I&#x27;m intrigued by the idea&#x2F;necessity of some &quot;non-omniscience&quot; factor in weighing 4th amendment cases moving forward.<p>The argument is always that they&#x27;re only tracking the &quot;same views enjoyed by passersby on public roads&quot;, attempting to create a false equivalence between a camera and a human.<p>This has always been a pet peeve of mine, because there are factors that nullify the projected equivalence: each of these &#x27;passersby&#x27; on the public road can only be in one place at one time. They are not omniscient. Further, there is an assumed limit to the amount of data they can collect (what can one person see from that street corner) and an assumed cost to the collection of that data (and therefore: even a government is limited in the scope of collection; they can&#x27;t place an agent infront of every house on every street). These were the assumptions present in the time of the writing of the amendment. These assumptions only apply to the economics of humans, not cameras, and materially changes the effect of the law in the present day.<p>Courts will need a mechanism to articulate that a camera is not equivalent to a passerby. It&#x27;s not a question of function, it&#x27;s a question of scope. Much like anti-trust laws or regulations against cornering economic markets don&#x27;t differentiate based on function, but the scope of the function. When it comes to privacy - the kind that the Fourth Amendment was written to protect - yes, placing agents on corners is substantially different than placing cameras on corners.