has been steadily eroding our privacy rights for the better part of at least half a century.

The game warden probably doesn't give a shit about your weed (unless you were high/drunk while carrying/using a firearm); he cares about whether you shot a deer when you weren't supposed to. Game is a public resource and we're sufficiently populated these days, and weapons sufficiently advanced, that unchecked hunting can decimate wildlife populations.

What bothers me more is that a massive portion of the US population falls under the zone wherein Customs and Border Protection can do almost whatever they want. It's something like 100 miles from the border.

Imagine driving down a street in NYC and a customs agent pops out of nowhere, stops you, disassembles most of your car's interior, demands the password to your phone and computer under threat of jailing, and then heads off with your phone, laptop, any papers you had, and the $6,000 in cash you were carrying to buy a used car. 100% legal, as far as the supreme court is concerned.

I wonder if any justices have realized that their courthouse and homes are within that same zone they think the constitution doesn't apply.

> Game is a public resource and we're sufficiently populated these days, and weapons sufficiently advanced, that unchecked hunting can decimate wildlife populations.

Sure, but that was true thousands of years ago too. It doesn't take much.

If you're willing to draw the obvious conclusion from the fact that mass extinction of large animals has occurred every time humans were introduced somewhere, it's always been true.

> What bothers me more is that a massive portion of the US population falls under the zone wherein Customs and Border Protection can do almost whatever they want. It's something like 100 miles from the border.

I definitely agree that this 100-mile reach is egregious overreach, but have there ever been any cases of this being actually abused, such as in the scenario you describe? Or for instance, have CBP agents ever busted into someone's home?

> I definitely agree that this 100-mile reach is egregious overreach, but have there ever been any cases of this being actually abused

There's the Greyhound bus raids. Probably happening still.

Does Suda v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection count? Suda was just hanging out in a small town in Montana and speaking Spanish. Martinez-Castro, et al. v. Village of Wakeman, et al. ? Saucedo-Carrillo, et al. v. United States? Jaimes v. Harris, et al.? Moreno v. United States Customs and Border Protection Officer Mario Unate and the United States of America? Hernandez-Carranco v. USA, et al.? Sanchez, et al. v. U.S. Office of Border Patrol, et al ? These are just a few of the ones that make it to the lawsuit stage, you understand.

Would you consider the ACLU complaint? https://cbpabusestest2.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/az-aclu-c...

> Or for instance, have CBP agents ever busted into someone's home?

Homes are the only thing excluded from this authority but just because it's to hand, Boule v. Egbert et al. The agent got it dismissed in summary judgment, saying the agent was in the wrong but the fourth amendment didn't apply because the house was right next to the border, and if property-owners like that had rights CBP officers might hesitate as they went about their patrols, and let bad guys get way. (They got that reversed on appeal — after two years and the expenses of appeal — and were allowed to proceed with the original suit.)

Thank you very much. Reading into one of these now [1], and they're just outrageous.

[1] https://holdcbpaccountable.org/2013/12/12/no-312-cv-05186-n-...

Not exactly what you were looking for, but the CBP were deployed to put down the Portland riots and were making arrests without probable cause.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/27/trump-border...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53453077

Shouldn't the question be the inverse? Can you point to any cases where the ability to do this without consequence is actually necessary?

I'm not arguing any kind of point, in fact like I said I completely agree that the 100-mile limit is absurd, I just want to know if there have been actual examples of abuse to point to...

I bet if you searched for "CBP 100 mile arizona" or something similar you would find out.

> Or for instance, have CBP agents ever busted into someone's home?

In the pre-dawn hours of Holy Saturday, April 22, agents of the Border Patrol's special BORTAC unit as part of an operation in which more than 130 INS personnel took part[25] approached the house, knocked on the door, and identified themselves. When no one responded, they entered. At the same time, pepper-spray and mace were employed against persons outside who attempted to interfere.[26] In the confusion, Armando Gutierrez called in Alan Diaz, of the Associated Press, to enter the house and enter a room with González, his great uncle's wife Angela Lázaro, her niece, the niece's young son, and Donato Dalrymple (one of the two men who had rescued him from the ocean). They waited in the room listening to agents searching the house. Diaz took a widely publicized photograph of a border patrol agent confronting Dalrymple and the boy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli%C3%A1n_Gonz%C3%A1lez

So, kinda? I don't have a spectacular source, but there's this [1] Deportations were highest at the end of Bush's term. Obama gradually ramped down internal deportations. You may recall there was a pretty strong emphasis on DACA, the DREAM act, and a bunch of stuff about sanctuary cities. That got rolled back somewhat under Trump.

