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.

Comments

What?

[Jiro]

If he's an undocumented immigrant, why don't they just deport him instead of going through all of this?

Re:What?

[Loki_1929]

Because it's impossible to secure 3,000 miles of border, and he would just sneak back in if that's all we did.

Pardon me, but that's bullshit.

Let's just take the forces we already have today. We have 1.4 Million in active duty military personnel and 850,000 reserves. Obviously we can't take every single one, so let's take half: 1.1 Million people. Now stick them on a 3-man rotation minus 1/3 for duty rotations and leave and spread them out across the 1,954 mile border with Mexico. That puts 125 people plus their equipment per mile of border, plus all their R&D budget going into technologies to increase protection. Those personnel aren't just idle all day; they're building fences, digging trenches, laying sensor grids, and basically doing all the stuff that completely shut down the San Diego zone for crossings and they're doing it 24/7/365 at 125 per mile or one person every 14 yards.

I think that's all way overboard for what we'd need to actually secure (~99% reduction in successful unauthorized crossings) that border, but in any event, don't try to say it's impossible to do. Say we lack the political will. Say we choose not to do it. Say we just aren't interested enough in the problem to do what's necessary to solve it. But don't say it's impossible; that's absurd. I'm not even getting terribly creative here; just sticking boots on the ground and a whole lot more boots than we'd ever actually need at that.

Re:What?

[Tokolosh]

Anything not forbidden to the Federal Government by the Constitution is allowed, assuming the appropriate laws are passed

You have this backwards. Everything is forbidden to the Federal Government, except that explicitly granted by the Constitution.

Re:What?

[Shakrai]

Notably us white Northerners were not suddenly beset with swarthy skinned Southerners taking our jobs.

Which explains why David Cameron is trying to amend the freedom of movement to gain the ability to deport EU nationals that move to the UK without first securing employment. Or the borderline racism I personally observed in Sweden and Finland directed at EU nationals who moved there from the former Eastern Bloc.

You might ask why your American governments don't afford you the same freedoms.

You can freely move through the 50 States with more ease than EU nationals can establish themselves in another EU State. Common language and all, plus there's no such thing in the States as a residency permit for American citizens. But don't let the facts get in the way of your conceptions. :)

Re:What?

[lymond01]

That read like an XKCD What If? response.

Re:What?

[HBI]

This all misses the point. The way most illegal immigrants come into and stay in the US is not by sneaking through the desert. It's by passing in on a tourist visa and then just not leaving.

Figure out a way to fix that problem that doesn't involve house to house searching and random checkpoints, and you get a gold star.

Re:What?

[Jane Q. Public]

It should also be noted that Federal law aside, the surveillance activities of the police is clearly against Washington State privacy laws.

In general, it is illegal for law enforcement to use ANY means that is not available to a casual passerby on the sidewalk, to see what is happening on private land. Using a stepladder on the sidewalk to look over the back fence is illegal without a warrant, as is the use of a drone, or even just standing in front of a house and peering through the front window with binoculars.

In general, the activity is undertaken specifically in order to see what cannot be casually seen, or is done over a period of time ("surveilling"), it is illegal without a warrant.

this is ridiculous

[hammarlund]

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.

Re:this is ridiculous

[BarbaraHudson]

Actually, it is different. For one thing, even an unmarked car sitting there 24/7 is going to raise eyebrows, as well as probably get the police some phone calls for suspicious activity.

Mounting a camera 24/7 at his house lowers the cost barrier - eventually it will be cheap enough to do this to everyone. You can be sure that, at that point, there will be selective enforcement. After all, if they enforced every law on the books on everyone, the only people who wouldn't be in jail would be???

Re:this is ridiculous

[__aaclcg7560]

If you have a cop car parked outside, most drug dealers would hightail over the back fence and take their business elsewhere. What most communities need are officers out of their comfortable police cars and walking the beat to know the neighborhood.

Papers please, comrade ...

[gstoddart]

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.

Re:If you point the camera on a politician..

[TheGratefulNet]

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?

Re:If you point the camera on a politician..

[BarbaraHudson]

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.

Re:undocumented immigrant

[mean pun]

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?

Re:Presidential Oath of Office - how quaint

[mc6809e]

"...he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed..."

Re:If you point the camera on a politician..

[dgatwood]

If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.
—Cardinal Richelieu (allegedly)

Re:undocumented immigrant

[causality]

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.

Re:undocumented immigrant

[Russ1642]

I hear it's open season on tourists. I'm going to Vegas to hunt me some Brits.

No, You are All Misinformed

[Strangely Familiar]

The Supreme Court does not interpret the constitution to be either completely restrictive of the Federal Government only to those powers and authorities granted to it by the Constitiution, nor is it completely free to do whatever it wants so long as it is not prohibited by the Constitution. An example is a federal bank. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say the Feds can have a bank, or create the Federal Reserve (try to find authority for this in the Constitution). Early on in the republic, there was a big fight over this. Eventually the Supreme Court decided that anything that was necessary and proper to effect the powers granted to the feds by the Constitution was allowed. So, a federal bank was allowed, because that was considered necessary and proper for collecting taxes, and spending the revenues collected. Many of the States Rights folks specifically raised the ninth and tenth amendment arguements, but they did not win with the Supremes. But not just anything is allowed. My guess is that if the Feds decided to open Federal Liquor Stores or have a Federal Lottery that would get struck down in the courts for being unnecessary and/or improper to effect some federal power. States can do these things, but the Feds probably can't. So, the real situation is not so black and white as either post tries to make it.

Re:Presidential Oath of Office - how quaint

[smooth wombat]

Which has nothing to do with the question I asked.

No one is saying people from other countries shouldn't be allowed to work in the U.S. (I'm not), what is being asked is they do it legally and with proper documentation.

So again, I ask the question, do you let random people walk in and out of your place without knowing who they are?