US Supreme Court asked if cops can plant spy cams around homes
theregister.com
theregister.com
Track them from point to point and use Mastodon or the pitiful shell of Twitter to keep everyone informed about who they hang out with and how long they spend together, what they talk about, which devices they use, their favorite brand of beer or tennis shoe.
We can call it RepWatch, PoliWatch, or whatever. It could be the next great social network and all they have to do to join is to run for office and win so we can monitor their habits, bad and good, and judge them on flimsy evidence.
And it would be defeated quickly on first amendment grounds.
I mean, it’s not going to stop cheating, but you would think it would encourage the cheater to choose another venue. Dumb people are dumb, though.
Rule one of doing bad things, legal or illegal: don’t talk about it with anyone who isn’t part of it. And as few of those as possible.
Also, this should apply to manual police surveillance of homes as well: there should be a warrant.
The War on Drugs has legitimized excessive policing to an insane degree (only eclipsed by the War on Terror).
People continue to support this because "drugs are bad, m'kay?", which can be true, but doesn't warrant this madness. The US should have learned its lesson with alcohol prohibition but apparently too many people profit off the current scheme for it to meaningfully change.
We could collectively remedy this promptly if enough of the population recognized and demanded that the better path is education, regulation, and taxation.
That case was in 1988, and it is not out of line with the 4th Amendment decisions over the ~50+ years since the Warren court that made good 4A decisions (like Katz vs US [1]). So expect this case to fly through 6 to 3.
You;ll only appear on that list if you do so for commercial purposes and are required to get a license, furthermore you can legally grow MJ or Hemp without one provided you live in a legal state: where you are allowed up to 6 plants per Adult resident of your home above the age of 21. So you can legally have a large compliant grow if you live in a CO-OP as is common in several legalized States.
And this very thing was disputed in CO in the early phases of Amendment 64 (legalizing recreational MJ and Industrial hemp in 2012), and then was made law of the land after the Farm bill of 2018 wherein hemp could be grown in all 50 stares as it was codified as a matter that was to be handled by their respective Department of Ag in their state/city.
In short, their is nothing stopping anyone growing Industrial hemp as a crop for their own usage in a legal state if it is not used for commercial purposes, it is however, not wise to do so because the DEA can get a warrant and sill do a search and seizure and continue to use things like asset forfeiture to ruin your life in the process so it's best to limit such grows not because the Law doesn't allow it, but for the sheer fear of having an agency that is growing in irrelevance to come inot your Life when a rather easy to get license/permit will do--some States even distinguish between commercial and R/D for this very purpose and to skirt around Laws where Federal funding can be threatened as was the case with CU Boulder/Denver.
> They're getting a warrant, not a conviction.
While true, you can still have your Life ruined in the process of said search warrant and be subject to asset forfeiture. Personally speaking, i think that is a direct violation of one's 4th Amendment Right, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen and it's best to be avoided.
Source: My startup was providing financial services and payment processing to the Legal Hemp Industry (2015-2018), and my co-founder was one of the first to legally do so under the seed/breeding program in CO.
It’s to the point where we need a new amendment to bolster the 4th in the modern era.
Not saying we SHOULD need one. Because I agree the spirit (and honestly the letter) of the 4th covers us. But clearly bad actors are winning the fight right now.
Surprisingly, that's not at all what we've seen. For example in Carpenter vs. United States, the Supreme Court was asked whether tracking someone via cell-transaction records required a warrant under the 4th amendment. Chief Justice Roberts and the Court's liberal justices said "yes, it is a violation because citizens should have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their movements." Meanwhile the most prominent originalists (Thomas, Gorsuch as well as Alito) filed dissenting opinions lamenting the decision, saying that the 4th amendment doesn't provide any protection for these records.
Anyway ordinarily I wouldn't respond to a political rant, but I do think it's important for HN readers to know what the most important judges in the country are actually saying on this point.
Also, as of now SCOTUS has decided a right to privacy doesn't exist within the Constitution. They were willing to get rid of that in order to overturn Roe V. Wade.
The problem with wanting an originalist interpretation of the Constitution is that the Constitution doesn't really say what most people think it does.
But would they seem like papers to someone in the 1700s? "Papers" in that context are physical documents, parchment and ink.
