Folks, here is the issue as I see it:
This was something that became a “thing” during the Biden Administration:
The government cannot surveil you without a warrant due to pesky 4th Amendment restrictions.
But Flock can.
Granted, Flock DOES NOT legally have the power to tie “you” (who you are) to a plate they read or a vehicle with a characteristic physical appearance like dents or bumper stickers. They simply file your plate number in a database with metadata (I assume) such as make, model, year, color, sticker locations, dent locations, and so on.
And each time you go by a flock camera in your car, it reads whatever it needs to and ties dates, times, and GPS coordinates to whatever plate number you have. If it doesn’t catch the plate number, or...if you have either removed your plate or altered/concealed it, it still gets tied to a specific plate.
Law enforcement agencies or other authorized entities DO have the ability to do that lookup to find who owns a given license plate, and they can do that with NO WARRANT WHATSOEVER. After all, if they are running a plate number during a traffic stop, they cannot expect to get a warrant as the car is stopped on the side of the road, right? So they have the ability to do this kind of thing for “the greater good”.
So, a local police department or other “authorized agency” signs a CONTRACT with Flock, and they get access to the Flock database with all those juicy, “anonymous” plate number. Generally, they don’t pay per each access, they have some contract that lets them do large numbers of lookups for a given price.
So.
Law enforcement or other “authorized agencies” (which 100% would include nearly any government agency, including ones that have laws they must follow for “warrantless surveillance” so they don’t have to break any laws by surveilling your car.
Because they aren’t doing the surveilling. Flock is. And there aren’t any rules against that you know.
And here we are. Without any warrant, the FBI, the IRS, the ATF, the State and the Local Police can surveil you 24x7 without breaking any law.
During the Biden Administration, I remember they wanted to get money allocated in various budgets for the purchase of private surveillance data, and there was some “debate” about that. In the end, it was all swept under the rug (IIRC) and that was that. I distinctly remember this surfaced briefly, it caught my attention, then disappeared. (the request for funds in various budgets to purchase surveillance data such as Flock provides). They wanted a way to get around the surveillance of private citizens without requiring a warrant, and this was the way to do it.
It is an end run around the 4th Amendment protections on Search and Seizure. It is as simple as that, in my opinion.
If I am erroneous in my analysis here, I am open to correction. This is what I appreciate about Free Republic. This is my analysis, and someone may put an analytic torpedo armed with specific rationality into the side of it, and I will fully accept that as a good thing.
Honestly that is a pretty tight analysis. Thanks.
The move toward using NGOs to skirt direct constitutional limitations on what the government can do is a strategy trend that has been increasing for decades.
Stuff like this is NOT going to stop until congress passes laws strictly restricting it, or until the supreme court makes a decision specifically saying that the use of private 3rd party services is still an infringement on people’s rights!
People are so naive.
Just because we have this pesky thing called the bill of rights doesn’t mean you are protected.
It only means that if you can catch and prove government entities infringing on your rights, you can pursue (likely an uphill battle) redress
Outstanding analysis. That this hasn’t become an election issue, or something reviewed by the SCOTUS is beyond me. If I were caught in a crime, and they located me this way, I’d get a lawyer to sue to have the case thrown out on 4A grounds and let the chips fall where they may.
At least the corrupt judiciary - and it is most certainly and completely corrupt - would be on record as having scuttled 4A. After that, it will take 2A to restore it.
And chainsaws.
Reality is probably worse than your analysis suggests.
“They wanted a way to get around the surveillance of private citizens without requiring a warrant, and this was the way to do it.”
It only takes one federal judge to stop things, and the federal judges rather like to wield power.
Thank you for your well-reasoned analysis, FRiend. It increased my understanding of the issue with Flock.