Forty-Two Cameras and the Flock That Ate the Fourth Amendment

Dear Silent Citizenry,

When a government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, it owes the people not secrecy dressed as safety, but transparency rooted in law. A decent respect for the rights of the people requires that the City of Green Bay explain, justify, limit, and make fully accountable any system that can record, search, and trace the lawful movements of the public.

We therefore submit these grievances.

>They have refused to assent to laws most wholesome and necessary for the public good, by allowing a system of public surveillance to stand without first establishing clear and binding protections for the people, including strict limits of use, public audits, data-retention rules, access logs, search categories, agency-sharing disclosures, and remedies for abuse.

>They have forbidden the passage of measures of immediate and pressing importance, by permitting the growth of license-plate-reading cameras, private vendor databases, and drone first responder technology while leaving the people without sufficient safeguards against the abuse of such power.

>They have called public bodies to decide matters of lasting consequence without the full knowledge and understanding of the governed, placing surveillance contracts, police policies, audits, and vendor agreements beyond the plain sight of the citizens whose movements may be recorded.

>They have failed in the representative duty to oppose with firmness invasions upon the rights of the people, by allowing technology to enlarge the reach of government power while treating constitutional concern as an inconvenience rather than a warning.

>They have erected among us a multitude of watchful instruments, and by contract with private power have placed upon the public ways devices capable of recording, searching, and tracing the movements of the people.

>They have kept among us, in times of peace, a permanent system of surveillance, without first securing the full knowledge, consent, and continuing oversight of the governed.

>They have affected to render the instruments of police power independent of and superior to civil restraint, placing their operation within private systems, internal policies, unseen audits, and agreements not plainly submitted to the people.

>They have placed the ordinary citizen under suspicion without charge, by permitting the movements of the many to be gathered and searched in order to investigate the suspected few.

>They have deprived the people, in practice, of the ancient security against general searches, by allowing government to collect first, search later, and justify afterward.

>They have altered fundamentally the relationship between citizen and government, changing the public street from a place of free movement into a field of recorded passage, where one’s lawful travel may be stored, searched, shared, and examined by authorities unknown to the citizen.

>They have made public safety the language by which public liberty may be narrowed, claiming gun violence as the cause while failing to show, by public record, whether this system is used narrowly for shootings and violent crimes or broadly for warrants, traffic enforcement, suspicious activity, civil enforcement, immigration enforcement, or other purposes.

>They have permitted private power to stand between the people and their own government, by allowing a vendor to operate systems touching the liberty of citizens while the public remains uncertain who owns the data, who may access it, how long it is kept, how it is shared, and whether it may be analyzed beyond its stated purpose.

>They have turned promises into safeguards and assurances into law, though a promise hidden from public inspection is not accountability, an audit unseen by the people is not transparency, and a policy that cannot be examined is not consent.

The City of Green Bay, having entered into a five-year agreement for Flock license-plate-reading cameras and a drone first responder program, now possesses a system capable of recording, searching, and tracing the movements of the public. It asks citizens to accept assurances where visible constitutional safeguards ought to stand.

The police chief has said these cameras were installed as part of a broader effort to reduce gun violence. He has said they help officers identify a suspect’s vehicle, know who they are, and sometimes be waiting for them before they return home. Let it be plainly understood: no free people should be indifferent to gun violence. No citizen should desire that violent offenders escape justice. But the presence of violence does not dissolve the Fourth Amendment, and fear does not grant government a blank warrant over the movements of the people.

A police officer observing one car on one street is ordinary law enforcement. A network of cameras, operated with the aid of a private company, creating a searchable record of vehicle movement across the city, is something far greater. It is not mere observation. It is surveillance. It is not simply seeing what happens in public. It is building a database that allows government to look backward through the lawful movements of ordinary citizens.

The Fourth Amendment was written to forbid general searches. It was written to prevent government from gathering first and justifying later. It was written to protect the innocent as much as the accused. If Green Bay claims this system is for gun violence, then the burden is on the city to prove it.

Let the city produce the contract, the five-year agreement, the drone agreement, the data-retention policy, the camera locations, the audit logs, the access records, the case-number requirements, the search categories, the outside-agency sharing agreements, and the rules governing who may search this system and why.

Let the city show how many searches were tied to shootings, homicides, armed robberies, stolen vehicles, traffic enforcement, warrants, suspicious activity, or any other purpose. Let the city show whether Brown County, De Pere, state agencies, federal agencies, or out-of-state agencies may access Green Bay’s data. Let the city show whether this information can be used for immigration enforcement, civil enforcement, warrant sweeps, political monitoring, or any purpose beyond the stated reason of gun violence.

Let the city show who owns the data, how long it is kept, whether Flock may analyze it, whether it may be shared, and whether the public has any meaningful protection from misuse.

For a safeguard hidden from the people is not a safeguard. An audit unseen by the public is not accountability. A policy no citizen may inspect is not transparency. And a promise from government is not the same as a constitutional limit.

We therefore hold that the people of Green Bay have the right to demand records, demand answers, and demand that any surveillance power be narrow, lawful, auditable, and accountable to the citizens it claims to protect.

This is not a complaint against public safety. It is a complaint against unexamined power. This is not opposition to solving gun crimes. It is opposition to building permanent surveillance infrastructure without the full knowledge and consent of the governed.

If the city is correct, the records will prove it. If the system is narrow, the records will show narrow use. If the system is truly for gun violence, the evidence will bear that out.

But if the records show broad tracking of everyday citizens, then the people must know before silence becomes surrender.

The Constitution does not enforce itself.

It waits for citizens to speak.