This has been a politically charged topic, and I'm doing my best to tread lightly.

My understanding is at the end of Obama's term, deportations were mostly driven by criminal activity. If someone got arrested for something, ICE is tipped off, and they're deported. On the other hand, they ran a stop sign, that was generally overlooked.

Later, there was a push to improve those numbers, so there were various people who were suspected or known to be undocumented. Some were visited and deported. There's various stories of homes being busted into. I have some opinions around all of that, but that's a minefield I don't want to walk through.

What is disturbing is, the enforcement varies with the political winds. They have a lot of power. "abuse" is pretty charged in this context. My preference is for the rules to be a lot less fuzzy. We already have a lot of rules around how citizens are treated, my preference is to treat people as citizens until proven otherwise. I'm ok with kicking in the door, if they can get a warrant.

There's lots of special cases, there's lots of horrible outlier examples. Yeah, I get the guy picking tomatoes getting paid under the table is not paying taxes. I know some folks don't report their tips.

Enforcement is super tricky, and I don't want to make it a million times harder, but I would like it to be more consistent. Again, this is a politically charged topic, which makes it tough to really think through (for me anyway).

[1] https://econofact.org/immigrant-deportations-during-the-trum...

The difference is that judges, justices, and lawmakers are a part of the elite class, and will never be threatened by such abuses.

>The game warden probably doesn't give a shit about your weed (unless you were high/drunk while carrying/using a firearm); he cares about whether you shot a deer when you weren't supposed to

No organization gives up or manages out its best and brightest. I trust your average beat cop not to be a power tripping jerk a lot more than I trust the average game warden.

This goes for all the "second rate" law enforcement agencies, DEA, ATF, Port Authority, blue helmets. Some of those guys truly believe in the mission (and I sympathize with these guys, caring about the mission in an organization where 1/10th to 1/2 of people have "settled" for the job is terrible). Some of those guys are just clock punchers. But a disturbing number of those guys quit or got managed out of the state police, FBI or whatever for shoot/taze/beat first ask questions later behavior that tends to result in dismissed charges which tend to result in poor performance reviews.

If I remember correctly, being within 100 miles of an international airport counts too.

If you count that too, all of the United States becomes border zone.

Almost as convenient as having no bases in RUS.

Yup, a lot of people don't know about this, but it is pretty bad. Within 25 miles of any US border or coastline, they can actually come into your house without a warrant to look for evidence of smuggling people, contraband, items not taxed properly and basically everything under their regulatory authority. 25-100 miles and they're not allowed to go in your house without a warrant, but they can stop you outside, hassle you, search your car and your person without one.

Something like 90% of the US population lives within the 100 mile zone, and the entire state of Florida resides within it because it is less than 200 miles across.

My money is on no, the cameras were not on his property. The article says the spy cameras were “placed the within the boundaries of where he lives, farms and hunts.”

Since the column piece is written by the complainant/affiliate my guess is the cameras were close to his land but on public property around the river and pointed at his property.

Surely we can just resolve this by looking at the actual complaint instead of trying to divine sense from some words like it's a party manifesto from Xi? Here it is, then:

https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Tennessee-Open-Fie...

The graphic on page 11 seems to indeed show the camera on the property.

That graphic is quite bad.

Not all markers follow the same logic. For the "Terry's Gate" the white line seems to point to the location of the gate, while when showing homes they do not point to homes but use the icon to designate location.

Depending on what they used for TWRA Camera the camera may or may not be located on the property. I am leaning toward not on the property as there is no real reason why they would point outside of the property with the white line unless they wanted to show where it actually was.

