WEBVTT
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Welcome back to Challenges of Faith radio program. I'm Gary McCance.
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Thank you for joining here on episode 3430. Reclaim the
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Net has laid out an article in that a report
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that a federal judge has called license plate readers a
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form of surveillance. The lower instance federal courts are making
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their rulings regarding license plate readers, LPRS, and they're so
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far coming in contradictory. The latest is from a federal
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judge in Oklahoma who has no doubt that the technology
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is a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance that is approaching
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a dragnet-type law enforcement practice and that the system is
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constitutionally problematic. because it lets the police indiscriminately and passively
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catalog your whereabouts over an extended period of time.
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U.S. District Judge Sarah E.
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Hill of the Northern District of Oklahoma made this and
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other points in her ruling in United States v. Cal,
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where she said that a Tulsa County Sheriff's Deputy violated
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the Fourth Amendment when he searched LPR systems without a warrant.
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The case started with the traffic stop of a Mazda
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SUV with a California license plate that passed the deputy's
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camera as he was parked by the highway.
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The judge said the deputy.
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Followed the car for no apparent reason other than the
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fact that it had.
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A California license plate.
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The vehicle was driven by Melissa Cowell and the stop
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was justified as the deputy said she had changed lanes
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without signaling and was following another car too closely. But
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before he pulled her over, the deputy ran the plate
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through two LPR databases, FLOC.
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And Vehicle Manager.
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The judge said this gave him access to more than
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50 individual records of cows' whereabouts across the country for
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an entire month, and that he had access to at
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least 30 days of the vehicle's location information in many states.
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The deputy used this information to help justify his search
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in her car. That search produced about 91 pounds of methamphetamine,
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and Cal 46 of Crane, Missouri, is now charged with
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possession with intent to distribute. But the judge has ruled
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that the evidence was obtained illegally and suppressed it. The
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ruling states the search was not supported by probable cause,
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and it was done without a warrant in violation.
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Of Cal's Fourth Amendment rights.
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The judge also suppressed all evidence obtained after the initiation
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of the ALPR search. The judge accepted that the technology
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has remarkable benefits, but also asked why is it the
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government's business where everyone goes all the time. The government
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cannot go snooping through our personal lives and business without
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an adequate basis to do so. In her ruling, Judge
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Hill also said that people do not have a reasonable
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expectation of privacy in their movements on a public roadway,
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but that the LPR technology becomes constitutionally problematic when law
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enforcement can indiscriminately and passively catalog your whereabouts over an
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extended period of time. The ruling is in contrast to
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to one made in March by the Fifth Circuit, which
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found that police use of plate reader data was not
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a Fourth Amendment search, with the system produced the periodic
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sightings of a car on public roads. And in California,
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a federal court has ruled that police can search for
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and look at eight photographs of a car taken by
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license plate readers, and that does not constitute a Fourth
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Amendment search. In the cow case, eight photos may be
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one thing, but a month's worth of someone's movements is
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a different story. And that story is one of mass surveillance.
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The difference is the database, and it keeps growing. All right, listeners,
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so what say you, whether for or against? Did you
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hear all the issues involved? What if that was you?
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Absence to drugs. But it didn't make a difference. Also,
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according to Reclaim the Net, Department of Justice says flock
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camera data is not protected by Fourth Amendment.
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The U.S.
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Government has told the Federal Appeals Court that data collected
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by flock safety cameras is not protected.
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By the Fourth Amendment because being.
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Watched on the road is the reality of modern life,
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and therefore nobody.
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Can expect privacy there. Did you hear that?
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The argument was made by the Justice Department attorney during
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oral argument in the Fifth Circuit in the case of U.S. v.
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Brown Lee.
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The panel of judges, Chief Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, Judge Ramirez,
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Judge Richman.
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Heard the case on October the 5th.
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One judge said there's a general rule that publicly observable
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movements are not protected and that flock cameras only enable
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episodic monitoring of cars as they pass by as opposed
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to tracking them continuously. The chief judge asked, If that
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rule still makes sense today when there are cameras everywhere
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and the data they collect can be easily analyzed, is
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that really the right rule in this day and age
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where everything is observed and all can be analyzed instantaneously,
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she asked.
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Another judge maintained.
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That it's the perversive regulation of cars when they're in
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plain view on public thoroughfares that diminishes any expectation of privacy.
