The thing I keep thinking about with these cameras is how different societies balance individual rights against community interests. In the US, the government generally has to prove guilt. What if you had to prove you were innocent? That is a HUGE difference. If someone said you were at Panini’s last Thursday, could you prove you weren’t? Maybe you are lucky. You spent the day in Sandusky and kept receipts for lunch, gas, and the ferry. I don’t have that kind of proof. Without location data from my cell carrier, I couldn’t prove I was home all day Thursday.

Flock cameras raise a related concern. The Fourth Amendment protects people, houses, papers, and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures. Would more data help solve crimes? Sure. But if police could routinely search our homes, open our safes, and review our phones and bank transactions, they might solve more crimes, too. As a society, we have accepted limits on investigative power. Even when that means some crimes remain unsolved, we have decided to protect individual privacy.

The traditional view has often treated what someone does in public is less private. If a person is standing at the corner of 303 and S Carpenter, they can record the plate of every car that drives by. They can add the make/model/color, and a description of the driver. They can even snap a photo. Great, no right to privacy in public. But there’s a difference between a person seeing a car at 303 and S. Carpenter and a network of cameras recording plates, identifying vehicles, and combining those observations across towns. One is a glimpse of a single moment; the other can create a searchable history of someone’s movements. You can expect no privacy on a public road without expecting that your entire trip from Vermont to Iowa will be recorded. Retrievable. Available to law enforcement offices across the entire country.