Hacker News Reader

Comment by nulbyte | Hacker News Reader

I wonder who owns the pole. Most utility poles are owned by the incumbent utility, not by the government. If an ordinary citizen attached a camera to property they did not own and it was, say, pointed at a police officer's home, I think a conviction would be a near guarantee.

If an ordinary citizen cannot do it, I don't think police should ordinarily be permitted to do it; there should be a review. Given this lasted for months, there clearly wasn't immenent danger.

People have a right to be secure in their houses under the 4th amendment. People have a reasonable expectation that others will not install cameras on property they do not own for the purpose of surveiling a house the other does not own. Secretly installing a camera seems like a violation of that reasonable expectation, thus making it a search.

View on HN

> I wonder who owns the pole. Most utility poles are owned by the incumbent utility, not by the government.

Who owns the utility?

In Canada, for example, it's common for the utility companies responsible for electricity transmission and/or distribution to be owned by provincial or municipal governments.

Utilities in the US are private entities with special regulations around them.

Aren't there some pretty significant electric utilities in the US that are municipally or state owned? The ones that come to my mind are in LA, Seattle, and Nebraska, if I'm not mistaken.

At least in Canada, even when a "private" company is involved, there can be significant government ownership. Hydro One in Ontario is publicly-traded, yet the Ontario Government holds nearly a majority of the shares, for example.

That's right--in the U.S., some utilities are "investor-owned." Others are cooperatives (owned by customers) and still others are owned by various local governments.

I propose that even if the government (indirectly) owns the utility pole, using them for espionage by a different government agency is still an infringement of rights.

The government also owns schools, libraries, and hospitals, yet (I would hope) we don't want that to mean the police can get your school transcripts, library or medical records, or compel hospital staff to restrain you until the police arrive, without a warrant.

In sum, the government owns far too much to be allowed to use all they own for whatever purpose they please.

> an ordinary citizen attached a camera to property they did not own and it was, say, pointed at a police officer's home, I think a conviction would be a near guarantee

Conviction for what?

> Conviction for what?

Drug possession. Drugs they found in your car after a "random" stop. I Whether you never use drugs or not doesn't matter, they will find something.

If you think cops have to play it fair if they wanna punish you, you are a bit naive.

Perhaps you are more naive than you think.

Do you think a police officer would really risk his livelihood to attempt this sort of thing?

Think about all of the illegal steps an officer would need to take - from procuring the drugs to falsifying the documents (narrative, etc.) - just to "punish" you.

And what exactly is the payoff?

Yeah, it's completely ridiculous to imagine cops planting drugs.

https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/baltimore-polic...

I don't think anything here, I just watch what happens.

I wouldn't do most of the stuff cops in the US are doing, and without knowing you the slightest I still have some confidence that you wouldn't either.

Yet they do. Not all of them, but some. And that is enough.

I'm just savoring the irony here.

trespass? theft? illegal use of...? they can get very clever when it comes to being able to say you broke the law. it seems it is near impossible to go the entire day without breaking a law of some sort as if it were by design.

If you have power lines with communication utility services running lower on the poles, those communication lines are paying rent to string their lines on those poles. So they could come at you with failure to pay rent, breach of contract (can there be a breach if you didn't sign), some sort of something along those lines would allow for at least a civil suit from the pole's owner.

wiretapping, voyeurism, intrusion on seclusion...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusion_on_seclusion

invasion of privacy; endangering an officer

If the utility company gave you explicit permission to put it there you'd be fine though. Which is almost certainly what happened here yeah?

Whichever party owns/maintains the poles can usually grant access to additonal parties if they see fit, including private citizens, other companies, the government, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com