Are License Plate Cameras Legal? | FedEx & Flock Safety Partnership Explained | Legal Talk

[Music] well hello there everybody welcome back to Legal talk I am so happy to have everybody you know here out there in the audience so glad that you stayed with us uh through that uh nice little commercial break stretch your legs got something to drink whatever may be maybe a snack even you know perhaps out there uh so I'm so happy like I said to have everybody overflowing with joy in fact and uh so next thing I've got now look I I've been talking about this for weeks right saying that we're going to do this I've been trying to do some more General um general purpose general interest legal topics right and I ran across this article that was in The Daily Mail uh recent about just a couple of weeks back I thought it was kind of interesting because it turns out that the writer for the Daily Mail you can you can you can Google this and find it on the Daily Mail uh turns out that uh our beloved package delivery company uh FedEx right Federal Express it turns out that they have struck a deal and they will be uh installing cameras on a lot of their trucks now I don't know about the rest of you guys out there but me I cannot bear uh get out into these mean streets and drive around a little bit without seeing several FedEx delivery trucks out there and so one of the things that uh has happened there is this company called flock Technologies right and flock flck uh is a company that provides uh shall we say a driver's license I mean a uh Drive U what do you call it cameras right they do cameras and they capture your license plate right and so one of the things that they do is they'll set up these cameras in the entrance and exits to uh shopping center so let's say there's a shopping center that has a high uh crime rate uh and they try to so they put up these cameras at the entrances and exits and these cameras what they do they're infused with artificial intelligence God help us I mean everything's got AI in it these days I think I'm waiting for them to come out with an AI toilet right so God knows that's probably coming but uh so these cameras are programmed uh they're connected with computers and they've got artificial intelligence and uh what they what they do is they snap a quick picture at the entrance and exit of a property let's say that's one use case right so you got a shopping center there's been some high crime uh statistics going on there and so what these flock cameras will do is they will uh snap a picture of the license plate of every car that's coming in or going out of that of that uh you know shopping uh mall or shopping center whatever it is and uh they they keep a database of that right uh and so of course the police uh have uh wanted to tie into that and the police have said well look you got all this data that you're capturing uh you know that could be useful for us to you know and so the so the shopping center will not just turn over certain bits of data that the cops need to uh you know to solve a crime they just give the police unfettered access uh to to the database uh so that they can just tap into it anytime they want to right now uh the when I he when I hear about stuff like that the first thing that comes to my mind is I think about well we uh we have in the United States this idea that the government can't just uh you know carry out Master surveillance on us I know yeah may maybe maybe that's a good a good thought or Not Right But in in any event we have the fourth amendment that says that we should be free from unreasonable searches and seizures so the I the idea being that the government can't just uh surveil you all the time uh just to wait and see if you might someday commit a crime right and they've got it on tape or whatever right you supposed to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures uh but the problem here is that uh there and and by the way there has been case law right 1990 2000 recent recent case law as far as uh you know police wanting to set up a drag Nets right so say oh this they can't say this whole neighborhood has a high crime rate we're going to post police officers at the entrance and exits of the of the neighborhood and we're going to stop everybody that's coming through the neighborhood right so there can be drag Nets but they have to be uh done in such a way that is there's a minimal impact on people about um people just going about their business right it it can't be uh it can't be overextended right so let's say if you know we saw this like think about the B Boston Marathon bombing right somebody just set off a bomb in this area so yeah in that case they can set up uh you know a perimeter around that area and check people as they come and go because they're after a very specific you know person or people right that somebody that committed this heinous crime right so they can set up a drag net temporarily for that limited purpose right but they can't just set up General drag Nets the government can't right and so that's that's one thing that so but but then when we talk about so that's physical presence of the police like in an area think about the another thing though what about your data uh Supreme Court uh recently uh ruled that uh that police are not able to just uh willy-nilly access your they can't just go to AT&T or go to T-Mobile or Verizon and ask for all of your uh cell records are all the cell records of everybody in a certain area