State Legislators Discussing Laws That Will Put Law Enforcement Surveillance Cameras Inside Private Businesses
from the because-no-square-footage-can-go-unsurveilled dept
The government does enjoy installing cameras pretty much everywhere it can do so with a minimum of complaints. If it thinks there might be some controversy, it just buries the details until after the fact.
Eugene Volokh has a roundup of new places state governments are planning to install cameras -- only the government won't be buying the cameras… or maintaining them… or even installing them. That's left to the private businesses these bills are pushing additional surveillance requirements on.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has proposed an ordinance that would compel all gun dealers to video-record sales (“to discourage traffickers and buyers who use false identification”). Presumably the video recordings would have to be kept for an extended time, since future investigations that would use the video recordings could happen years after the sale. A similar New York state bill would require that the videos be kept for one year.And all the government asks in return for its impositions is total, at-will access.
Likewise, two weeks ago, Minnesota enacted a law — with much less fanfare — that would require video- or photo recording of people who come to sell cellular phones, with each recording to be kept for at least 30 days
Minnesota's bill targeting cell phone resellers stipulates this:
Recordings and images required by paragraph (a) shall be retained by the wireless communications device dealer for a minimum period of 30 days and shall at all reasonable times be open to the inspection of any properly identified law enforcement officer.New York's bill mandating surveillance in gun shops says this:
THE STORED IMAGES SHALL BE MAINTAINED AT THE PERMITTED BUSINESS LOCATION FOR A PERIOD NOT LESS THAN ONE YEAR FROM THE DATE OF RECORDATION, AND SHALL BE MADE AVAILABLE FOR INSPECTION BY A POLICE OFFICER UPON REQUEST.It's not just phone and gun dealers. Minnesota's scrap metal dealers are also included:
The scrap vehicle operator shall also photograph the seller's vehicle, including license plate, either by video camera or still digital camera, so that an accurate and complete description of it may be obtained from the recordings made by the cameras. Photographs and recordings must be clearly and accurately associated with their respective records. Any video must be shown to law enforcement, upon request.The problems with legislation like this are numerous. While many of these businesses may record these transactions for their own safety, being compelled to do so is a completely different matter, especially when it's bundled with open, warrantless access by law enforcement.
Then there's the issue of mission creep. Should these laws pass unaltered, the government will find itself unable to resist the pull of other businesses it feels are on the "sketchy" side, or that possibly cater to people who may have other, less legal habits.
I suspect that, especially if the gun sales videorecording bills are enacted, similar laws will be proposed for sales of alcohol (which is often sold to underage buyers who have fake IDs, or to straw purchasers who are buying on behalf of an underage buyer), for sales of marijuana in places where it has been legalized, for sales of legal substances that are nonetheless potential drug or bomb precursors, and so on.Given the government's penchant for equating nearly everything with its two favorite Wars (Terrorism/Drugs), a vast cross-section of retailers will find themselves legislatively "encouraged" to oblige the government's "collect it all" excesses.
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Filed Under: enforcement, privacy, private business, security cameras, surveillance
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The costs of this system are to be paid by the offical and can not be expensed back to the tax payers.
So what I see here is, we spend more money on buying military equipment than actually doing our job. We are so paranoid of missing anything, we are going to make you film it all. As long as we make you bear the costs it isn't government intrusion. o_O
We have jumped the shark, it is time to reign them back in.
If there are such problems with these businesses, then perhaps they need to address those more proactively beyond the tape it all and when we finally notice the law was broken we can find it.
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I've got this feeling we've jumped several already. They just keep getting bigger, occasionally sprouting an extra tentacle or some such.
I've also got this feeling we're not done jumping yet.
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or lasers
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The citizens must have the power to vote for new bills that are supported by at least 1 million people, or maybe the power to have referendums on various bills created by citizen rights organisations that have proven they are not taking any legal bribes.
I wish someone with financial backing could start a website that does this, possibly someone like bill gates with his trillions of dollars could invest a few hundred million and invest in the future of the country he made his trillions in and not spending that money in third world countries that have no respect for life and kill each o0ther indiscriminately.
