Yes, that's what they are. But does that mean are they breaking federal law or unconstitutional? I believe we've been told by the courts repeatedly that we should have no expectation of privacy out in public.
I agree that it's not clear that this breaks federal law. But I do think it's clear that this <i>should</i> break federal law.<p>There's an interesting analogy with copyright issues surrounding AI use. Both copyright laws and surveillance were created to (respectively) creative incentives for authors to create novel works; and to protect citizens for indiscriminate surveillance. The laws made sense given the technology available at the time: it simply wasn't feasible to put a cop on every street corner, or to ingest the ideas of every work ever written.<p>But the laws have been eclipsed by technology. Technology makes a mockery of existing laws, by clearly violating their intent. Much has been written to the effect of "why bother to create new, free materials on the internet when it will just get scooped up by an LLM with no attribution to me." Similarly, Flock cameras have the <i>effect</i> or violating privacy in the exact same way the original laws sought to prevent.<p>Unfortunately, laws are slow to change, and monied interests will fight tooth-and-nail to put their profits above the rights of ordinary people. It's going to be a difficult decade or so coming up.
> why bother to create new, free materials on the internet when it will just get scooped up by an LLM with no attribution to me<p>Can confirm. I've personally stopped releasing new open source code, and stopped contributing to projects.<p>Until copyright laws are updated to protect my work from being stolen and my labor exploited by AI companies, there's zero incentive for me to participate in open source.<p>Even OSI's cuck licenses are being cucked beyond reason. I didn't think that was possible.
> But does that mean are they breaking federal law or unconstitutional?<p>I'd argue they break the fourth amendment:<p>> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.<p>What are "unreasonable searches" if not being under "indiscriminate mass surveillance?"
We never had Flock before, it's possible that some legal principles will be reexamined and reinterpreted because they were made around prior assumptions which have been upended by new technology. Who knows, maybe Congress will legislate something.
From <i>others</i>. Not mass surveillance by a private corporation.<p>Otherwise maybe I'll just set up my own cameras in public locations. If the police want the data they can pay per minute of footage. I'll let them search for metadata and tell them if footage matches with no visibility to the footage until after payment. If they search for something and don't purchase but come back for it - it's then increased pricing. If this is all public space and we can all build these systems because there's no expectation of privacy then all is fair in access to public right of way along roads.
I’m no American but isn’t it a 4th Amendment issue, and the problem is how the various local, state, federal governments are using a private contractor (Flock) to do an end run around this by pretending that it’s no different from any private citizen recording another in a public space?
This has been allowed generally in US courts, to use private companies to collect data, etc.
There may be a solid legal argument that since Flock is operating hand in glove with the government that they effectively <i>are</i> the government within the context of 4A. IMHO, it's not out of the realm of possibility that courts reexamine the government's ability to buy up private data which they would normally be precluded from collecting, and establish limits on their ability to do so.
Is there a whole thing in the U.S. where it’s a no no with regards to cell data without a warrant? This feels like that.<p>(bear with me, this all comes from random podcasting over the past decade)
When a "private company" is using public land and public money to set up their surveillance devices, it is no longer private.
"Digital effects" have always been a grey area for unreasonable search-and-seizure. This was an infamous moment for the late Antonin Scalia, who, iirc, argued that the constistution couldn't reasonably be addressing this matter, as the Founding Fathers had no concept of digital effects when defining "documents and effects".
No expectation of privacy does not mean you can follow someone around all day and keep a log of what they do, which is essentially what this thing does.<p>Over the course of a days/weeks, the places one visits, roads you drive on, etc. those things should definitely be private.
Isn't that exactly what a stakeout is? Or an undercover operation?<p>I didn't search for undercover, but I can find nothing about a warrant being required for a stakeout in the US (and numerous results saying no warrant is required).
Why doesn't it mean that?
Isn't that what paparazzi do already? Seems like you can do that.
The moral of the story is, if you want to make a mass surveillance tool that tracks your every movement and collects all of your most sensitive communications, make sure it has a great camera, a bright large screen and day long battery life.
I think you're greatly oversimplifying what courts have actually ruled on this over the years. Off the top of my head, the Supreme Court explicitly ruled that wiretapping a public pay phone in a booth is unconstitutional[1], and rulings from lower courts on using Stingrays without warrants are a mixed bag[2]. I don't think there's anything close to a broad precedent that the right to privacy evaporates the moment you go out in public.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katz_v._United_States" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katz_v._United_States</a>
[2]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_use_in_United_States_law_enforcement" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_use_in_United_States_...</a>