But the headline and narrative paint a way too optimistic (if you’re anti-Flock) picture of Chatrie’s impact.
In particular the search identified by Chatrie (Google’s database of expected-private location records, including movement in the home and other private spaces) has almost no analog in third-party-owned recordings of public movement.
> The Court held that police conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they obtained Chatrie's location data, because, as the opinion put it, "an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information."
The analogue with Flock is pretty clear then:
> Just as important as the holding is the reasoning: the Court rejected the government's fallback argument that the search was fine because it only pulled a narrow, time-limited slice of a much larger dataset. Once the Fourth Amendment applies, the majority reasoned, it doesn't matter how small a bite investigators took out of an all-encompassing database.
That’s what triggered the essential element of an expectation of privacy, from which the fact of a search was established.
Totally absent in this case, as far as I can tell.
Otherwise, it's the same: Google's database is a third-party-owned record of people's movements in public, and Flock's database is a third-party-owned record of people's movement in public.
The ruling in Chatrie had nothing to do with an expectation of privacy, or lack thereof. It was about the dragnet nature of the surveillance. And in that respect, I don't see any meaningful difference between Flock's and Google's systems.
Isn't there some level of expectation if for your whole life these mass networks didn't exist and you could go to the grocery store without being locked in database prison?
Held: Police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired Chatrie’s location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information.
Note the possessive “his”. Crucial to the case, this was held to be the individual’s data, not the third-party’s.
I do agree that Flock is also not the same as the database of cell phone location data that Verizon or Apple or whoever else might maintain.
It's somewhere in the middle, IMO. At least to my non-lawyer brain.
For states where law enforcement cannot do such things directly, they can still contract with a private provider, either as an RFP, or (as in some states) "you can't RFP this butttt if some private provider just so happened to provide it, you can use it".
License plate number is a registered identifier mandated to be fully plainly visible, with that identifier tied to a registered individual; compared to cell phone which has identifiers, sure, but they're not registered to an individual necessarily, and not mandated to be plainly visible, rather only "visible" as a means of service provision.
The fourth amendment does not say “private conversations,” so when police started tapping phones, the courts focused on whether the phone tap physically intruded on somebody’s house, papers, or effects. Police apparently could tap phone conversations by watching reflections on a nearby window, and the fourth amendment didn’t apply because there was no physical intrusion. The “reasonable expectation of privacy” test come from Katz v. US ( https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/389/347/ ) where the Supreme Court realized that whether there was a physical intrusion was irrelevant.
It's basically a continuous rebalancing of private vs government power, and new technologies cause more rebalancing.
You can still pay your use tax and be a good citizen, and in fact, its probably a better demonstration of your duties as a citizen to protect the right to privacy and say to your local governments that have a history of abusing and selling vehicle registration data to 3rd parties that you do not tolerate that.
Happy to share more, the sites for Montana registration can be shady but the dirt legal one is great.
This is a modestly different situation than one concerning warrantless tracking of phone locations, if for no other reason than my phone oftentimes in my pocket. It is not always visible to onlooking bystanders. And even if it isn't, externally there is no reliably way to differentiate one iPhone from another. In comparison: license plates, when in public, are always visible, and very easy to discern from one-another (different state-unique numbers); so in my mind the expectation of privacy is far lower.
I abhor what Flock does, but I'm not sure I see a constitutional argument for why what they do is unconstitutional.
Specifically, even if a county hired all those officers and did what you suggest if there is no purpose other than recording all this information. I believe it would be a constitutional violation. A person has the right to reasonable privacy outside of their home. License plates can and should be recorded when there is a relevant purpose to it. Such as toll collection, or a scoped traffic watch done by a police officer or a traffic camera. The dragnet collection of data for "maybe its useful" or "we don't know when it will be useful, but it might" has generally been struck down when brought to the supreme court.
