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Comment by text0404 | Hacker News Reader

Sure, but putting that data into a persistent database which law enforcement searches on demand is a violation of the fourth amendment.

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No? Which Supreme Court decision decided that persisting video recorded in public is a violation of the Fourth Amendment?

Chatrie. It's about the use of the data, not the data itself.

Law enforcement searches a database of recorded, retained, aggregated data about people who have not committed crimes: this constitutes a fourth amendment search. Go ahead and record all you want, but when law enforcement decides to use that data, they have to get a warrant.

That case didn't cover public-facing cameras, that was about the government demanding telecoms hand over geolocation data on their users. The government was demanding that mobile providers hand over private data, akin to asking Google for your gmail contents.

This is far removed from a camera set up in a public space.

Chatrie held that the government conducted a fourth amendment search when it got the location data, even though the data was held by a third party. The reasoning was that the data revealed Chatrie's physical movements, not that Google itself was somehow a constitutionally private space.

It didn't just reveal Chatrie's movements, it revealed to movements of everyone in the geofenced area. And more importantly, it revealed movements even in private not just in public.

Again, this is far removed from a camera in a public space.

Chatrie was not about the dragnet capturing people in private spaces. It established that LE acquisition and aggregation of location information can constitute a fourth amendment search even when the observations are made in public.

But the observations in the Chatrie case weren't made in public. This was private information that only Google had access to, and law enforcement went and demanded that Google hand over that private information.

By contrast, a person can stand on a street corner with their phone and record everything a Flock camera records.

The SC's holding was that the government's acquisition of location data from a third party was itself a fourth amendment search because the individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy wrt location data. So you're kind of agreeing with me here: the data is either private and subject to a warrant, or it is in public where individuals do have a reasonable expectation of privacy wrt aggregated location information.

And again, a person standing on a street corner is constitutionally distinct from LE following and tracking individuals movement over time.

> The SC's holding was that the government's acquisition of location data from a third party was itself a fourth amendment search because the individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy wrt location data.

Specifically, the GPS coordinates logged by their cellphones.

> So you're kind of agreeing with me here: the data is either private and subject to a warrant, or it is in public where individuals do have a reasonable expectation of privacy wrt aggregated location information.

You're missing the point: Flock camera's don't record where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

> And again, a person standing on a street corner is constitutionally distinct from LE following and tracking individuals movement over time.

Wrong: as long as law enforcement are only tracking your movements in public, they don't need a warrant or probable cause.

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