City Sued for Using Flock Cameras in ‘Massive’ Surveillance

welcome once again to L to's law here's Steve lato Andrew sent me notes to Steve check out this story I believe it's Trifecta it's topic you like to talk about involves the institute for justice and I saw it on Gizmodo which is a sister site to Jalopnik where you used to write and I said you know you're right my friend now I did get this from a whole bunch of other people thank you very much I just now pulled the press release from The Institute for Justice's website I'll put a link to them in the description below the video Federal lawsuit challenges Virginia City's use of over 17 cameras to conduct prolonged warrantless surveillance of the entire driving population now this is interesting because this isn't the only city that's doing this these systems are now used in more than 5,000 us communities if it's not happening to you it's coming soon Dan King wrote this two Norfolk area residents teamed up with the instit for justice to file a federal lawsuit against the city challenging the constitutionality of its massive vehicle surveillance system which allows police to monitor the comings and goings of all drivers in the city the two argue the program violates a fourth amendment rights of all citizens and this is used in thousands of communities across the country uh one of the plaintiffs is a 42-year-old uh husband and father who recently retired from the Navy I don't like the government following my every movement and treating me like a criminal suspect when they have no reason to believe I've done anything wrong uh another plaintiff is a 44-year-old home healthcare worker who lives in Portsmouth my work requires me to drive around Northfolk very often and it's incredibly disturbing to know the city can track my every move during that time in 2023 the city police partnered with a company called flock safety to install 172 automatic license plate reading cameras across town and some people I'm sure have already wondered wait Steve I see security cameras everywhere you go inside a building with security cameras what's the difference well the different thing here is that number one it's outdoors number two they're reading license plates it's not just recording what happens they're also reading the license plates and doing stuff with that the cameras were strategically placed to create what the police chief calls a nice curtain of Technology 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 red light flocks cameras capture images of every car driving by which it then retains for at least 30 days so again the difference is that if there's a camera there and all it does is record people who run a stop sign or a red light well that's different or a camera that just gets you when you're speeding artificial intelligence and and hey where could that go wrong 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 so what vehicles does your vehicle associate with they [Laughter] know they've created a draget that allows the government to monitor everyone's day-to-day movements without a warrant or probable cause this type of mass surveillance is a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment says an JJ attorney and it's not just norfol police who can do this tracking because flock pulls its data in a centralized database police across the entire country can access over a billion monthly data points that means not just tracking drivers within a particular jurisdiction but potentially across the entire nation so they could say hey there's this vehicle we just saw the vehicle uh I wonder where else it's been and they can ask the system has this thing popped up any place else on your system yes it has it was over here then it was over here that's disturbing following someone's every move tell you some incredibly intimate details about them such as where they work who they associate with whether or not they're religious what hobbies they have possibly even medical conditions they might have says JJ senior attorney Robert frer who I've met by the way great guy this type of intrusive ongoing monitoring of someone's life is not just creepy it's unconstitutional all of this happens without any judicial oversight the police can access flock database without a warrant and can view save and share any data prior to its deletion nothing about the operating procedures requires the officials to establish probable CA or get a warrant before searching the system worse yet the police department's policy actually requires police to log into flock and utilize the technology throughout their entire shift it's no surprise that surveillance systems like this have been repeatedly abused in Kansas officials were caught using flock to stalk their exes including a police chief who used flock 228 times over 4 months to track his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend's vehicles in California several police departments violated California law by sharing data from their License Plate Reader database with other departments across the country and as is the case with other databases these can be susceptible to hacking which can then reveal private data several other local municipalities including Chesapeake suuk Hampton Newport News is of white and Franklin also use flock cameras the company allows these departments to share data with one another or any other police departments across the country that use flock in May of this year a state trial court held that norlex system lays a drag net over the entire city and that prolonged tracking of public movements with surveillance serves to invade the reasonable expectation of privacy citizens possess in their entire movements and so I know some people say but Steve the second you step out your door you are in public you can't expect privacy well that's a little different than being photographed and tracked and having the data stored and analyzed and artificially intelligence uh about you every time you're out someplace and and so I think this is kind of like a spectrum okay and and this right here is one far end of the spectrum okay other courts including the US Supreme Court have ruled at the use of modern Technologies for prolonged monitoring of someone's every movement is a search under the Fourth Amendment and thus requires a warrant in Carpenter versus us the Supreme Court held that accessing historical cell phone location data was a search requiring Fourth Amendment protections relying on Carpenter the fourth US ciruit court of appeals held that a surveillance program in Baltimore which captured aerial photos of 90% of the city every second for at least 40 hours a week was a search because it afforded the city retroactive access to detailed encyclopedic record of every person's movement in the city across days and weeks this case is part of 's project on the Fourth Amendment which seeks to protect the right of Americans to be secure in their persons and property J is litigating several challenges to warrantless searches of private property including in Louisiana Pennsylvania and Virginia in New Jersey IG is also challenging the bulk collection and prolonged retention of newborn babies genetic data without parents' consent and so there's a whole bunch of things going on there this like I said before I think is problematic and it bothers me to be living in a in a surveillance Society everywhere you go everything you do is being recorded and on the one hand we've got the internet and a bunch of like things like smartphones tracking our every move already but when the government starts doing it uh that's an issue because remember there is I don't know Constitution Bill of Rights that kind of thing Fourth Amendment as they point out more specifically um that you you should be allowed to just go about your life and be left alone on some level and just again to make sure this point is there yes when you walk into a bank or you walk into a post office there's probably a surveillance camera one you know it's there two it's just recording what's happening okay is it actually photographing you and running that you know information to database to figure out who you are and tracking your moves and then sharing the information with other people and that's the problem with this this network and so I'm sure some of you are familiar with the book uh 1984 uh ironically which is now ancient history but when written was about the future and and parts of the future came true before 84 and parts of it are coming true after and so you could be living in one of the cities that has this system and uh yeah you are then constantly under surveillance when you're out and about which is I think quite intrusive so we'll see what happens the court will rule on it and I suspect this is the kind of thing that will literally take the US Supreme Court to straighten out meaning that you're going to get some conflicting rulings from different circuits and it's going to take the US Supreme Court to go yes or no on whether or not this is a permissible thing for the government to do and that is literally to track all vehicular traffic in a city 24 hours a day 7 days a week and not just photograph it but analyze it and calculate it and then share the information with other people without warrants is a serious issue and I always like to point out that the institute for justice is a nonprofit and they do a lot of work that otherwise would not get done because people generally speaking can't afford to take cases like this to the US Supreme Court and so who's going to look out for the rights of the people who are concerned about this but can't afford to chase it so the JJ does that but they survive entirely off of donations and support from people who believe in the work they're doing so I always tell you that if you find this story interesting and you think they're doing good work please support them I put the link in the description below the video and even if you can't support them financially you can support them morally just give them moral support what I mean by that is you can go and bookmark their page subscribe to the newsletter because that's one of the ways they find out about these things is people say Steve I just got an email from The Institute so Andrew pointed out that the story got picked up by all kinds of other people including Gizmodo sister site to Jalopnik and so the story is out there now but please support the institute for justice they're great people doing great work so Dan King wrote that press release Federal lawsuit challenges Virginia City's use of over 170 cameras to conduct prolonged warrantless surveillance of entire driving population questions or comments put them below let's talk to you later bye-bye thank you for watching Leo's law I haven't slept for 10 days because that would be too long