Breaching the lines

Law enforcement officials have been breaching the lines of privacy for decades. In ‘Habeas Data: Privacy vs. the Rise of Surveillance Tech‘ by Cyrus Farivar, there are many recollections of police violating people’s privacy without obtaining a warrant first. In Kyllo v. United States, police used a thermal imaging device to detect heat activity near Daniel Kyllo’s house, and determined that Kyllo was guilty of growing Marijuana in his house. While they were correct, it was argued that they had no right to enter Kyllo’s house and arrest him, as they technically violated his privacy from outside. In Olmstead v. United States, Roy Olmstead’s phone was tapped without a warrant being issued for the tap.

Surveillance technology presents a major issue in our daily lives. Police have proven time and time again just how untrustworthy they are with these technologies. After Freddie Gray died in 2015 after being detained by police, protests broke out, and the Baltimore police department used face recognition technology to identify and arrest people who attended the 2015 protests against police misconduct that followed Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore. Police have misidentified people as suspects due to storing their facial information in their databanks without their knowledge or consent.

Breaching the lines of privacy is a bad things. Most people would agree, yet there are still police officers and FBI agents looking for any reason to violate someone’s privacy. The internet is the perfect place for governments surveillance, since websites record people’s data and then sell the information. ‘US agencies buy vast quantities of personal information on the open market – a legal scholar explains why and what it means for privacy in the age of AI’ by Anne Toomey McKenna explains the data pipeline by pointing out that government surveillance can fall outside legal boundaries, crossing the lines of privacy and civil liberties.