Interesting that he filed this only under his State's constitution in State court. I don't see why he couldn't have made a 4th Am. challenge under federal law too, and filed in federal court. Although they may have passed on the State law aspect if they deemed it too complex.

A county court judge is woefully under-skilled and will almost certainly side with authorities and bump this to the appellate courts for a more in-depth legal examination.

Do we know if he has a collateral federal case?

Some states have stronger protections in their state constitutions than the federal constitution provides. Montana, for instance, explicitly provides a right to privacy, whereas a "right to privacy" is at best implicit in the US Constitution.

I don't know anything about the Tennessean Constitution to say if that's the reason though.

I looked at it real quick, it's not one of the states that copy-pastes the 4th Am like a lot do, but it also doesn't seem to offer up any extra protections like some states do, as you mention.

> “placed the within the boundaries of where he lives, farms and hunts.”

I recognize the words, but that is a really strained sentence structure. What are they trying to say?

Placed within the boundaries sounds like my property. If I'm roaming my property and find something there that I did not put there, then I'm going to be taking it down. I'll probably even attempt to sell it.

It sounds like they are trying to imply it was his land without actually stating as such (because it was likely just over the property border).

The current state of the open fields doctrine is that your home and its "curtilage" are protected, but the "open fields" beyond that are not. The wording "lives, farms and hunts" suggests that area is his curtilage because it is where he takes part in the activities of private life. Property bounds are not really relevant because 4th amendment privacy rights and property rights are not co-extensive.

"Boundaries of where he lives, farms and hunts” makes me think they carped bombed the whole area, including a whole bunch of private property that was his and other people's. Basically nobody farms public lands. A lot of people farm their neighbor's land.

And as other commenters have pointed out, there isn't a 1:1 mapping between "not your property" and "where the .gov can stick a camera without a warrant".

There's actually legal government documents that quite literally state where your property is. Any property that is not defined as your property is not your property. It's really not a hard topic.

As long as it "just" over the property line then I guess it's not really his property then? Doubt the tax assessor gives them a break on the "just" over part of it. Are we really trying to say that property lines are gray areas? If I build my fence just over the line onto my neighbor's property, that'd be okay then, right?

This straining to justify the trespassing to place an illegal wiretap is just mind boggling.

I think your parent meant "just over" in the opposite direction, e.g. just outside his property.

i guess that could be read that way now that you mention it. totally didn't take it that way in my jumping to conclusions.

so, now that we've established it could be not on your property but absolutely most definitely viewing your property, time for action. Time for a sheet of plywood blocking the view. Now, knowing that it's probably an extremely wide angle lens, that playwood probably won't block the full view. Time for a bright ass light on that board that just so happens to point at the camera. Maybe a UV LED lights to make it not as annoying in case that light is too disturbing. Or, a laser light show attached to that piece of plywood that just happnes to scan back and forth across the camera lens several times at alternating heights.

As if they can't come and move the camera. I suppose eventually you could build your plywood wall around the entire perimeter of the property. In the suburbs we call that a privacy fence. A bit more costly to build on such a large plot of land however.

Okay, so now I'm starting to wonder if I'm just a sick mind or if others are just really not very creative.

So you go and move the piece of plywood. It costs the US Gov't much more money to move the thing than it will you. Stick it to the man. Plus, each time you move it, you can update the messages you've spray painted onto that piece of plywood. "Hello Mr Secret Agent Man!" "Isn't it a lovely day to be viewing my property?" "How about you go and..."

The problem with pissing off law enforcement is that they have many more resources than most people, and they care a little less about costs.

I could see that if someone were to act along the lines of your cartoon, that they would be facing an obstruction of justice charge.

I could also see a large number of building inspections and other checks that the landowner was following the law.

And quite possibly the sheriff could start setting up a traffic stop at say, the end of the driveway, where they check all passing cars for DWI. Also raising the possibility of civil forfeiture.

In Minneapolis, the police decided it was fine to fly police helicopters over residential areas at low altitudes for hours at a time, every day. This is legal, you do not own the airspace above your land. Hopefully they wouldn't notice anything suspicious, which could trigger a no-knock search of your property.