Maybe once the people are in power again then they can put pressure on third world countries or the middle east to stop their indiscriminate killing and ignoring illnesses and look after the citizens of there countries.
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When exactly was that?
I'm no history expert but I don't think that ever was the case, it is simply a figment of someone's imagination.
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Marked as funny
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Does this not consists of an unreasonable search?
Further how long before it is mandated that the videos and picture are made accessible to law enforcement via the Internet, or that they are fed to a face recognition system for checking the person is not banned from the purchase, before the sale is permitted?
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Yes it does. Regardless of laws requiring businesses to keep any sort of records, law enforcement should still need a warrant to access it. You can't just codify unlawful search. Well, I guess you can in the United States of Amerika.
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In our so called representative government, you are not asked to vote on these bills.
Note: it is not a representative government when the elected officials do not represent the will of their constituents.
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I cannot even fathom the depths this country as sunk to
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I thought it had to do with the fourth amendment.
Oh wait, I get it - surveillance is speech.
Good one!
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The US Government is afraid of everybody, including its own citizens.
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The US Government is afraid of everybody, especially its own citizens.
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Free US.
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Let's not forget the third rationale for intrusive government -- "To protect children."
What Social Services agency wouldn't jump at the chance to have video cameras in every family's home? (For their own good, of course!)
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If you take your "shall make no law" to it's logical extreme, it would mean that everything from jaywalking to the KKK would be protected because they laws against such things harm their free speech rights.
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And for the record, to an extent the KKK is protected under the First Amendment. That's why the KKK still exists. They're allowed to hate all they want, just as long as they don't act on it.
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You need to change that to... as long as they do not act upon it in a way that infringes upon anyone's liberties.
Refusing to do something for someone because you hate them is not always illegal or morally wrong.
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With respect to a particular transaction, according to specific documentation requirements, and limited only to certain kinds of activities. This does not include keeping a visual record of every single person that walks into a business and giving police unrestricted access to such records.
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For example the state has an interest in regulating water supplies. Doesn't mean the state is excused in regulating water to prevent anyone from drinking it.
So you have to be more specific. That the state may have an interest in regulating something is just a normative statement and doesn't contribute much to the conversation. The point of this discussion is to discuss the pros and cons of the regulations the state wants to pass.
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A solution
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Re: A solution
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This is exactly like DRM for business- it only affects legitimate customers and the criminals or would-be criminals are totally unaffected.
If a scrap metal company asked to photograph my truck so I could sell them a load of junk, I would kindly and politely tell them what they can do with their cameras and leave.
Again I ask, where is the outrage?
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In many parts of the country currently there are scrappers breaking into homes, businesses, anything not guarded by armed guards and ripping out metal to sell for scrap.
In a 1 size fits all solution, we just take pictures and if we manage to figure out someplace was hit, we just check the records and boom we caught them.
Of course then we have a nice list of suspects to work through, so our job is easier.
Perhaps it would be better to look into real solutions to these problems.
Scrappers - they do it because it provides income.
Perhaps trying to get more jobs into the area would fix that. They work damn hard to get a few bucks.
Cell Phones - How about actually forcing the industry to solve the problem? If a stolen phone is reported and remotely deactivated & blocked from reactivation... people wouldn't steal phones as often. They have no value after that. Returning them to the owner & they could be turned back on.
Gun Sales - this one will be touchy, but there are already oodles of rules and forcing what you want in via the backdoor of burdening 3rd parties is stupid. This is just trying to expand things and creating more problems for everyone.
We really need to stop allowing the idea of just record it all incase we need it later. It won't stop the event from happening, and that should be the goal. Perhaps doing the hard things of improving the world should win over short sighted quick fixes.
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See, for example, the war on drugs. Fix the drug problem by banning drugs. When that doesn't work and it only creates gangs and violence, instead of admitting that the government made a mistake in banning drugs it starts passing more laws (ie: gun control laws) to stop the gangs. When that doesn't work we fix it with surveillance laws. Until, pretty soon, we live in a police state.
