Eyes Over Compton: How Police Spied on a Whole City

[Junebug]

Yeah I'm pretty sure there is no expectation of privacy on a public street.

Depending on the technology, I could see Scalia and the four liberals going the other way. The current SCOTUS has interpreted the Fourth Amendment broadly in cases of technological advances. It's one of the few areas where liberals are happy to join Scalia's originalist reasoning.

 

[WakeandBake]

This is an issue I have changed from cynically ambivalent on, to somewhat concerned.

 

[Junebug]

This isn't super well developed in the case law, but certain justices have noted that the issue of whether someone has a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in something is not just an empirical question. If it were, then it would be subject to creep as government puts more and more of these technologies to use. Instead, it involves a normative judgment about whether this or that activity is protected by the spirit underlying the Fourth Amendment. Fuzzy, I know, but I tend to think that police activities like the ones at issue here go too far, at least absent some extraordinary circumstances beyond normal crime (like the hunt for the Boston Marathon or The Joker getting ready to blow up a couple of boats).