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He sought to differentiate between that and tracking people's phones, saying,
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we all expect to be subject to intermittent surveillance when
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we're driving around. It's the reality of modern life. We
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don't necessarily expect our phone, which is essentially part of
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our body, to be tracked as we move in both
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public and private places. The chief judge kept asking if
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the rule that allows this type of surveillance is still
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valid When it becomes so pervasive, when it becomes not
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spread out and is on every corner, which is soon
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to be, she asked, is it really episodic? When it
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so permeates everything, she also asked and noted that finding
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in the defendant's favor would be a big ask, A-S-K.
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The defendant, Charles Brownlee, was convicted of a series of
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armed robberies of cash stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
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and his lawyers are now trying to get his conviction overturned,
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arguing that police use Flock and another company, Vigilant Solutions,
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to track him down without a warrant.
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Brownlee's lawyers argue.
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That this is unconstitutional, while one judge said that the
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technology is not capable of following people into constitutionally protected areas,
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and that is why it's different from phones. which are
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tracked as people's mood in both public and private places.
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The judge also dismissed the idea that the government can
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use the data collected by Flock and other companies to
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track people all the time, saying the political process is
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a serious check on that hypothetical ever coming to fruition,
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and I think a better check than an erroneous extension
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of Fourth Amendment. Assistant Federal Public Defender Matthew Wright, who
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represents Brown Lee, argued that the way the police use
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the databases in this case constitutes a search and that
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the data collected by Flock and Vigilant is stunningly comprehensive.
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Now, I'm going to take a moment. You don't mind
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if you take a sip of my water. He said.
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That the initial... Boy, that water was delicious. He said.
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Go ahead and laugh. You know it was funny.
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He said that the initial collection of data is indiscriminate
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and that it is collected from everybody and that it
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can be used to reconstruct your pattern of life. Wright
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said the police can learn when you go to work,
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when you're out late at night stepping out on your partner,
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when you're going to church on Sunday, that's a search.
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He noted that the police were able to use the
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data to find Brownlee's car in two and a half hours,
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literally a needle in a haystack. But they didn't even
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know the needle they were looking for when they started.
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The court has not yet ruled in the case. The
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argument comes as there is a flurry of activity around
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the use of license plate readers and their data in
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the United States. A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled that
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using this technology to track a woman's car without a
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warrant was unconstitutional. While in Texas, at least $ 30 million
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has been spent on flight cameras alone, with the state's
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governor in August pausing funding of the purchase of these
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devices by state agencies. Meanwhile, a bill has been proposed
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in the U.S. Congress that would ban federal agencies from
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using license plate readers on their data. The argument that
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this is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment because
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its reality rings hollow, because it's the government that has
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made it so.
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Meanwhile, the rule.
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That is supposed to protect citizens from this type of
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mass surveillance keeps shrinking every time another camera is installed.
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Effectively protecting less and less. Alright, so you heard all
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the pros and the cons, even from the judges. But
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what say you, the effective one?
1
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Welcome back to Challenges of Faith radio program. I'm Gary McCance.
2
00:00:04.559 --> 00:00:11.449
Thank you for joining here on episode 3430. Reclaim the
3
00:00:11.589 --> 00:00:16.670
Net has laid out an article in that a report
4
00:00:16.710 --> 00:00:21.570
that a federal judge has called license plate readers a
5
00:00:21.829 --> 00:00:29.079
form of surveillance. The lower instance federal courts are making
6
00:00:29.120 --> 00:00:34.600
their rulings regarding license plate readers, LPRS, and they're so
7
00:00:34.740 --> 00:00:39.490
far coming in contradictory. The latest is from a federal
8
00:00:39.549 --> 00:00:43.530
judge in Oklahoma who has no doubt that the technology
9
00:00:43.590 --> 00:00:48.070
is a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance that is approaching
10
00:00:48.109 --> 00:00:53.750
a dragnet-type law enforcement practice and that the system is
11
00:00:53.810 --> 00:00:59.100
constitutionally problematic. because it lets the police indiscriminately and passively
12
00:00:59.200 --> 00:01:03.600
catalog your whereabouts over an extended period of time.
13
00:01:04.920 --> 00:01:06.799
U.S. District Judge Sarah E.
14
00:01:06.900 --> 00:01:10.890
Hill of the Northern District of Oklahoma made this and
15
00:01:10.930 --> 00:01:14.010
other points in her ruling in United States v. Cal,
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00:01:14.790 --> 00:01:19.209
where she said that a Tulsa County Sheriff's Deputy violated
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00:01:19.230 --> 00:01:23.730
the Fourth Amendment when he searched LPR systems without a warrant.
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The case started with the traffic stop of a Mazda
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SUV with a California license plate that passed the deputy's
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00:01:32.719 --> 00:01:35.680
camera as he was parked by the highway.
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00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:38.060
The judge said the deputy.