That's the problem with Constitutional originalism - it boils down to interpreting the mind of an imaginary ghost, which fundamentally leads to justifying confirmation bias by proxy.
Should LE be allowed to look at all the recipients of your snail mail without a warrant? Absolutely not. They, therefore, should not be allowed to read your call logs. It’s basically the same.
If you really want to get technical, the Supreme Court has no business in judicial review, as that is not explicitly stated in the Constitution. Marbury v Madison is more tradition than anything.
It's going to be clearly silly for most people to say that multibillion dollar corporations are allowed to conduct unlimited surveillance on you, but the government can't. The 4A was encoding a legal right to the societal expectation of privacy. We've spent the last 30 years blithely destroying that social expectation via tech. Of course no one much is up in arms in it now - we've trained it out. Big Data and the Fourth Amendment are antitheses. Even if you were to somehow rile up enough people to force some sort of legislation against stuff like this, it's going to happen anyway, illegally, and they'll find a way to get away with it. Consider the myriad abuses of the CIA and NSA. What happened when the CIA spied on Congress illegally as Congress investigated their other illegal actions, and then got caught, then lied about what they were doing? Absolutely nothing, and the guy in charge is now considered a hero by a whole political faction and is a frequent media commentator expounding his opinions as a Trustworthy Expert.
In a world where you're dealing with human beings, you can't have giant repositories of extremely useful data in centralized locations and think that a "don't look at this" sign is going to do you any good. You have to not have giant centralized repositories of data people care about. The Fourth Amendment could only effectively exist in a world where privacy was valued and invading it meant breaking into someone’s home, or his lawyer’s office, or paying people to follow him around all day.
And in fact our use of technology definitely contributed to this, even when it seemed very innocuous. Logging is invaluable for testing and troubleshooting, forum posts, DMs, login data, and tweets obviously have more value as things that are non-ephemeral...but what you do by logging everything, what you do by having an Internet where things are by default non-ephemeral is change exactly this societal expectation.
Going back to the helicopter example in this thread, would we argue that the government shouldn't be allowed to look at the aerial view on maps.google.com? The very existence of this service changed what people understood as private.
Corporations can’t put you in jail and that’s why the 4th amendment needs to be strong now more than ever. The government should be required to get warrants and not just be able to buy that data.
It's one thing to say they shouldn't be able to do it and we need to pass a law, it's another to create a world where they actually can't, and aren't incentivized to.
As a whole separate question, do you think companies and individuals should be banned from voluntarily giving data to the police, out of ideological motives or generosity or whatever? That also just intuitively seems weird. Charging a fee for something you're happy to do is just a small jump. The problem is the mass collection of data in the first place. Once you have that, the rest is inevitable. Mass data collection is a massive qualitative change to what we had before.
If you want it all to stop, that means banning the collection of data. This of course won't eliminate it altogether, and it will wipe out a lot of the tech industry, but it will go a long way, and proving someone has collected data they weren't supposed to is a lot easier than proving they shared it inappropriately.
An originalist analogy would be the government spotting something with their naked eye from a boat that isn’t visible from land. I don’t think that would be unconstitutional. If someone in a helicopter is using their naked eye to look at your one property, that seems to be in a different category from e.g. thermal imaging everyone from space.
I mean, any distance is going to be arbitrary. And “people might lie” is a bad reason to reject a rule. (It’s a good reason to raise the burden of evidence.)
Imagine saying out loud with a straight face that it’s not a search because you’re in the sky.
Defence didn’t allege the cops lied. This case wasn’t about lying cops.
> no reasonable civilian pilot would be flying so low
This argument has merit. That said, civilians don’t slowly patrol neighbourhoods either. So I’m not sure where the threshold is for what cops can do on patrol.
Your entire argument is based on the flawed premise that government should have any right to stop you from growing, selling or consuming marijuana.
>... to be secure in their... houses...
The cameras are outside, so teeeeeechnically...
But why would police treat a peeping tom differently when they do the same thing? It's so hypocritical.
For the same reason that, when the police restrain you against your will and lock you in a cage, it's an arrest, but if you do it, it's assault and kidnapping.
Which we definitely don't do in the US
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/10/us/citizens-arrest-what-is-ex...
Citizen’s arrest was actually outlawed in GA because of what happened there by the very conservative state legislation and signed into law by the Republican governor.
