Judge denies request to exempt Flock footage from Public Records Act

If you're out driving on public roads do you really have any expectation of privacy? Anybody can take a picture of your car...

Another non-paywalled article on the case: https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/investigat...

Courts have found that scale and intent matter.

An offhand picture by a private individual is OK, but a large scale organized hoovering of personally identifying information is not OK.

The finding is also the denial of an exemption appeal which has a much lower legal threshold to clear.

> Anybody can take a picture of your car

But they don't.

Once my car drove by a Google street view vehicle. I thought it was cool. If a Google street view vehicle (or, nowadays, Amazon truck) drove circles around my neighborhood collecting wearabouts of all cars I'd find that concerning.

The way these camera systems are set up is tantamount to an ankle monitor. Who wants to live like that?

Sources?

The basis for the current litigation Schmidt v. City of Norfolk[0] is the 2018 Supreme Court decision Carpenter v. United States.[1]

The ruling in Carpenter is essentially that you can't have prolonged surveillance without a warrant.

[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf

[0] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69288422/schmidt-v-city...

Would you accept the government require you to wear a private company's gps tracker whenever you are in public?

> If you're out driving on public roads do you really have any expectation of privacy?

Expectation of privacy generally comes from taking steps to preserve it. If you put curtains on your windows, any rando can't install a hidden camera in your house to see what's happening behind them. If you don't install curtains on your windows, any rando can stand in the street and see what they see.

The government prohibits you from concealing the number plate on your car. They can't reasonably prohibit you from doing the thing that would establish an expectation of privacy and then use the fact that you didn't do it to say that you don't have one.

A somewhat-milder equivalent would be a law that requires you to have a personal ID number visibly affixed to both your front and back at all times outdoors.

Sure, it's tradition, but license-plates started being required over a hundred years ago and the tradeoffs and dangers were not the same.