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Followed the car for no apparent reason other than the
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fact that it had.
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A California license plate.
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The vehicle was driven by Melissa Cowell and the stop
26
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was justified as the deputy said she had changed lanes
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without signaling and was following another car too closely. But
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00:01:55.519 --> 00:01:57.859
before he pulled her over, the deputy ran the plate
29
00:01:57.900 --> 00:02:01.079
through two LPR databases, FLOC.
30
00:02:01.180 --> 00:02:02.340
And Vehicle Manager.
31
00:02:03.400 --> 00:02:05.760
The judge said this gave him access to more than
32
00:02:05.760 --> 00:02:10.539
50 individual records of cows' whereabouts across the country for
33
00:02:10.580 --> 00:02:14.219
an entire month, and that he had access to at
34
00:02:14.280 --> 00:02:18.879
least 30 days of the vehicle's location information in many states.
35
00:02:20.219 --> 00:02:23.159
The deputy used this information to help justify his search
36
00:02:23.199 --> 00:02:29.060
in her car. That search produced about 91 pounds of methamphetamine,
37
00:02:29.280 --> 00:02:34.750
and Cal 46 of Crane, Missouri, is now charged with
38
00:02:34.930 --> 00:02:39.789
possession with intent to distribute. But the judge has ruled
39
00:02:39.849 --> 00:02:44.449
that the evidence was obtained illegally and suppressed it. The
40
00:02:44.490 --> 00:02:47.819
ruling states the search was not supported by probable cause,
41
00:02:48.560 --> 00:02:51.139
and it was done without a warrant in violation.
42
00:02:50.639 --> 00:02:52.580
Of Cal's Fourth Amendment rights.
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00:02:53.900 --> 00:02:58.979
The judge also suppressed all evidence obtained after the initiation
44
00:02:59.039 --> 00:03:04.620
of the ALPR search. The judge accepted that the technology
45
00:03:04.659 --> 00:03:09.250
has remarkable benefits, but also asked why is it the
46
00:03:09.289 --> 00:03:14.669
government's business where everyone goes all the time. The government
47
00:03:14.710 --> 00:03:19.229
cannot go snooping through our personal lives and business without
48
00:03:19.289 --> 00:03:23.330
an adequate basis to do so. In her ruling, Judge
49
00:03:23.389 --> 00:03:26.930
Hill also said that people do not have a reasonable
50
00:03:26.969 --> 00:03:31.849
expectation of privacy in their movements on a public roadway,
51
00:03:32.569 --> 00:03:38.240
but that the LPR technology becomes constitutionally problematic when law
52
00:03:38.259 --> 00:03:43.900
enforcement can indiscriminately and passively catalog your whereabouts over an
53
00:03:43.960 --> 00:03:48.219
extended period of time. The ruling is in contrast to
54
00:03:48.810 --> 00:03:51.240
to one made in March by the Fifth Circuit, which
55
00:03:51.300 --> 00:03:54.919
found that police use of plate reader data was not
56
00:03:54.979 --> 00:03:58.460
a Fourth Amendment search, with the system produced the periodic
57
00:03:58.520 --> 00:04:02.699
sightings of a car on public roads. And in California,
58
00:04:02.719 --> 00:04:05.259
a federal court has ruled that police can search for
59
00:04:05.300 --> 00:04:07.969
and look at eight photographs of a car taken by
60
00:04:08.039 --> 00:04:12.030
license plate readers, and that does not constitute a Fourth
61
00:04:12.210 --> 00:04:16.410
Amendment search. In the cow case, eight photos may be
62
00:04:16.529 --> 00:04:20.550
one thing, but a month's worth of someone's movements is
63
00:04:20.589 --> 00:04:24.870
a different story. And that story is one of mass surveillance.
64
00:04:25.730 --> 00:04:32.329
The difference is the database, and it keeps growing. All right, listeners,
65
00:04:32.350 --> 00:04:37.939
so what say you, whether for or against? Did you
66
00:04:37.980 --> 00:04:42.680
hear all the issues involved? What if that was you?
67
00:04:43.779 --> 00:04:52.560
Absence to drugs. But it didn't make a difference. Also,
68
00:04:52.639 --> 00:04:57.189
according to Reclaim the Net, Department of Justice says flock
69
00:04:57.209 --> 00:05:00.529
camera data is not protected by Fourth Amendment.
70
00:05:01.810 --> 00:05:02.250
The U.S.
71
00:05:02.290 --> 00:05:05.670
Government has told the Federal Appeals Court that data collected
72
00:05:05.730 --> 00:05:08.750
by flock safety cameras is not protected.
