Baltimore PD’s Insane AIR Spying Ruled Unconstitutional



This hasn’t been in the news. I just happened to come across the opinion yesterday while doing my usual homework. On Thursday, the 4th Circuit, sitting “en banc,”held that Baltimore Police Department’s Insane and Orwellian mass AIR surveillance program is/was unconstitutional. It’s crazy what they were doing, but not surprising. This is a huge blow to the tyrants….

Read the opinion and more: https://thecivilrightslawyer.com/2021/06/29/fourth-circuit-holds-mass-aerial-surveillance-is-unconstitutional/

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45 thoughts on “Baltimore PD’s Insane AIR Spying Ruled Unconstitutional”

  1. I love it when the courts rule of in favor of the people and the constitution.

    Why do police think that everyone is a criminal? Why do they think we're all guilty until proven innocent.

    Abolish qualified immunity

  2. I saw a show years ago now where they had the whole city from the overhead view and resolution was way higher than one pixel per person. It may have been read license plate resolution, it was that good. It was a big room with a huge screen. I think the plane just did a small circle at altitude. It was a "pilot program" and they showed how they solved a crime tracking… Software could tag anything and translucent color it to track it.

  3. Gee, what a surprise, when the judges movements are tracked every second, they suddenly find a 4th amendment applicable.
    Speeding again, judge, at the bar again, judge, didn't go straight home like you told the wife, judge ?

  4. Here in Seattle did as well it began after the latest Muslim holly day on August and just recently stop due to weather and you should see how many drones were at night with there blinding light aim at vehicles.

  5. I guess you don't know then that this is now going on all over the USA and Europe and has been ramping up since Biden took power? It is being carried out by a variety of military and Police aircraft and was first spotted over Mar-a-lago and the Maricopa election audits. MilSpec Monkey has been tracking this and when the aircraft flies in a tight circle, they are masquerading as a cell tower and sucking up all the information. https://www.youtube.com/c/MonkeyWerxUS Here is one of the first times spotted in May 2021 before the perfect circles started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQNr6C4TDcE

  6. That's very weird that you have this video on YouTube at this time. The reason I say that is because I live in a no-fly zone in Las Vegas Nevada but have, in the last few months noticed that there are numerous helicopters flying around in the skies here all day long. I have lived at the same address for 34 years but have only recently noticed it and was telling a neighbor the other day that I've been trying to get a number for the Air Traffic Control at the Harry Reid International Airport here in Las Vegas to see if I can find out what this is all about. It just seems very suspicious that they fly around and hover in areas which disturbs my peace when trying to sunbathe in my backyard. If I find out anything, I'll let you know.

  7. I heard about this years ago. They were doing it in Ohio. There are people that track radio transmissions and tail numbers on planes. They definitely didn’t let anyone know about it

  8. So, then the Govt has a private for profit corporation fly the drones to surveille us. Just like the Govt can not censor free speech so they have YOUTUBE, GOOGLE, TWITTER etc do the censoring for them. Of course there's always carrots and/ or sticks offered by the Govt to the private company and its usually in the billions.

  9. The second you step out of your door, you throw away all expectations of privacy. If aerial cameras are unconstitutional, then any security camera outside should be unconstitutional. Very slippery slope here. Where do we draw the line between a personal camera and a camera being used to gather data? FYI, remember the face recognition that facebook used to use that would identify people in the background? They still use it, but they have already gathered a large enough database to not need manual tagging anymore. Pictures are still being tagged, and not just the pictures on fb. Any digital camera that is on a device that you clicked ok on any EULA for has been granted access to your camera, your storage, and your data. Don't need to worry about cameras on planes that only pic up a pixel when every single person with a smartphone is a walking surveillance device with camera and microphone. Unless you have a soundproof room, inside a Faraday cage that you leave all electronic devices outside of, you do not have privacy. There is technology that can detect the vibrations in the windows of your house and convert that to audio files. The only thing giving us any privacy is that facebook is a company and they still want money and right now, only the federal government can afford their data. I'm not a conspiracy cook. This technology has been around for decades.

