Law Commons^™

Public Privacy: Camera Surveillance Of Public Places And The Right To Anonymity, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Government-sponsored camera surveillance of public streets and other public places is pervasive in the United Kingdom and is increasingly popular in American urban centers, especially in the wake of 9/11. Yet legal regulation of this surveillance is virtually non-existent, in part because the Supreme Court has signalled that we have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public places. This article, written for a symposium on the intersection of the Fourth Amendment and technology, contests that stance, at the same time it questions whether the traditional, "probable-cause-forever" view of Fourth Amendment protections makes sense in this technological age. Based on an …