Latest / Challenges of Faith Radio Program / So does Flock affect you or not? Ep 3430

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So does Flock affect you or not? Ep 3430 · Challenges of Faith Radio Program

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  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Challenges of Faith radio program. I'm Gary McCance.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining here on episode 3430. Reclaim the
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  Speaker 1: Net has laid out an article in that a report
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  Speaker 1: that a federal judge has called license plate readers a
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  Speaker 1: form of surveillance. The lower instance federal courts are making
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  Speaker 1: their rulings regarding license plate readers, LPRS, and they're so
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  Speaker 1: far coming in contradictory. The latest is from a federal
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  Speaker 1: judge in Oklahoma who has no doubt that the technology
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  Speaker 1: is a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance that is approaching
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  Speaker 1: a dragnet-type law enforcement practice and that the system is
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  Speaker 1: constitutionally problematic. because it lets the police indiscriminately and passively
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  Speaker 1: catalog your whereabouts over an extended period of time.
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  Speaker 2: U.S. District Judge Sarah E.
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  Speaker 1: Hill of the Northern District of Oklahoma made this and
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  Speaker 1: other points in her ruling in United States v. Cal,
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  Speaker 1: where she said that a Tulsa County Sheriff's Deputy violated
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  Speaker 1: the Fourth Amendment when he searched LPR systems without a warrant.
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  Speaker 1: The case started with the traffic stop of a Mazda
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  Speaker 1: SUV with a California license plate that passed the deputy's
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  Speaker 1: camera as he was parked by the highway.
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  Speaker 2: The judge said the deputy.
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  Speaker 1: Followed the car for no apparent reason other than the
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  Speaker 1: fact that it had.
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  Speaker 2: A California license plate.
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  Speaker 1: The vehicle was driven by Melissa Cowell and the stop
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  Speaker 1: was justified as the deputy said she had changed lanes
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  Speaker 1: without signaling and was following another car too closely. But
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  Speaker 1: before he pulled her over, the deputy ran the plate
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  Speaker 1: through two LPR databases, FLOC.
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  Speaker 2: And Vehicle Manager.
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  Speaker 1: The judge said this gave him access to more than
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  Speaker 1: 50 individual records of cows' whereabouts across the country for
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  Speaker 1: an entire month, and that he had access to at
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  Speaker 1: least 30 days of the vehicle's location information in many states.
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  Speaker 1: The deputy used this information to help justify his search
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  Speaker 1: in her car. That search produced about 91 pounds of methamphetamine,
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  Speaker 1: and Cal 46 of Crane, Missouri, is now charged with
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  Speaker 1: possession with intent to distribute. But the judge has ruled
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  Speaker 1: that the evidence was obtained illegally and suppressed it. The
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  Speaker 1: ruling states the search was not supported by probable cause,
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  Speaker 1: and it was done without a warrant in violation.
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  Speaker 2: Of Cal's Fourth Amendment rights.
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  Speaker 1: The judge also suppressed all evidence obtained after the initiation
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  Speaker 1: of the ALPR search. The judge accepted that the technology
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  Speaker 1: has remarkable benefits, but also asked why is it the
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  Speaker 1: government's business where everyone goes all the time. The government
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  Speaker 1: cannot go snooping through our personal lives and business without
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  Speaker 1: an adequate basis to do so. In her ruling, Judge
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  Speaker 1: Hill also said that people do not have a reasonable
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  Speaker 1: expectation of privacy in their movements on a public roadway,
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  Speaker 1: but that the LPR technology becomes constitutionally problematic when law
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  Speaker 1: enforcement can indiscriminately and passively catalog your whereabouts over an
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  Speaker 1: extended period of time. The ruling is in contrast to
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  Speaker 1: to one made in March by the Fifth Circuit, which
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  Speaker 1: found that police use of plate reader data was not
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  Speaker 1: a Fourth Amendment search, with the system produced the periodic
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  Speaker 1: sightings of a car on public roads. And in California,
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  Speaker 1: a federal court has ruled that police can search for
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  Speaker 1: and look at eight photographs of a car taken by
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  Speaker 1: license plate readers, and that does not constitute a Fourth
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  Speaker 1: Amendment search. In the cow case, eight photos may be
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  Speaker 1: one thing, but a month's worth of someone's movements is
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  Speaker 1: a different story. And that story is one of mass surveillance.
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  Speaker 1: The difference is the database, and it keeps growing. All right, listeners,
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  Speaker 1: so what say you, whether for or against? Did you
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  Speaker 1: hear all the issues involved? What if that was you?
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  Speaker 1: Absence to drugs. But it didn't make a difference. Also,
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  Speaker 1: according to Reclaim the Net, Department of Justice says flock
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  Speaker 1: camera data is not protected by Fourth Amendment.
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  Speaker 2: The U.S.
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  Speaker 1: Government has told the Federal Appeals Court that data collected
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  Speaker 1: by flock safety cameras is not protected.
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  Speaker 2: By the Fourth Amendment because being.
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  Speaker 1: Watched on the road is the reality of modern life,
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  Speaker 1: and therefore nobody.
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  Speaker 2: Can expect privacy there. Did you hear that?
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  Speaker 1: The argument was made by the Justice Department attorney during
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  Speaker 1: oral argument in the Fifth Circuit in the case of U.S. v.