All of this is just local people. If the Feds get involved, then a person could have more serious issues.

either that or if they wrote it themselves they thought, man these jerks don't know who they're dealing with! I am going to write so smart here they'll be sorry they ever messed with me!

It takes an extremely disciplined mind to write well when angry about the thing one is writing about, otherwise you risk being completely unclear.

might be to articulate the privacy issues. As in, the cameras aren't just technically on his property but they're filming his whole life

Even if something is placed on government-owned land (eg. a river), they're still bound by the fourth amendment and they can't use security cameras that surveil where the owner/person has a 'reasonable expectation of privacy'.

Whether or not that means the owner of the land has such expectation on hundreds of acres depends on how secure the location is; you could make the argument "anyone could legally boat down the river and see them, therefore there is not an expectation of privacy", or you could make the argument that cameras installed at an unreasonably high elevation (eg. the top of a tree on the river) would be surveilling land that nobody not trespassing could see. This is also assuming you have a legal fence/barrier that informs anyone trespassing isn't allowed, otherwise it'd be harder to claim treading the land and setting up 'wildlife cameras' is trespassing.

I had the opposite takeaway from the text; that is, that the cameras were, in fact, on his property.

The quote you cited is just referencing his property, I think they said 163 acres.

Yeah. I stopped reading after it after it called case law a “judge made law.” Inflammatory rhetoric like that tells you all you need to know about their journalistic ethics.

They're his lawyers, not journalists.

Then they should know even better that judges don’t make laws, they rule on existing laws, and their rulings get used as precedent.

I came here to complain about exactly that. I wish people could argue on actual facts and not politically brand everything in sight.

I don't know, I don't necessarily have a problem with the phrase as a rhetorical device. As an example, there is no explicit law against insider trading in the United States. Congress has attempted to write such a law on a few occasions, but it's never passed. Nevertheless, if you do insider trading and are caught by the SEC, you will pay a big fine and if you were egregious enough you will go to jail.

The law that is invoked in these cases is extremely vague and broad. Basically the law says you cannot commit fraud when trading securities. The whole thing is about 50 words. Nevertheless, over the years the courts have built out a huge body of case law that details what counts as fraud, and among this case law is a lot of rules on edge cases around insider trading. Based on these rules, companies have developed things like blackout periods where employees are not allowed to sell stocks, and 10b5-1 stock sale plans in order to avoid insider trading.

So sure, these rules are not technically "law" because they were developed by judges and not Congress. But if you break those laws you'll be convicted and maybe go to jail all the same.

At the same time, I don't think that just because it is "judge made law" means that it's necessarily bad. In the case of insider trading, Congress basically punted on the issue and forced the courts to specify what does and does not constitute insider trading. It would probably be better for Congress to clearly define the rules, but they didn't so the courts had to do it instead.

Then they should know even better that judges don’t make laws, they rule on existing laws, and their rulings get used as precedent.

In the US, our system of law is based on our Constitution, in this case the Fourth Amendment to the Bill of Rights. Like several other amendments, this one is written vaguely enough to allow outrageous interpretations by biased or incompetent judges. This is one of those situations.

If you can look into Fourth Amendment law without growing steadily sick to your stomach, you're either on the government's side or you have a stronger stomach than mine.

Well, I think what they're getting at is what people call "legislating from the bench", the fourth amendment very clearly protects people from government snooping and seizure without a warrant from a judge, deliberately broad or lax interpretations of things happen in court all the time for whatever reason. Setting a precedent that the fourth amendment doesn't apply to your land outside your house and things like that are very obvious examples of this sort of thing.

> Then they should know even better that judges don’t make laws, they rule on existing laws, and their rulings get used as precedent.

Yes, and when those precedents are binding, they are called "case law" aka judge-made law. It's not a perjorative, most of the time. It's simply how the law works in countries like the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge-made_law (redirects to "Precedent")

"Is it legal for the government to setup surveillance cameras on someone's land, to monitor their land?"

That is about to be found out in court.

"Although the case is proceeding in state court under the authority of the Tennessee Constitution, the central claims point to a nationwide problem. Starting about 100 years ago.."

