Rocky Houston was a felon in possession of a gun, and is headed to jail for years for that crime. How did they catch him? They installed a video camera on a utility pole near a family-owned property until useful footage was captured.
A federal appeals court upheld his conviction this week, with Judge John Rogers writing that "no reasonable expectation of privacy [exists] in video footage recorded by a camera that was located on top of a public utility pole and that captured the same views enjoyed by passersby on public roads," even if there was no warrant.
David Kravets:
"John Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, said the ruling is bad news for privacy.
"Obviously, the new era of technology, one that was completely unimaginable to the men who drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, requires an updated legal code to enshrine the right to privacy. New technologies which enable the radical expansion of police surveillance operations require correspondingly robust legal frameworks in order to maintain the scope of freedom from authoritarian oversight envisioned by the Framers," he said.