Scalia's corruption, and his desire to deny the public the tools to prove it, was the thread keeping us all safe.
Merely calling it a "right" is just too hand-wavy, and doesn't convince anyone who doesn't already agree with you.
So I don't know who you're arguing with.
edit: I mean, I deliberately put scare quotes around it.
"I know what I am doing, and you don't." (It has to be interpreted as I did not write it in a literal form, but it will do at least for now.)
Plus: one has the right not to be unnerved by peeking intruders. I have a viz for it, let me search for it and I will update the post. Edit: found: https://i.ibb.co/JCrzmbJ/clarkson-children-that-stare.jpg
People have claimed "natural law" to marginalize most of what are now protected classes of people.
The rest of your comment is so incoherent I can't understand what you are trying to say.
I'll translate up to some point.
I wrote that explaining the logic that shows that "privacy is a natural right" is not difficult: it is based at least on the principle that the individual is responsible on his self, and is endowed with a judgement to carry on that responsibility, and that the judgement of his peers is not qualifiable as worthy in such an amount to override that of the responsibility bearer, so, exceptions aside relevant to the impact on others, the peers will leave the individual "in peace" and in suspension of judgement. This produces (logically) one side of the inappropriateness of having peering eyes on you: the peers do not have the qualifications to intrude.
In [that] short [form]: "I know what I am doing [much more than you can in general judge], and you don't". Very loose form, but can be used provisionally as a shortening.
And another side is that shown in the picture, with that Jeremy Clarkson acting as the "annoying staring child": it's annoying to have peering eyes on you - it is more distracting than mosquitoes and one has the right to carry on one's business in peace.
There may be even more sides.
The argument is:
> the individual is responsible on his self, and is endowed with a judgement to carry on that responsibility, and that the judgement of his peers is not qualifiable as worthy in such an amount to override that of the responsibility bearer, so, exceptions aside relevant to the impact on others, the peers will leave the individual "in peace" and in suspension of judgement. This produces (logically) one side of the inappropriateness of having peering eyes on you: the peers do not have the qualifications to intrude
.../hence/, privacy is a natural right. Because, by nature, you are responsible over yourself (you are that inside you), and the others are not, and their judgement is imperfect. So, what you do is your own business, naturally protected by right against the eyes of others (apart, of course, that behaviour which has consequences on others).
> simple and direct
Only proportionally to simplicity and the actual possibility of making something "direct"... As noted («Principia Mathematica»), "1+1" is not really direct...
> "I don't like someone looking at me so privacy is a 'natural' right"
But that is a secondary argument, and it is actually valid: one has the natural right not to be bothered, not to be disturbed. There has to be real, definite, proportional cause to break that rule.
Have you noticed that no one else tries to write like this and people just generally say what they mean?
In his Whren v US decision [0], Scalia gave police the power to stop and search any driver as long as they assert a traffic violation as the pretext for the stop.
In Florida v Riley [1], he agreed that it's not unreasonable to police to use a helicopter to fly into position to see into property not visible from any adjacent building or from adjacent land, assert they can see marijuana, and use that as a pretext for a search warrant.
In Lawrence v Texas [2], which focused on a case where police entered Lawrence's apartment (in response to a reported weapons disturbance) and found Lawrence engaged in consensual sexual act with another man, and Lawrence was arrested on charges of violating a Texas statute against "sodomy". The court ruled that individuals have the right to engage in sexual acts with other consenting adults when in the privacy of their homes. Scalia wrote a rancid screed of a dissent.
Sometimes Scalia stood up for the 4th amendment, but he didn't value it more than his prejudices and ideological mission. And that makes it hard for me to say he thought privacy was an individual right.
[0] https://www.oyez.org/cases/1995/95-5841
1: it was a unanimous decision
2: they can’t just assert a traffic violation, there has to be an actual violation of the law.
How's that working out in practice?
No, Scalia didn't support police flying a helicopter up to your window and pretending they see marijuana then raiding your house. And yeah GP is going to argue that "assert" doesn't mean claiming something that isn't true. But the intention is obvious to the point that it's really difficult to see good faith here.