But the issue behind, is a more complicated one.

It will also likely soon become moot as drones get cheaper and cheaper, and you don't own the sky over your land. Here's a company, Brinc, building border security drones which the promo video also says can also easily be used for prisons, data centers and just about anything else.

https://theintercept.com/2021/12/13/brinc-startup-taser-dron...

But if a private person may not fly over private property of other people, than that rule should apply for government personal, too - unless a warrant, or "special rules". And they can be changed by the people.

The airspace 500ft up, and in some cases 200 ft and up is public property basically.

This really needs to change with the mass availability of camera drones.

Good luck leaving air travel viable while closing all the loopholes that would still be abused.

There are almost allways loopholes with every regulation. It is about it working most of the time.

I mean we have satellite spying since quite a while anyway and with more cheap satelites that comes bigger.

It is still a big difference, if some agency manages to get pictures of some property sometimes - by flying over with a special drone or satelite - then it is for them to secretly install cameras on peoples land. Cameras can be always on surveilling and are cheap once installed. A drone needs operating, has a limited operating time and can be spotted.

Drawing these fine lines is exactly what regulation is for. You can have air travel without having random people flying over and photographing your kids' backyard water fight party.

Just to be clear…it’s not a news article, it’s an editorial. There’s a small “opinion” tag at the top that gets kind of overwhelmed by all the ads.

If it’s not immediately adjacent to a persons home, apparently so.

The government's justification for this is the open fields doctrine, which comes from a supreme court ruling that says that fourth amendment protections don't apply to 'open fields':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-fields_doctrine

Which makes a lot of sense, the 4th amendment was never meant to protect land this way, It was always meant for personal things and the household, not meant to carve all private land as off-limits to everyone and the government.

In regard to access to land, I really like the Freedom to roam [0] doctrines of a few European countries.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam

This instance seems like a 'taking'. The government should have to pay rent if the installation is more than transient (something like 24 hours), and they should not be able to keep it secret from, or disrupt the owner's use of the land without invoking eminent domain.

You are making a rather basic, fundamental, and common mistake due to modern eroded understanding of language and meanings. The effects that the fourth amendment prohibits the government from violating, do in fact include land property.

I'm sure the common person likes the Freedom to Roam, but those of us who live on farms and like our seclusion it would be a nightmare.

The Rights of Way in say the UK are way older than your or anyone's farm. They are a form of returning back to the Commons that which was always part of the Commons. It's rather more complicated than that but that captures the general spirit of Freedom to Roam.

Some of the roads and tracks hereabouts are quite old. Many are rather older than written evidence. For example the Sweet Track (1) up the road from here is getting on a bit. I'm not sure if it still counts as a Right of Way as its a Scheduled Monument!

I live near to the Fosse Way (2) which is a bit more modern - a Roman road. Quite a few of the roads hereabouts are still called "Roman Road" which is surprisingly unimaginative. The county of Somerset is quite well known in the UK for having an above average of really odd place names, which is quite a boast, given the competition.

I imagine that you live in a land that can cram several UK land areas into one state. You may like your seclusion but I hope it doesn't belong to someone else 8) Provided trespassers errr ramblers keep their dogs away from your livestock and close gates and don't litter then all is good. To mitigate some of the side effects of rambling we have a few laws. A farmer has some legal protection when a dog attacks their livestock (3) Erm, I've just read the Act and it looks like only a minor fine. However, anecdotally, dogs worrying say sheep sometimes don't survive the encounter. I'm a massive dog lover (there are five in the room here) but they can't be allowed to worry livestock. We also have stiles, routinely provided to get over walls and hedges and cattle grids for similar reasons but mainly for roads.

Bear in mind that you too are a common person and your rights are probably protected by a form of Common Law - don't knock it and I imagine that you might have one of those new fangled Constitution things spelling out your Rights too. A Bill of Rights plus documented Amendments is quite a handy thing to have around. You could "take the fifth", I'd need a lawyer to even try to do a similar thing and I think that here in the UK "it may harm your defence if you choose to not say something that you later rely on in court".

