Legal team demands city take down 24-hour surveillance camera watching innocent family

A legal team at the Institute for Justice has dispatched a demand letter to officials in the town of Greers Ferry, Arkansas, insisting that they take down a surveillance camera that watches an innocent family 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The family, explains IJ lawyer Joshua Windham, “cannot enter or leave their own driveway without the city’s camera capturing a picture of their movements.”

The case involves Charlie and Angie Wolf, and the city’s spy program.

The city contracted with a company to install automatic license plate readers, and the Flock Safety company did so, putting one just weeks ago across the street from the Wolfs’ home and pointing it at them.

“As positioned, the camera captures their driveway and a good portion of their front yard,” the IJ reported.

“After the camera was installed, Charlie reached out to the police chief to express his concerns and was told ‘it’s not moving.’ The following month, the couple sent a letter to city council raising Fourth Amendment concerns and asking officials, once again, to move the camera. Then, in July, Charlie appeared before the city council to reiterate his concerns. At that meeting, city officials doubled down on their stance. City Attorney Blake Spears told Charlie: ‘If you want the camera moved, my suggestion would be to get a court order,’ and Police Chief Kallen Lacy added: ‘We have no plans to move the camera,’” the IJ reported.

Among the concerns, Charlie Wolf said, is that, “Every time me, my family, friends, children or grandchildren come to, leave, play in the front yard or try to enjoy our private property, we are being photographed and added to a database without consent or violation of any law.”

Windham said, “Simply put, the city has put the Wolfs under a state of constant surveillance, where they’re effectively being treated as criminal suspects, even though they’ve done nothing wrong.”

Of course the city has obtained no warrant for its spying.

The legal team pointed that already two state supreme Courts have concluded putting a surveillance camera in front of a home for months without a warrant is unconstitutional.

“Even if the camera wasn’t located directly in front of the Wolfs’ home, the decision to place several Flock cameras throughout the city may still violate the Fourth Amendment,” the IJ pointed out. “In Carpenter v. United States, the United States Supreme Court ruled that using cell phone location data to retrace a person’s past movements was a search that requires a warrant. Using cameras to capture the movements of every person who drives through the city is also a search that requires a warrant under the Fourth Amendment.”

The team pointed out that the Flock system already is being challenged in court for its presence in another city.

There a federal court denied that city’s attempt to get the case dismissed “because the plaintiffs had plausibly alleged ‘an injury caused by [the] installation and operation of the Flock camera’” and ‘that a violation of [their] Fourth Amendment rights occurred.’”