73
00:05:09.829 --> 00:05:11.860
By the Fourth Amendment because being.
74
00:05:11.620 --> 00:05:14.240
Watched on the road is the reality of modern life,
75
00:05:15.279 --> 00:05:17.240
and therefore nobody.
76
00:05:16.680 --> 00:05:19.839
Can expect privacy there. Did you hear that?
77
00:05:21.399 --> 00:05:25.949
The argument was made by the Justice Department attorney during
78
00:05:26.149 --> 00:05:29.209
oral argument in the Fifth Circuit in the case of U.S. v.
79
00:05:29.269 --> 00:05:30.029
Brown Lee.
80
00:05:31.350 --> 00:05:37.800
The panel of judges, Chief Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, Judge Ramirez,
81
00:05:38.319 --> 00:05:39.319
Judge Richman.
82
00:05:39.879 --> 00:05:41.730
Heard the case on October the 5th.
83
00:05:44.029 --> 00:05:47.370
One judge said there's a general rule that publicly observable
84
00:05:47.430 --> 00:05:52.699
movements are not protected and that flock cameras only enable
85
00:05:52.879 --> 00:05:57.420
episodic monitoring of cars as they pass by as opposed
86
00:05:57.459 --> 00:06:03.100
to tracking them continuously. The chief judge asked, If that
87
00:06:03.160 --> 00:06:06.689
rule still makes sense today when there are cameras everywhere
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and the data they collect can be easily analyzed, is
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that really the right rule in this day and age
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where everything is observed and all can be analyzed instantaneously,
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she asked.
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Another judge maintained.
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That it's the perversive regulation of cars when they're in
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plain view on public thoroughfares that diminishes any expectation of privacy.
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He sought to differentiate between that and tracking people's phones, saying,
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we all expect to be subject to intermittent surveillance when
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we're driving around. It's the reality of modern life. We
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don't necessarily expect our phone, which is essentially part of
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our body, to be tracked as we move in both
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public and private places. The chief judge kept asking if
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the rule that allows this type of surveillance is still
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valid When it becomes so pervasive, when it becomes not
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spread out and is on every corner, which is soon
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to be, she asked, is it really episodic? When it
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so permeates everything, she also asked and noted that finding
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in the defendant's favor would be a big ask, A-S-K.
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The defendant, Charles Brownlee, was convicted of a series of
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armed robberies of cash stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
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and his lawyers are now trying to get his conviction overturned,
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arguing that police use Flock and another company, Vigilant Solutions,
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to track him down without a warrant.
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Brownlee's lawyers argue.
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That this is unconstitutional, while one judge said that the
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technology is not capable of following people into constitutionally protected areas,
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and that is why it's different from phones. which are
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tracked as people's mood in both public and private places.
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The judge also dismissed the idea that the government can
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use the data collected by Flock and other companies to
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track people all the time, saying the political process is
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a serious check on that hypothetical ever coming to fruition,
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and I think a better check than an erroneous extension
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of Fourth Amendment. Assistant Federal Public Defender Matthew Wright, who
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represents Brown Lee, argued that the way the police use
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the databases in this case constitutes a search and that
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the data collected by Flock and Vigilant is stunningly comprehensive.
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Now, I'm going to take a moment. You don't mind
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if you take a sip of my water. He said.
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That the initial... Boy, that water was delicious. He said.
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Go ahead and laugh. You know it was funny.
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He said that the initial collection of data is indiscriminate
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and that it is collected from everybody and that it
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can be used to reconstruct your pattern of life. Wright
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said the police can learn when you go to work,
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when you're out late at night stepping out on your partner,
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when you're going to church on Sunday, that's a search.
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He noted that the police were able to use the
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data to find Brownlee's car in two and a half hours,
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literally a needle in a haystack. But they didn't even
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know the needle they were looking for when they started.
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The court has not yet ruled in the case. The
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argument comes as there is a flurry of activity around
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the use of license plate readers and their data in
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the United States. A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled that
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using this technology to track a woman's car without a
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warrant was unconstitutional. While in Texas, at least $ 30 million
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has been spent on flight cameras alone, with the state's
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governor in August pausing funding of the purchase of these
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devices by state agencies. Meanwhile, a bill has been proposed
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in the U.S. Congress that would ban federal agencies from
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using license plate readers on their data. The argument that
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this is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment because
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its reality rings hollow, because it's the government that has
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made it so.
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Meanwhile, the rule.
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That is supposed to protect citizens from this type of
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mass surveillance keeps shrinking every time another camera is installed.
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Effectively protecting less and less. Alright, so you heard all
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the pros and the cons, even from the judges. But
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what say you, the effective one?