Anyway, you mentioned seclusion ...

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Track 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosse_Way 3. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/1-2/28

its only a nightmare when you cant trust the travelers, or when the visit is not peaceful

Or if the traveller hides cameras that interfere with your privacy on your own land.

this is indeed a thorny point and I agree with that

Which was the justification for the Third Amendment... the travelers (quartered soldiers) were neither trustworthy nor peaceful.

Warrantless spying should be illegal full stop. Let alone installing equipment on someone's land or cutting down their trees. I hope the government agency responsible for this is soundly reprimanded in court.

They'll just get told to pay $25 for the lost value of wood on that tree branch.

And if a pleb logged a few feet over the property line and that was a government tree you could bet they'd be going after him for some insane fantasy value of it.

It’d likely be a felony offense.

God bless the Institute for Justice, they really do what it says on the tin, including actually winning cases. And that can have such huge leverage on national policy. They have a gift for choosing good cases and promoting them effectively. By bang per buck they're my favorite 501(c)(3).

We have allowed power to become heavily centralized across many aspects of law and culture, and representation (e.g. number of house representatives per capita). Reversing that trend is probably a good idea, if only to help keep the peace between geographies with different values and needs currently fighting to win in an all-or-nothing federal system.

I’m interested in what the future of 24/7 drone surveillance looks like in the U.S.

Many countries are using this technology, which lets them rewind, and then fast-forward (and rewind, and so on) to catch and understand criminal networks, but eventually it will be used by divorced couples to find out where the other person was.

That's actually a pretty interesting topic actually. Does a drone flying over your property count as a warrantless search? The government will most certainly be of the opinion that it does not.

The courts have typically been ruling that other kinds of tech designed to surveil without entering the property (e.g., thermal imaging) constitute searches. I could see drones being counted differently, but that doesn't seem like a certain bet to me.

Not necessarily, judges have confirmed that using high tech surveillance from the street isn’t always legal (e.g. massive checks of the temperature in people’s garage to find people growing plants etc.).

Well by government I mean the agencies doing the surveiling. They'll of course insist and argue in court that it's lawful, I would hope judges say it isn't.

It's tricky because of the way airspace works with private property, its a very complex realm. It's different peering through their roof to see what they're doing inside, but just watching people outside might be considered not an unlawful search.

I searched the records and don't find a case with Terry Rainwaters listed, and the only mentions of Hunter Hollingsworth are for felony theft, with a guilty plea, but I can't say that it's the same person.

Was this case actually filed or is this just like an exercise?

An unfortunately common practice that isn't new. There are voluminous examples and an easily found one below.

https://www.cnet.com/news/court-oks-warrantless-use-of-hidde...

Forbes had a better write up back in April when this story made the rounds: https://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2020/04/14/...

Also, Terry got a PPP loan for $20k for his one person soybean farm. Seems legit.

> Also, Terry got a PPP loan for $20k for his one person soybean farm. Seems legit.

Well it could be totally legit. Single person farms still pay people, even if themselves, and $20k isn't that much. Besides payroll, they can be used for owner compensation, mortgage interest for business related loans, business rental payments, business utility payments, and continuing employee benefits.

For farmers, the PPP maximum loan amount is 2.5 times the amount of the average monthly payroll costs from the prior 12 months or the 2020 / 2019 calendar year, capped at $10 million.

See https://farms.extension.wisc.edu/ppp-and-eidl-loans-advances...

I have to wonder how do you even know he has a PPP loan. I search his name and "PPP" and the only hits I get are federal government information sites. The Forbes article doesn't had the word "loan" or "ppp" or "soybean" so where are you getting this info from?

You can find info on his loan at https://www.federalpay.org/paycheck-protection-program/terry...

Are you trying to just stir up controversy with that comment? It's almost like you're troll farm driven.

I thought the OP article was likely a rehash of an older article so googled his name.

The Forbes article and the PPP loan results were right next to each other. I read them both and thought the guy was pretty sketchy all in all.

As for stirring up controversy, this entire topic is controversial. It’s a post designed to trigger privacy rights people, and doing quite well by the looks of it.

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