  10. MESA PD FLIES AROUND SPECIFIC AREAS DAY AND NIGHT…OVER AND OVER…FLYING CIRCLE PATTERS OVER APARTMENT COMPLEXES, SEARCHLIGHT ON THEN OFF…ALL DAY AND NIGHT. ALL FOR NOTHING.
    MESA BELIEVES THE PEOPLE ARE THEIR PROPERTY.

  11. I always thought an officer needed probable cause to run your plates. I would have approached the license plates readers as the "state" is too easily able to track the movements and free association of the people. If I know that I am being followed by agents of the "State" is that not intimidation and harassment?

  12. These programs were begun under the Obama administration, in late 2014 if I remember correctly. While the "General Public" may be unaware of this mass surveillance, it is widely known, and even more widely discussed in technical [mostly engineering] communities. We all believed that the old adage "you have no expectation of privacy in public" was going to render this atrocity Constitutional: I am beyond pleased that a federal court (a place which is not usually capable of correctly processing this kind of highly technical information properly) found this behaviour unconstitutional! The analogy of everyone having an ankle bracelet is a good one: I suspect that is the very argument that swayed the Judge's opinion.

    I have been involved in several "bleeding edge" cases where the technology was the key to both acquittal or conviction, and, poorly understood by the courts. The key is to draw analogies like this one. In Kentucky, there was a child porn case (ended up being nolle'd IIRC), where the entire question was how the possession happened. The defendant was a completely technically ignorant. He literally could not tell where his desktop ended and the public internet began. The key to the defense was to determine how the images ended up on his computer: the federal computer/CP laws [primarily the Adam Walsh Act] prohibit the defense team from getting forensic copies of the evidence being used for prosecution (deliberately, and I think unconstitutionally). The "regular" routine is the defense and associated experts are allowed to investigate a forensic copy which resides at the police station or prosecutors office, on their schedule, and when they find it convenient. Clearly, this makes the work of the experts either impossible or severely difficult. I managed to get a federal judge to release a forensic copy to us with the stipulation that the pictures in question be "blanked out" on the copy. While it's a digital procedure, performed by a technical expert, the analogy was providing the defense with the entire case file, only having redacted the prohibited imagery by taking a magic marker to it. The judge understood that argument, and gave us a copy – over the prosecution's strenuous, vocal, and almost frenzied objections! Until that day, the prosecution essentially had zero Brady responsibilities when dealing with CP cases, and the local AUSA was a very unhappy camper! Suddenly, it was possible for defendants to actually get the necessary information to prove their innocence, and he was furious! Anyway, I have gone off on an unecessary tangent…

    This tech is already incredibly invasive and comprehensive (as you pointed out), but it is only going to get better – defense attorney's need to start getting their attacks ready now, because if you wait until you need them, it will be too late.

  13. I am constantly amazed at the foresight of our forefathers. They made the U.S. Constitution a reality, complete with the Bill of Rights. They didn't want the government conducting surveillance (or spying). They had been through the mill with the King of England. And they made the Constitution a living document as it can be amended (I think 27 times now?). They didn't have much foresight when it came to black people and Native Americans though. It took 78 more years before black people would be freed. Didn't they refer to blacks as 3/5th of a person? As far as the Natives go they're still getting screwed and the government owns all of the land they used to fish and hunt on. As an example Shasta Indians had 1.6 million acres they hunted and fished. Today they have 46 acres.

  14. Police need to swear an allegiance to the Constitution, as we do with our military, local laws are secondary , if a dopey local ordinances is in conflict they should be compelled not to enforce.

  15. they have been doing it in Baltimore for a while now, they have also piloted (no pun intended) it in other high crime cities.
    This surveillance program was originally developed for Oversees. It was used in Iraq to track people who planted IED's after they were discovered.

  16. The slow pace of the judiciary is abetting the other branches to trample our rights. They can do what they want for over a decade, then only must stop for short periods before rebranding the law and creating another slow path through the courts and multiple layers of dysfunctional judges before finally seeing scotus.

    This first came to my attention when the FBI was first identified as using‘stingrays’

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