Lawsuit challenges Virginia City's use of cameras for warrantless surveillance

I wish such fights and compromise were more common, rather than the furtive implementations and blind acceptance that is standard.

What's the point of a surveillance system if you are not going to use it to solve property crimes? The biggest issues with liveability in a lot of "nice" US cities like SF are property crime and law enforcement choosing to go after "easy" white collar crime like traffic and parking violations instead of the blue collar crimes that affect safety and property.

How is it identifying the car without the plate? VIN?

> In 2023, Norfolk Police partnered with a company called Flock Safety, Inc. to install 172 automatic license plate reading cameras across town. The cameras were strategically placed to create what Norfolk Police Chief Mark Talbot referred to as a “nice curtain of technology,” which would make it “difficult to drive anywhere of any distance without running into a camera somewhere.”

> Unlike traditional traffic cameras—which capture an image only when they sense speeding or someone running a red light—Flock’s cameras capture images of every car driving by, which it retains for at least 30 days. Artificial intelligence then uses those images to create a “Vehicle Fingerprint” that enables any Flock subscriber to both track where that vehicle has gone and identify what other vehicles it has been seen nearby.

This makes it a little ambiguous whether the Flock subscription is for the specific added service of tracking a car around, or access to the whole system.

The principle is what is being tested here and, should the IJ prevail against the city, that ruling would apply as equally to Amazon as it does to Flock Safety.

If the constituency didn't balk then, at the very least, the data would be available to the public and would help balance the power dynamic with the government.

In this case the dog theoretically alerted on amphetamines, which are not always illegal since there are numerous prescribable versions of amphetamines. The rest of the "probable cause" wasn't indicative of any crime in particular (traveling to Oklahoma and New Mexico is hardly proof of anything).

OTOH, if you are going to be traficking drugs for a living, don't leave duffel bags in plain sight, and use your turn signal.

> 100% Homicide cases cleared in Cobb County, Georgia and Riverside, California with the help of Flock*

> *As of March 2023 Cobb County PD in Georgia reports, “Over the last two years... we’ve had 62 homicides and solved 100% of those homicides.”

I'm sure people's initial gut reaction is "100% murder solves is awesome!" because, well, yeah. But we need to quantify what a "solve" is: You charge someone with murder; the secondary concern is if they did it.

When you read extremely high figures like 100% solves in 62 murders over two-years, one has to wonder if this is the most effective detective work ever, or they're finding any warm bodies to charge to pump the stats. As the article about this says, the national average is closer to 50%, and even that is known to contain wrongly charged and or convicted people.

Do people really believe that a couple of hundred cameras in fixed public locations really improved the solve rate that much? I'm extremely skeptical.

And:

> 90% Michigan freeway shootings resulted in arrests with the help of Flock*

> * As of July 2023, Michigan State Police reports using Flock in 90% of the freeway shootings having an arrest in all of them.

So now we're using arresting people (not charges, or convictions) as our yard stick? So we're rewarding police departments for going out and finding anyone who may be loosely connected, taking away their civil liberties, in order to look better on paper? That's outright gross. Major red flag.

Let's just say for the sake of argument that "Flock Safety" helps police find/arrest/charge legitimate suspects. There must be better ways of showing it. Also someone needs to look into Cobb County PD in Georgia for the quality of their murder charges, because that stat is more indicative of abuse than competence.*

There's no constitutional right to privacy (Roe v Wade overturned, remember), it's legal to photograph people in public in that country, and doing something legal 60 times per second in 170 locations automatically doesn't make it illegal.

"REQUEST FOR RELIEF

Plaintiffs respectfully request that the Court issue judgment against Defendants as follows:

a. Declaring that Defendants’ policies and customs described in this Complaint are unlawful and violate the Fourth Amendment (incorporated through the Fourteenth Amendment) to the U.S. Constitution;

b. Permanently enjoining Defendants from operating the Flock Cameras;

c. Ordering Defendants to delete all images, records, and other data generated by the Flock Cameras;

d. Permanently enjoining Defendants and their officers, employees, agents, and any others acting on their behalf from using the Flock Cameras to collect images or information without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause;

e. Permanently enjoining Defendants and their officers, employees, agents, and any others acting on their behalf from accessing any images, records, or other data generated by the Flock Cameras without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause;

f. Awarding Plaintiffs’ counsel reasonable attorneys’ fees and litigation costs, including but not limited to fees, costs, and disbursements pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988; and

g. Ordering all other relief to which Plaintiffs are entitled, regardless of whether such relief is demanded in this Complaint."

You could argue that point b is a blanket ban, but in fact it's kinda limited: it asks to prohibit the city from operating the cameras, but says nothing of any other party operating them. All the other points simply ask for the city to be required to obtain a warrant, just like it would have to do under normal circumstances.

That's not at all what's going to happen. I don't think we have reason to believe it's going to significantly reduce crime let alone make it "statistically pointless."

What it will do is, you know, conduct mass surveillance. This technology will support the policing doctrine that everybody is a criminal suspect. That means you are a criminal suspect, and the police will watch you, and if they want to, they'll stop or arrest you for something or other. You don't need to be dangerous to anyone, that's irrelevant. Just vulnerable. And this tech makes you more vulnerable.

Is that a price worth paying for a pipe dream of safety?

No. Just normal warrants for surveillance like always, and ban "warrantless" subscriptions to data sources that might be used to investigate or prosecute crime.

Here's a New York Times article for today "As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator"

And you want warrantless broad spectrum surveillance to prevent crime.