In Terry v Ohio [0], a plainclothes policeman saw three guys casing a store, saw the outlines of concealed items that he believed to be guns, he stopped and searched them on that basis, and two of the three guys had weapons. The Court ruled that the evidence was admissible and the officer's "reasonable suspicion" made the search lawful, as the officer's safety may be endangered if they're questioning individuals with weapons. Without a reasonable suspicion that an individual has a concealed weapon, though, the frisk is an unconstitutional 4A violation.
In this NY Civil Liberties Union study of stop and frisk data [1], going through NYPD stop and frisk data, from 2003 to 2013, 2585945 frisks were performed but weapons were only found in ~2% (!!!) of frisks. If your suspicions are wrong 98% of the time, it's pretty hard to describe the suspicion as "reasonable", but the SC declared that asserting reasonable suspicion is all it takes to make those unconstitutional searches constitutional.
I'm not anti police, I'm a homicide researcher in Chicago and I have immense respect for a number of the officers and detectives I've worked with. But I can't look at these facts and then pretend they don't exist.
[0] https://www.oyez.org/cases/1967/67
[1] https://www.nyclu.org/sites/default/files/publications/stopa...
Whoah, neat, say more?
2a. Imagine a police officer falsely alleged a traffic violation. How much equipment would the pulled-over driver need to have to prove the allegation was false, and how much would it cost to then prove the allegation false? How much equipment would police cars need to prove every allegation was valid? Why are we going to pretend this isn't just another case where the Supreme Court is coaching police on what words they need to put in reports (eg "furtive gestures" to justify a Terry stop, or any traffic violation for this) to allow "us" to have our cake (the 4A) and eat it too (still overpolice Black neighborhoods and chase Black people out of suburbs)?
2b. Should driving 26 mph in a zone with a 25 mph speed limit eliminate protections against a stop and a search? If there are so many traffic laws that it's inevitable that following someone for 10 minutes would yield 1 violation, in what sense do we really have any 4A protection while on the road?
Was it not well thought out? Filled with hateful language and stereotypes?
"""I turn now to the ground on which the Court squarely rests its holding: the contention that there is no rational basis for the law here under attack. This proposition is so out of accord with our jurisprudence--indeed, with the jurisprudence of any society we know--that it requires little discussion.
The Texas statute undeniably seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are "immoral and unacceptable," Bowers, supra, at 196--the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity. Bowers held that this was a legitimate state interest. The Court today reaches the opposite conclusion. The Texas statute, it says, "furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual," ante, at 18 (emphasis addded). The Court embraces instead JUSTICE STEVENS' declaration in his Bowers dissent, that "the fact that the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice," ante, at 17. This effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation. If, as the Court asserts, the promotion of majoritarian sexual morality is not even a legitimate state interest, none of the above-mentioned laws can survive rational-basis review.""" [0]
I'd say it's fairly hateful to compare consensual homosexual sex to bestiality (which cannot be consensual and thus is always rape).
He also spends a lot of time freaking out about the idea that if the Court forbids states from criminalizing homosexuality, it would logically follow that homosexuals are just people and would also be entitled to marriage equality. And he makes it clear how much he is afraid and repulsed by the idea of homosexuals getting the right to marriage equality.
"""Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means. Social perceptions of sexual and other morality change over time, and every group has the right to persuade its fellow citizens that its view of such matters is the best. That homosexuals have achieved some success in that enterprise is attested to by the fact that Texas is one of the few remaining States that criminalize private, consensual homosexual acts. But persuading one's fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one's views in absence of democratic majority will is something else. I would no more require a State to criminalize homosexual acts--or, for that matter, display any moral disapprobation of them--than I would forbid it to do so. What Texas has chosen to do is well within the range of traditional democratic action, and its hand should not be stayed through the invention of a brand-new "constitutional right" by a Court that is impatient of democratic change. It is indeed true that "later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress," ante, at 18; and when that happens, later generations can repeal those laws. But it is the premise of our system that those judgments are to be made by the people, and not imposed by a governing caste that knows best.