For Flock's case, they don't operate as far as I know as ticket issuing traffic cameras which have a much tighter level of control of how they operate. IE: Traffic cameras have clear signs near them notifying the drivers of their usage, in some states the issuing of the citation cannot be considered criminal (Civil issuance) and must not capture faces of drivers.
One officer would absolutely not be able to record on that piece of paper every single license plate that passed through a busy intersection. Not even close.
The number of officers that _would_ be required to do so would absolutely be "outside the realm of possibility" for even a well-funded police department.
That's why flock is different. It's a level of scale that was previously—despite your assertions—impossible.
> As Google puts it, and no one seriously disputes, Location History serves as a “diary” or map “of a person’s travels.”
"Diary" is a red herring here. They're referring to a location log, just like what Flock produces.
During the investigation the investigating officer had become worried that the assailant would use police resources to further track and harass the victim.
Luckily the guy was driving a company vehicle that did not track to his address.
I'd be surprised if most other states don't have similar vehicle laws.
1) Garaging a vehicle, for x days or more.
2) Driving a vehicle, for x days or more.
Have you looked into what the specifics are, and how they are triggered?
Poking some holes at this:
- Are you on the hook to register vehicles you don't own for actions (1) or (2)?
Consider two examples:
(a) you rent a vehicle,
(b) you drive or choose to house a friends' vehicle.
From what you've stated, logically, anytime you rent a vehicle or operate or house a friends', you now are asked to register it.
Do you think this is accurate? And if so, do you think it would hold in court of law?
Depends on the state, in my former state, Virginia, it is tax evasion. This is not unique to Virginia BTW, Georgia has similar laws. By law in VA, all cars that are garaged in state for longer than 90 days must pay the car tax. Only reason Montana LLC registered cars get away from it is most counties find out who must pay the tax from Virginia DMV so these cars are missed.
I mean, it’s both, right? You’re definitely getting a tax advantage compared to a lot of areas of the country. And how is insurance going to work?
Insurance is a bit tricky though I've heard it's simple. Most companies don't ask or inquire about where the cars registered, and neither do repair shops or parts of the claim process inquire into this. If you're uncomfortable with this, you can DYOR and check what happened for claims if a driver who's personally insured is driving a vehicle registered under an LLC/company. I think it isn't true that just because a vehicle is registered by a company, it cannot be used for personal purposes or that insurance companies would make claims more difficult (though check yourself and I'm happy to know what you find)
In both scenarios, the data is held by a private third party and a person generates this data pretty much by-default.
This is the relevant bit:
In Carpenter, this Court held that accessing cell-site location information (CSLI) constitutes a Fourth Amendment search because “individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of their physical movements,” 585 U. S., at 310. The Court reasoned that CSLI provides a “detailed” and “encyclopedic” portrait of a person’s whereabouts, id., at 309, and, with that, “an intimate window into a person’s life,” id., at 311. Because people “compulsively carry” their cell phones “all the time,” the Court explained, a cell phone “tracks nearly exactly the movements of its owner,” and thus “faithfully follows” him not only through “public thoroughfares [but] into private residences, doctor’s offices, political headquarters, and other potentially revealing locales.”
Automobiles are not cellphones, and the state is free to regulate automobiles. It could mandate tracking devices in all cars, if there was political will.
There's nothing special about any particular technology at all. The question is whether people have an option to generate the data for a third party (Google, Flock, or cell tower operators) and then the sensitivity of that resulting data.
Carpenter is pretty simple: If you by virtue of existing in the modern world produce a bunch of super sensitive data that third parties now have, then those third parties aren't allowed to just give the government that data.
For example, this would allow the government to wiretap anyone without warrant.
Katz v United States would be the place to start your research.
(a) you rent a vehicle,
(b) you drive or choose to house a friends' vehicle.
in both cases, the vehicle would already be registered in the state (by the rental company or by the friend).
it is not clear to me why you think the vehicles would need to be re-registered.
it's a silly "hole" to try and poke.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/license-plate-cameras-will-soo...
United States v Jones already answered this question.