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Federal Court Nixes Weeks of Warrantless Video Surveillance
An anonymous reader writes with this news from the EFF's Deep Links:
The public got an early holiday gift today when a federal court agreed with us that six weeks of continually video recording the front yard of someone's home without a search warrant violates the Fourth Amendment. In United States v. Vargas local police in rural Washington suspected Vargas of drug trafficking. In April 2013, police installed a camera on top of a utility pole overlooking his home. Even though police did not have a warrant, they nonetheless pointed the camera at his front door and driveway and began watching every day. A month later, police observed Vargas shoot some beer bottles with a gun and because Vargas was an undocumented immigrant, they had probable cause to believe he was illegally possessing a firearm. They used the video surveillance to obtain a warrant to search his home, which uncovered drugs and guns, leading to a federal indictment against Vargas.
If he's an undocumented immigrant, why don't they just deport him instead of going through all of this?
I'm all for the forth amendment and all, but having a camera pointed to the outside of his house is no different than having a cop sitting outside the house in a car.
America is rapidly deciding that her guiding principles are optional, and that the law only applies if law enforcement says it does.
Wide spread warrantless wiretapping, surveillance, and parallel construction all say that the police and government will do whatever the hell they like, and your rights be damned. And if they have to lie to the court to get what they want, that's OK too.
And for all of those who claim you still have free speech and all that ... the answer is simply for now. When it becomes expedient to take away that right, they will.
Land of the free, home of the brave. If it wasn't so scary it would be hilarious.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
if you point a camera or mic at any of us, sooner or later we'll all be guilty of some crime on the books.
its by-design, too. have so many laws that, if 'the man' wants to come after you, there is always a reason he can find.
THIS is why it should not be allowed. plus, well, its NOT the kind of world we would want to live in. we get the world we want, and do we (as a people, human beings) want to live in a world where this is allowed to happen?
we better stop this invasive spying shit. its already gone on more than it should. will we, as a people, have the wisdom and forsight to stop this before we truly become an orwellian society, in every literal sense of the word?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
If you point the camera on a politician you won't have to wait a month to watch a crime to happen.
If you point a camera at a politician, you won't have to wait a month to see the camera removed.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Why does the fourth amendment apply? If he is not a citizen of the US, our laws shouldn't protect him.
Did you think about the consequences of what you are saying even for a second?
"...he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed..."
Why does the fourth amendment apply? If he is not a citizen of the US, our laws shouldn't protect him.
Because the Constitution is a document describing what powers the government has and how these powers may be used. It's like a default-deny firewall: the government has no powers whatsoever, except these enumerated powers. The Constitution is emphatically not a document describing what rights a person (citizen or not) has and when they will be honored.
The document was written based on the idea of "natural rights". You have certain rights simply because you are a human being; the government either recognizes that or it becomes dysfunctional and fails to fulfill its major purpose, which is to protect your natural rights. The Founders (mostly Deists) explained it in terms of us having been "endowed by our Creator" with such rights. You could also remove the Creator-concept entirely and argue that such a system simply works better and does the greatest good for all involved, and thus is inherently superior to systems that reject the concept of natural rights.
You don't have rights merely because the government deigned to let you have them, or decided that depriving you of them wasn't worth the trouble. A system where that's the foundational principle has lost even the pretense of human dignity. That kind of system wouldn't even have to bother with the incremental "hey we have an excuse that sells (protect the children! stop the terrorists!)" encroachment of liberty that we're seeing now. It could just go straight into open tyranny without having all those little baby steps for naive people to ignore.
You may wish to brush up on a little American history, specifically why the Tenth Amendment was written. It affirms that the federal government has only those powers which are delegated to it, with the rest being reserved by the states and the people. I'm all for deporting this guy, by the way. We should either enforce our immigration laws (like Mexico and every other sovereign nation) or repeal them, but if we're going to arrest this man, there's a process that must (and should) be followed.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein