What does this mean for videoing in public?
Wow. As someone who is unfortunately stuck in the festering Trump-humping suckfest that is Oklahoma, it’s nice to see a very rare reasonable thing to come out of here. It also figures that it was one of our cops being so blatantly and overwhelmingly shitty to someone they saw because they had an out of state tag that caused this ruling. They like to do that. 🙄
(To be clear: I’m not implying cops elsewhere aren’t also garbage; I know they are! I’ve just obviously had more personal experiences with the ones here.)
They obviously do.
What does that mean for their continued operation?
Nothing. The headline and the article do not match.
The judge’s ruling does not label the use of Flock data to aid in arrests as illegal, rather, it clarifies that the officer in this case did not have probable cause to “intruded on her reasonable expectation of privacy” with the technology — setting stricter precedent for when law enforcement may employ extensive ALPR databases during investigations.
So the cameras recording our every movement are just fine and dandy. It’s just in this case, the officer didn’t have probably cause to dip into that massive database before noting a minor traffic infraction. It seems like the judge ruled that the officer needed to follow her around until she made an infraction and then violated the hell out of her privacy. So, no real change at all.
Also…
A spokesperson for Flock told The Hill, “The ruling goes against the overwhelming weight of authority in similar cases across the country, including multiple recent decisions in Oklahoma, and we expect it will be appealed and ultimately overturned.”
Yep. I imagine even the very slight limitation to Flock use resulting from this ruling will end up getting overturned by the appeals court, state supreme court or SCOTUS.
So basically, the city which installs them violates reasonable expectation of privacy. The fact that the data was collected was the violation in the first place.
They will be receiving a sternly written letter in the mail.