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  Speaker 2: Brown Lee.
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  Speaker 1: The panel of judges, Chief Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, Judge Ramirez,
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  Speaker 1: Judge Richman.
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  Speaker 2: Heard the case on October the 5th.
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  Speaker 1: One judge said there's a general rule that publicly observable
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  Speaker 1: movements are not protected and that flock cameras only enable
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  Speaker 1: episodic monitoring of cars as they pass by as opposed
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  Speaker 1: to tracking them continuously. The chief judge asked, If that
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  Speaker 1: rule still makes sense today when there are cameras everywhere
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  Speaker 1: and the data they collect can be easily analyzed, is
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  Speaker 1: that really the right rule in this day and age
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  Speaker 1: where everything is observed and all can be analyzed instantaneously,
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  Speaker 1: she asked.
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  Speaker 2: Another judge maintained.
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  Speaker 1: That it's the perversive regulation of cars when they're in
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  Speaker 1: plain view on public thoroughfares that diminishes any expectation of privacy.
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  Speaker 1: He sought to differentiate between that and tracking people's phones, saying,
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  Speaker 1: we all expect to be subject to intermittent surveillance when
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  Speaker 1: we're driving around. It's the reality of modern life. We
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  Speaker 1: don't necessarily expect our phone, which is essentially part of
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  Speaker 1: our body, to be tracked as we move in both
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  Speaker 1: public and private places. The chief judge kept asking if
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  Speaker 1: the rule that allows this type of surveillance is still
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  Speaker 1: valid When it becomes so pervasive, when it becomes not
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  Speaker 1: spread out and is on every corner, which is soon
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  Speaker 1: to be, she asked, is it really episodic? When it
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  Speaker 1: so permeates everything, she also asked and noted that finding
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  Speaker 1: in the defendant's favor would be a big ask, A-S-K.
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  Speaker 1: The defendant, Charles Brownlee, was convicted of a series of
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  Speaker 1: armed robberies of cash stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
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  Speaker 1: and his lawyers are now trying to get his conviction overturned,
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  Speaker 1: arguing that police use Flock and another company, Vigilant Solutions,
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  Speaker 1: to track him down without a warrant.
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  Speaker 2: Brownlee's lawyers argue.
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  Speaker 1: That this is unconstitutional, while one judge said that the
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  Speaker 1: technology is not capable of following people into constitutionally protected areas,
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  Speaker 1: and that is why it's different from phones. which are
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  Speaker 1: tracked as people's mood in both public and private places.
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  Speaker 1: The judge also dismissed the idea that the government can
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  Speaker 1: use the data collected by Flock and other companies to
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  Speaker 1: track people all the time, saying the political process is
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  Speaker 1: a serious check on that hypothetical ever coming to fruition,
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  Speaker 1: and I think a better check than an erroneous extension
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  Speaker 1: of Fourth Amendment. Assistant Federal Public Defender Matthew Wright, who
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  Speaker 1: represents Brown Lee, argued that the way the police use
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  Speaker 1: the databases in this case constitutes a search and that
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  Speaker 1: the data collected by Flock and Vigilant is stunningly comprehensive.
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  Speaker 2: Now, I'm going to take a moment. You don't mind
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  Speaker 2: if you take a sip of my water. He said.
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  Speaker 2: That the initial... Boy, that water was delicious. He said.
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  Speaker 2: Go ahead and laugh. You know it was funny.
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  Speaker 1: He said that the initial collection of data is indiscriminate
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  Speaker 1: and that it is collected from everybody and that it
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  Speaker 1: can be used to reconstruct your pattern of life. Wright
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  Speaker 1: said the police can learn when you go to work,
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  Speaker 1: when you're out late at night stepping out on your partner,
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  Speaker 1: when you're going to church on Sunday, that's a search.
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  Speaker 1: He noted that the police were able to use the
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  Speaker 1: data to find Brownlee's car in two and a half hours,
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  Speaker 1: literally a needle in a haystack. But they didn't even
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  Speaker 1: know the needle they were looking for when they started.
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  Speaker 1: The court has not yet ruled in the case. The
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  Speaker 1: argument comes as there is a flurry of activity around
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  Speaker 1: the use of license plate readers and their data in
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  Speaker 1: the United States. A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled that
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  Speaker 1: using this technology to track a woman's car without a
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  Speaker 1: warrant was unconstitutional. While in Texas, at least $ 30 million
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  Speaker 1: has been spent on flight cameras alone, with the state's
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  Speaker 1: governor in August pausing funding of the purchase of these
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  Speaker 1: devices by state agencies. Meanwhile, a bill has been proposed
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  Speaker 1: in the U.S. Congress that would ban federal agencies from
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  Speaker 1: using license plate readers on their data. The argument that
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  Speaker 1: this is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment because
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  Speaker 1: its reality rings hollow, because it's the government that has
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  Speaker 1: made it so.
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  Speaker 2: Meanwhile, the rule.
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  Speaker 1: That is supposed to protect citizens from this type of
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  Speaker 1: mass surveillance keeps shrinking every time another camera is installed.
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  Speaker 1: Effectively protecting less and less. Alright, so you heard all
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  Speaker 1: the pros and the cons, even from the judges. But
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  Speaker 1: what say you, the effective one?