Expectation of privacy in public?

[Karsten M. Self]

on Mon, Sep 24, 2001 at 07:16:03AM +0200, Anonymous
(nobody at remailer.privacy.at) wrote:
> For the lawyers and lawyer larvae out there...
>
> In an article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian this week, there is an
> article about MUNI's policy of making audio recordings of passengers.
>
> <quote>
> Nathan Ballard of the City Attorney's Office told the Bay Guardian that
> they were well aware of the policy and approved it. "There are no
> expectations of privacy in public," he said. Ballard asserted that the
> policy was constitutional and did not fall under any wiretapping laws.
> When asked if all of the vehicles that employ this surveillance policy
> post signs to inform passengers that their conversations are being
> recorded, he said, "This policy does not require signs."
> </quote>
>
> Frankly, if I'm sitting in the back of an empty bus, talking to the person
> next to me, it's my opinion that there certainly is a reasonable expection
> of privacy. Does anyone more qualified than I care to tell me why I'm
> right or wrong?

Jeffrey Rosen's _The Unwanted Gaze:  the destruction of privacy in
America_ is a good general read on this topic, and is generally
recommended.

It doesn't cover the issue of "privacy in public" in depth, though the
issue is really more one of moving anonymously (or at least largely
unrecorded) through public spaces.

Rosen does discuss privacy at home and at work, and in cyberspace.  The
index doesn't specifically list "public spaces", though there's some
discussion of anonymity.  Brandeis and Warren wrote a law review article
in 1890 in the _Harvard Law Review_.

Rosen does touch on expectations of privacy in public spaces:

    In _The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera describes how
    the police destroyed an important figure of the Prague Spring by
    recording his conversations with a friend and then broadcasting them
    as a radio serial.

The other interesting discussion is of the Olmstead case (the original
wiretap case).

I would raise objections on the basis of the Fourth and Forteenth
Amendments.

Peace.

--
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