> The AIR program uses aerial photography to track movements related to serious
crimes. Multiple planes fly distinct orbits above Baltimore, equipped with PSS’s camera
technology known as the “Hawkeye Wide Area Imaging System.” The cameras capture
roughly 32 square miles per image per second. The planes fly at least 40 hours a week,
obtaining an estimated twelve hours of coverage of around 90% of the city each day,
5
weather permitting. The PSA limits collection to daylight hours and limits the
photographic resolution to one pixel per person or vehicle, though neither restriction is
required by the technology. In other words, any single AIR image—captured once per
second—includes around 32 square miles of Baltimore and can be magnified to a point
where people and cars are individually visible, but only as blurred dots or blobs.
> On the merits, because the AIR program enables police to deduce from the whole
of individuals’ movements, we hold that accessing its data is a search, and its warrantless
operation violates the Fourth Amendment
> The decision you're citing explicitly cites precedent for the constitutionality of warrantless mounted pole cameras.
And explicity notes that it's the relative scarcity of them that matters.
> Decades later, in United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), location-tracking
technology crossed the line from merely augmenting to impermissibly enhancing. There,
police used a GPS-tracking device to remotely monitor and record a vehicle’s movements
over 28 days. Id. at 402–04. Although the case was ultimately decided on trespass
principles, five Justices agreed that “longer term GPS monitoring . . . impinges on
expectations of privacy.” See id. at 430 (Alito, J., concurring); id. at 415 (Sotomayor, J.,
concurring). Based on “[t]raditional surveillance” capacity “[i]n the precomputer age,” the
Justices reasoned that “society’s expectation” was that police would not “secretly monitor
and catalogue every single movement of an individual’s car for a very long period.”
> Thus, Carpenter solidified the line between short-term tracking of public
movements—akin to what law enforcement could do “[p]rior to the digital age”—and
prolonged tracking that can reveal intimate details through habits and patterns.
Put enough of them up, and the software to track between them, and you're in "enables police to deduce from the whole of individuals’ movements" territory.
Maybe! I'm skeptical. Either way: Anti-Pinkerton doesn't come into it.
I'll tell you what's not going to happen, with certainty: we're not going to get to a point with ALPRs where it becomes so abusive that the Supreme Court decides municipalities can't track cars at all.
They do if it's done to the point where you can track individuals around the city.
https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/201495A.P.pdf
> The AIR program uses aerial photography to track movements related to serious crimes. Multiple planes fly distinct orbits above Baltimore, equipped with PSS’s camera technology known as the “Hawkeye Wide Area Imaging System.” The cameras capture roughly 32 square miles per image per second. The planes fly at least 40 hours a week, obtaining an estimated twelve hours of coverage of around 90% of the city each day, 5 weather permitting. The PSA limits collection to daylight hours and limits the photographic resolution to one pixel per person or vehicle, though neither restriction is required by the technology. In other words, any single AIR image—captured once per second—includes around 32 square miles of Baltimore and can be magnified to a point where people and cars are individually visible, but only as blurred dots or blobs.
> On the merits, because the AIR program enables police to deduce from the whole of individuals’ movements, we hold that accessing its data is a search, and its warrantless operation violates the Fourth Amendment