- The growing surveillance state and unconstitutional risk
- New Hampshire’s Restrictions on LPRs and data collection
- Flock in the Granite State – not that many and yet too many
- AI and Home Security surveillance are tools
- A brief look at government’s role in regulation and use
- Conclusion
It is entirely true that Flock Cameras are collecting all sorts of information about you and that, whether private or public, they create a database that could be used against you. You’ve heard stories, not all of which will be true. But the tech exists to do all the worst things you could imagine anyone wanting to do.
Mass warrantless search. Unconstitutional. You need to check the laws in your state.
My state has lots of laws and rules restricting how LPRs can be deployed and used, what data can be collected, and how quickly data must be deleted. No matter the make or model, they must all comply with 261:75-b, which includes audits.
I can’t say if anyone has ever audited the use, but I can say there are only a handful of Flock cameras in the Granite State. Most of them are on interstates. Nashua has a few elsewhere, and you can find them in Manchester and Salem, a handful of Seacoast towns, in Hooksett, Concord, and Hanover, but by law, they are not permitted to photograph or retain images of drivers or passengers.
V. LPR operation and access to LPR collected data shall be for official law enforcement purposes only. LPR devices shall only be used to scan, detect, and identify license plate numbers for the purpose of identifying:
(a) Stolen vehicles.
(b) Vehicles associated with wanted, missing, or endangered persons.
(c) Vehicles registered to a person against whom there is an outstanding warrant.
(d) Vehicles registered to persons whose drivers’ licenses, driving privileges, or vehicle registrations are under suspension or revocation.
(e) Vehicles registered to persons suspected of criminal or terrorist acts, transportation of stolen items or contraband, or motor vehicle violations.
(f) Vehicles in violation of commercial trucking requirements.
(g) Vehicles involved in case-specific criminal investigative surveillance.
(h) Vehicles involved in homicides, shootings, and other major crimes or incidents.
(i) Vehicles in the vicinity of a recent crime that may be connected to the crime.
VI. A positive match by an LPR device alone shall not constitute reasonable suspicion as grounds for a law enforcement officer to stop the vehicle.
And,
VIII. Records of number plates read by each LPR shall not be recorded or transmitted anywhere and shall be purged from the system within 3 minutes of their capture in such a manner that they are destroyed and are not recoverable, unless an alarm resulted in an arrest, a citation, or protective custody, or identified a vehicle that was the subject of a missing person or wanted broadcast.
There are almost no Flock Cameras in the North Country. In fact, north and west of Manchester, there are none except for Hanover and on Rt 3 west of Concord. None I could find, at least. But not all LPRs are Flock, and their very existence creates the opportunity for abuse. From images captured or retained outside the guardrails established by the legislature to a future legislature watering down or removing the few protections in existing law.
Yes, a surveillance state is necessary to deploy the globalist social credit system. Yes, these cameras would be critical to its exercise. But we don’t ban cars because Muslims drive them into parades of people.
The law will be bent and abused; that is why warrantless surveillance is unconstitutional. And yet here we are. Here we are in a world where AI can be deployed to make any of this better or worse. AI is, after all, just a tool, like a firearm. The difference is that a firearm isn’t going to teach itself new tricks, nor can we make it self-learn and adapt. It needs us for that. For now.
And just like firearms, AI will be used for ill, as will Flock and LPR cameras, but that means we must also have the right to keep and bear AI or home surveillance. All are likely to be abused. Law Enforcement can or will ask for access to home surveillance, but they should be expected to get a warrant, not because you are uncooperative with LEO but because, without that, LEO will violate our rights in the name of expediting their process.
Their process is not always in our best interests, especially when it tries to ignore protections meant to prevent abuse.
As legislatures jerk their knees in response to chicken-little outrage, often paid for by foreign interests, over AI (or anything else – water comes to mind), we should remind them that their job is to protect our rights. The rules must always risk freeing the guilty so the innocent are not wrongly accused or detained.
And don’t write them without teeth. NH’s 261:75-b doesn’t have any, not really.
To ensure compliance with the provisions of this section or to investigate complaints of misuse of LPR devices, the attorney general or a designee of the department of justice including county attorneys and law enforcement officers acting at the request of the attorney general may examine and audit any LPR device, a server used to store LPR data, and records pertaining to the use of LPR devices maintained by any state, county, or local law enforcement agency and the department of justice may seek an injunction banning the use of LPR devices by an agency found to have used an LPR device or devices in repeated violation of this section and requiring the confiscation of LPR devices if the attorney general deems it necessary to prevent ongoing violations or deter future violations of this subdivision.
Repeated violation? Once is too much, and there is no mandate to audit; and while the pro-surveillance state people can’t imagine a sum of your money the government can’t spend, they’ll say audits cost money. The answer to that question is: lose the cameras. Sue warrants to access privately owned security cameras. No risk you will violate anyone’s rights “by accident.”
Likewise, incidents of innocent people being wrongly accused or detained are not an excuse to obstruct the use of personal/private surveillance, AI, or anything else, used in a lawful and conscientious manner, that does not violate anyone else’s rights. We have laws for that, too. You can’t legally record someone without their consent except in public spaces where there is no presumption of privacy. And even then, meeting there and recording them without consent is still illegal.
Individuals have rights, and the government exists to protect those rights.
Cameras and AI can and will do great good, and some will abuse them. Our job as citizens is to ensure our government isn’t abusing either but that we are free to benefit from either. Otherwise, all we’ll get is abuse.