you know Supreme Court has ruled that that's an over overstep they need a warrant for that right they need to be able to describe particularly they're looking for your cell phone information because they have other information probable cause Reasonable Suspicion they think that you have been involved in some kind of criminal activity so they can come after your cell phone data right so that's the way you know that's the way that has been working now there's a thing in the law called the thirdparty doctrine and the third party Doctrine is basically this right if if they if the government can access data that you've already provided to third parties right uh then you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy in that data and so they can access that so let's say you sign up for some sweep sweep stakes and you give uh you fill out one of those little entrance forms and you give all that information to some company right well that company they can then sell that data to data Brokers as long as that's uh you know within the thing that you signed and authorized right you gave up you freely gave up that information well now data Brokers can put together all that information they can coate it they can you know tag it and now they know an awful lot about you right and so they can sell that to the police and the police can buy that and that is kind of an in run right it works Works its way around the Fourth Amendment so the courts have ruled that if you freely give up information to another party and then the police uh are able to access that they pay for Access uh then uh then then that's not a violation of the Fourth Amendment and so probably uh this uh unless some specific legislation were to come along my take on this is that uh this is probably going to be legal so what's happened basically FedEx has entered into an agreement with flock they going to put these license plate cameras on their trucks I I don't know this for sure as I haven't dug into it but I mean probably I would guess FedEx is probably being somehow compensated for this all right so they put these cameras on their trucks and as their trucks are driving around town making their doing their routes making their deliveries and we're talking thousands and thousands of trucks I mean go only knows I don't even know how many trucks fed it operates in their Fleet but if they put cameras on all those trucks and capture this driver license uh this driver I'm sorry not driver license but the plate information from from your car uh so they they're capturing all of this putting in a database and now the police are going to be able to uh access that that's only half of it they're also going to be able there's going to be an ability for the police to say well we're they're a person of interest right um license plate number abc123 uh we're interested and uh you know talking to that person we think that there's a you know investigative purposes whatever they're going to be able to input that into the system and these that this artificial intelligence is going to enable these cameras to be able to pick up so let's say the police have put into the system that they're looking for this uh they're looking for this certain license plate and then when the FedEx truck passes you on the road being there you go it it it hits and it alerts the police that the license plate they're looking for is at a certain place a certain time now you can argue that there's uh you know plenty of good about that you know police help the police solve crimes etc etc I'm not going to you know I'm going to enter into all of that here and now today especially since our segment's almost over but just FYI uh because somebody asked me recently hey uh this FedEx thing uh you know is that legal can they do that right what about the Fourth Amendment well Fourth Amendment uh you know is not all-encompassing and if you freely drive around uh the city uh with your license plate showing which you have to have your plate showing um then it's probably legal I I I don't think there's a fourth amendment problem with it uh but probably it's going to be litigated and we'll find out if that uh if that take is real or not but te technology uh is on and we just can't really put the genie back in the bottle at this point uh but there you go folks so FedEx is in the uh uh business with this this flock uh the flock security company and they are snapping pictures of license plates as they drive around uh doing their delivery routes and uh they're going to share that information with the police and my take on it it's probably not a Fourth Amendment violation so there you go uh I am a tax attorney John Mitchell here in beautiful Houston Texas and if you have uh any legal question but especially tax questions that's going to be my forte so you can uh you know you can reach me I I've got the brand new a website that I've just got to put up uh um 99- taxel docomo you know just uh you know dial that number or better yet you know send send me an email uh I forgot to forgot to put my email but it's uh it's very very easy right attorney Mitchell pm.me that's that's going to be my email uh but you got my website you got my 800 number there give me a call if you have topics for the show as well I'd love to hear from the audience out there so uh again John Mitchell legal talk happy to have you out there thanks very much we're going to go to another uh quick break and we will be right back so stick with us [Music]