[aklug] Re: Legal protection from drone surveillance

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On 07/02/2012 08:29 AM, Mike Tibor wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Jun 2012, Christopher Howard wrote:
>
>
>
> What most people forget when this topic comes up is that airborne
> drones are really only effective when the surveillance target is
> out in the open. Believe it or not, when you're out in the open you
> have no expectation of privacy, and the police need no warrant to
> photograph you or record your conversations. Police routinely
> plant cameras/microphones in open areas to gather evidence during
> an investigation, so I'm not sure why mounting them on a small
> airborne platform changes anything.
>
> Violation of your privacy can only occur when you're in a place
> where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy--in your home
> for instance. An airborne drone isn't going to make it easier for
> police to watch you or monitor your conversations when you're
> inside your house. Technology for surveilling a target inside a
> structure from the outside has existed for many years now. That
> kind of technology should be of far more concern then the simple
> mounting of a camera on a little RC helicopter, and I'm not sure
> why it isn't.
>
> Don't get me wrong--I think most tools used by government agencies
> that have the potential for abuse are virtually guaranteed to be
> abused by them, given the opportunity. I'm just having trouble
> seeing the basis for the outrage on this one.
>
> Mike

For the sake of discussion, here are some more questions: (I'm not
claiming to be the expert here, or to have all the answers.)

1. Can law enforcement legally use remote surveillance to monitor you
activities inside a private structure, without a warrant? E.g., are
they allowed to point a powerful telescope through the window of your
home (without getting a warrant) and record everything you've done in
your living room, and would that count as legally admissible evidence?
(If there was a bill preventing that, I'd be glad to sign on to it.)

2. Does "expectation of privacy" include just the inside of your
shuttered home, or is it any place that is not "public"? E.g., suppose
you are sitting in your backyard, behind a grove of trees, where
normally no one would be able to see you from the highway.

3. Outside of drone technology, is there any technology that can
easily track your activity (with photography) everywhere you go? If
you were walking the main streets of San Diego, you might expect there
to be a hidden camera at every corner (maybe there should be a law
against that as well...?), but what about when you are walking the
suburbs, or hiking through the woods? What else can they do in those
cases, except assign a police unit to you? (Which is relatively
speaking rather expensive.)

H.R. 5925 doesn't mention anything at all about "expectation" of
privacy, it simply states that the Feds must get a warrant to use a
drone to "gather [any] evidence or other information pertaining to
criminal conduct or conduct in violation of a regulation".

I'm not saying other methods of surveillance aren't a concern, but
this is the only surveillance-related bill I see in the House at the
moment.

- --
frigidcode.com
indicium.us
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Received on Mon Jul 2 11:07:38 2012