Pole Camera Surveillance Under the Fourth Amendment

Placing a video camera on a utility pole and conducting surveillance can be a useful law enforcement tool to gather information without requiring an in-person presence by officers at all times. But this tool may be subject to the Fourth Amendment restrictions. This post reviews the evolving case law, particularly since the United States Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945 (2012). Jeff Welty in a 2013 post reviewed video surveillance generally, not just pole cameras, and discussed Jones and the few cases decided in light of its ruling. This post, after reviewing Jones, will discuss a few pole camera cases decided in federal courts since his post and whether officers should seek approval from a court before conducting pole camera surveillance. United States v. Jones. Officers installed a GPS device without a valid search warrant on a suspected drug-trafficker’s vehicle and then tracked the vehicle’s movements for about four weeks. The holding of Jones was that the installation of the GPS tracking device on a suspect’s vehicle was a Fourth Amendment search because it involved a physical intrusion (a “trespass”) into the vehicle for the purpose of obtaining information. In addition, five Justices (the four who joined Justice Alito’s concurrence in the judgment plus Justice Sotomayor, who also had joined the Court’s opinion) expressed the view that prolonged GPS monitoring intrudes upon a suspect’s reasonable expectation of privacy and is a search under the Fourth Amendment. These Justices reasoned that although short-term monitoring of a [...]