One of the benefits of leaving regulation of this matter to the people rather than to the courts is that the people, unlike judges, need not carry things to their logical conclusion. The people may feel that their disapprobation of homosexual conduct is strong enough to disallow homosexual marriage, but not strong enough to criminalize private homosexual acts--and may legislate accordingly. The Court today pretends that it possesses a similar freedom of action, so that that we need not fear judicial imposition of homosexual marriage, as has recently occurred in Canada (in a decision that the Canadian Government has chosen not to appeal). See Halpern v. Toronto, 2003 WL 34950 (Ontario Ct.App.); Cohen, Dozens in Canada Follow Gay Couple's Lead, Washington Post, June 12, 2003, p. A25. At the end of its opinion--after having laid waste the foundations of our rational-basis jurisprudence--the Court says that the present case "does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter." Ante, at 17. Do not believe it. More illuminating than this bald, unreasoned disclaimer is the progression of thought displayed by an earlier passage in the Court's opinion, which notes the constitutional protections afforded to "personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education," and then declares that "[p]ersons in a homosexual relationship may seek autonomy for these purposes, just as heterosexual persons do." Ante, at 13 (emphasis added). Today's opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned. If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is "no legitimate state interest" for purposes of proscribing that conduct, ante, at 18; and if, as the Court coos (casting aside all pretense of neutrality), "[w]hen sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring," ante, at 6; what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising "[t]he liberty protected by the Constitution," ibid.? Surely not the encouragement of procreation, since the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry. This case "does not involve" the issue of homosexual marriage only if one entertains the belief that principle and logic have nothing to do with the decisions of this Court. Many will hope that, as the Court comfortingly assures us, this is so.""" [1]
[0] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/558/#599
[1] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/558/#604
He never said Scalia was perfect. He implied that he was our last hope
So even if that was OPs point, it's wrong.
So what makes this utility-pole surveillance different? The cameras are placed in public (outside, on utility poles which presumably involve a public easement). They are not equipped with extreme telephoto lenses or infrared cameras. It is hard, in the abstract, to see how that is any different than a First Amendment auditor doing the same thing.
Where I think it's arguably different is in the sustained, targeted nature of the activity. If one or more private citizens decide to film outside a person's house for 15-30 minutes as part of an audit or similar activity, yes it's probably annoying, but annoying doesn't mean illegal. But if they station themselves outside the house night and day, recording the comings and goings of the residents, I think that arguably rises to the level of stalking. To be clear, I don't think the surveillance cameras meet the legal definition of stalking, but they arguably have similar impact.
I don't think nosy neighbors should be illegal, for instance, but if they choose to plant something inside your property, then they should be in big trouble.
"We received a tip that a drug deal was going down in this area; it's just a coincidence that one of the cameras happened to be able to see inside that house."
There is, of course a difference in that you have a reasonable chance of noticing a stake-out taking place, but then you have a similar chance of noticing cameras being placed on utility poles near your home so...
The majority opinion was written by Scalia, joined by Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer.
With Dissent by Stevens, joined by Rehnquist, O'Connor, Kennedy
Thomas is still on the court. I think Gorsuch is even more protective of due process than Scalia. I think the 3 liberals would vote to strike it down. That is 5. Robert’s, Kavanaugh, and Barret could go either way.
There are women on grindr???
I would suspect that for MTF individuals that Grindr would be one of the few places with a critical mass of both people they are looking for and people looking for them, even if that's not really the intended or main target audience. From what I understand, trans individuals have a hard time on other dating apps because their profiles get reported a lot for being "misleading" (which is a whole debate that I'm not getting into)
You wanted a prostitute but didn't intend to pay?
If you're just looking for a hookup, the first hint of a money demand should have been met with "nope, not interested in pay-for-play". And drop them.
My very limited understanding is that the vast majority of these sting cases are dismissed as entrapment and are largely about dissuading others from attempting to solicit in the future. Are there any lawyers on that could speak to this?
Aka ‘making an example’ of someone. The buyers in particular only seem to get named in specific high profile cases or when the authorities feel it’s really out of hand and they need to do something drastic.
Similar to drugs frankly.
Unlike drugs, it seems extremely rare for anyone involved to actually get more than token jail time unless they are a very large scale madame/pimp (and jail is not, generally, prison).
> I met someone on Grindr who was really cute and she asked for payment upfront. Then I said that makes me nervous and I’d like to get to know you first, just a regular date.
So even after a woman asked you to pay her (for what?), you decided would still like to date this woman? And you expected to convince her to stop being a prostitute during the date?
what state are you in where paying for a prostitute would get you sent to prison?
Why would you be killed in prison - for getting a prostitute?
hand in hand https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/14/politics/house-vote-supre...