By DAVE WILSON
Los Alamos

Mr. Jeremy brings up some valuable and useful insights in regard to the Fourth Amendment, and the expectation of personal privacy when an individual is in a public space (link). I appreciate the time he took to do so. He is indeed correct that the courts have ruled that there is no legal presumption or expectation of privacy when you walk out your front door and into public areas. Indeed, you compromise your expectation of privacy even when you exit your home and go into your backyard.

“At the time it was adopted, the Fourth Amendment prohibited the government from entering into any home, warehouse, or place of business against the owner’s wishes to search for or to seize persons, papers, or effects, absent a specific warrant.” Public spaces are specifically not mentioned because they are not protected. https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/print-archive/original-fourth-amendment

But that does not confront or answer Mr. Rickman’s concern about the larger issue, which is the collection, storage, accessibility, and the ability to search the information that is recorded by the cameras. There is also the issue of the Counties lack of transparency in allowing and installing the cameras without public notice or input, but that is a subject unto itself.

Mr. Jeremy points out that “Any person, at any time, anywhere,  can pull out their phone and record you, your vehicle and your license plate as you drive on a public road…”, and he is correct. But again, he stops short of the bigger issue. Taking a video of something, or someone, in public is a passive event, it exists only on the device that made the recording. That person could of course put the video on social media, but it is still not a searchable event in a centralized database. If local law enforcement was only doing a passive recording of vehicle traffic, and then if necessary, reviewing relevant footage, from specific locations, for a relevant time and day, for a specific event, then this would be a very different conversation. Doing so would keep all of the local information, local.

As these Flock cameras are now operating, they collect all data, about all travel, by all vehicles using all the roads (that have these cameras), and that information ultimately gets sent to a central database by the local agencies. As was revealed in a recent local NM newscast on KOAT, even if local agencies have protective privacy policies in place, once the data has been uploaded to Flock, those protective policies are stripped away.

The Fourth Amendment is clear about what it protects, personal, not public, privacy. To infer that, because the Fourth Amendment does not guarantee the legal presumption or expectation of privacy in a public place, that it then somehow does allow for the operation of a centralized repository for massive amounts of information about all travel on all public roads (that have these cameras), is a huge leap. One that needs to ultimately be determined by the courts, not by the lack of comment from the disinterested and disengaged collective voice of public opinion.

I don’t dispute Mr. Jeremy’s comment that the cameras can be useful and a big help to law enforcement. I have seen enough stories on the news that confirm his statement. However, neither our Constitution, or our Bill of Rights, contains a statement such as, “None of these Rights are that important, if it is going to make someone’s job more difficult.”

The big question that has to be addressed is whether the usefulness of the technology as it currently exists and is being used, is more important than keeping our personal data safe. Mr. Jeremy’s assurance that, “There are checks and balances. You have to become a registered user through a law enforcement agency. …” is naive. We routinely hear about, and receive notices in our mail, about databases that are constantly being hacked, resulting in our personal information being stolen. We read or hear stories in the news about bad actors that have access to database information, just like the Flock database, and use them for illegal purposes like stalking, retaliation, or as a “favor” to someone, etc. Anyone who tells you that your online data is fully protected and safe, is simply incorrect.