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Maybe they would have time if they spent it doing actual investigative work rather than blanket spying on everyone.
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And except for the owner-occupied homes that have tempting materials attached to them (copper downspouts and the like). (My cousin was awakened early one morning by some noise and discovered scavengers tearing the copper downspouts off the house. The thieves were gone long before the cops arrived.)
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This has been going on for years with convenience and liquor stores. Cities and counties get tired of the volume of calls for thefts and think new laws are needed. The end result is that (at least in my area) some stores now have policies that thefts will only be reported if certain thresholds are exceeded; otherwise the store is just going to roll over and take the loss.
So next time you hear any police department say that crime is going down, take that statement with a grain of salt.
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All together now
We just want some thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the blogspace:
Hey, writers! Leave us crooks alone.
|: All in all, it's just another fly on the wall. :|
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Good only for one thing
The building I work in has cameras on the parking lots to discourage break-ins. For a camera to cover only a dozen or so stalls, it's not zoomed in enough to read a license plate. I've tried an in-car camera with 1080p resolution, and I had to be right up close to the car in front of me at a stop light for the license plate to be legible in the video.
What they are doing is handing business owners a requirement that cannot be reliably met, if at all. Something they can then charge business owners with, if someone doesn't know their place.
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If you are monitoring om a small dash monitor, that would happen, as they have a very low resolution, like 320 x 240. Check the videos on a decent monitor to see what is really visible.
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A bit of zoom would fix that, but then you'd have only a narrow field of view. A parking lot cameras has it worse, since you want to cover a much larger area.
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That's a lot of storage
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But for cellphones? Really? That's not even trying to be subtle about being a dystopian surveillance state!
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They are high ticket items, there has been much resistance to creation of a stolen phone database to block them from being reactivated and there is demand. They can dump them on craigslist or to a cell reseller who wipes the phone as part of their normal business and then sells it to whoever has cash. If you power on the phone and it says this phone has been deactivated as stolen... much less likely to sell.
Rather than burden the providers & producers to create a system, it makes way more sense to have people who deal with the phones take pictures and hang onto them for when they get around to checking for stolen phones. Then they can cite them for buying stolen goods, being bad for the neighborhood, and all sorts of other things.
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Great Money-Making Opportunity here!!!
Or setting up a full makeup/costume studio. Let's see how many George Washingtons and Lincolns and Jacksons and Franklins we can get on video buying guns...
... or Aaron Burr for extra style points..
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At what point does it become a First Amendment speech/assembly issue, when people can no longer use your business to gather and talk about the latest police brutality case, because they know the police in question can (without a warrant) find out who was there and who said what?
At what point does it become a 5th amendment self-incrimination issue, when you're required to be constantly videotaping yourself and provide that tape to police, without them even needing a suspicion of wrongdoing?
At what point does it become a basic privacy issue, when police can, just for laughs, decide to pull the video where it looks like you're picking your nose?
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That wasn't a suggestion you morons!
Because I get the feeling these people only heard the first half of that.
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Let's say the sheriff's office deputized me as a meter maid/traffic cop. Now I can go into any gun store and browse a years worth of gun buyers captured on video/photo. Or who just bought the new itelephone or whatever.
Anything that tickles the fancy of any LEO.
If these go through it is just a matter of time before banks have to record anyone who performs any transaction.
You know. Because of possible 'smurfing' and so on.
It could even be drug money.
It's just like the intelligence community outsourcing their collections so the state doesn't violate any "rights".
It's like the third party doctrine.
"We don't search anything. We just force businesses to do this and let them provide the infracstructure for us. We just waltz in when we want to and seize any info we want.
We are separated by a whole hop so you should feel totally safe"
Anyway these plans won't accomplish their "stated goals" as every inclined individual will just wait 31 days to use their burner phone and stockpile arms 1 year and 1 day before using them.
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