No person should have to fear that every trip down the street is being permanently recorded, writes Judge Andrew P. Napolitano.
(Pixabay /CC0 1.0/Public Domain )
“The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. … They conferred against the Government the right to be let alone — most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”
— Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941)
The rapid spread of public surveillance cameras represents something far more consequential than a new piece of police technology. It represents a fundamental change in the relationship between the individual and the state.
These cameras allow government agents to record, identify, catalog and retroactively track the movements of people who have committed no crime, are suspected of no wrongdoing and have done nothing to invite government scrutiny. That’s not public safety. It’s an assault upon individual privacy.
Privacy is not a privilege granted by government. It is an aspect of personal liberty that the government exists to protect. It is a natural human right protected from the government in the Bill of Rights. The fact that a person leaves his home and travels upon a public road does not mean that he has surrendered that right.
There is an enormous moral and constitutional difference between a police officer who happens to observe a person in public and government surveillance that automatically and systematically records that person’s vehicle, location and movements; and stores that information for future use.
A free society doesn’t just protect people from crime; it protects them from arbitrary government. The presumption is liberty. Government is the negation of liberty. A person should not have to establish his innocence before the government leaves him alone. The burden always belongs to the government to justify all intrusions into personal liberty. Police cameras reverse that principle. They collect information about everyone the camera views and leave it to individuals to challenge the collections afterward.
The U.S. Constitution requires articulable suspicion connecting the person being surveilled to a legitimate law-enforcement objective to justify public surveillance. A vague assertion that the technology might someday help solve a crime or enhance public safety does not meet that standard.
Questions of Personal Liberty
A New Orleans Police automated license plate recognition scanner camera at North Peters Street and Esplanade Avenue in 2020. (Tony Webster/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0)
The view that personal privacy and public safety are in equipoise — that they are merely two competing interests of equal moral and legal weight from which government officials are entitled to choose subjectively their preferred balance — is the core of authoritarianism.
Safety is one of the legitimate purposes for which government exists. Privacy is among the personal liberties that government exists to protect. It cannot be taken away without judicial approval. Government cannot justify violating a natural right merely by asserting that doing so might make people safer. If that were so, there would be no meaningful boundary on any governmental power.
There is a profound difference between investigating a specific crime through constitutionally authorized surveillance and constructing a permanent infrastructure of suspicionless surveillance. The former begins with evidence and seeks information relevant to a particular governmental purpose. The latter begins with everyone and waits for the evidence.
When 7,000 American police departments have these systems with no legislative approvals, we have the police making policy judgments. They are deciding that the government should possess a new capacity to observe innocent people, what information should be collected, how long it should be retained, who should have access to it and what purposes may justify searches; all this irrespective of the U.S. Constitution.
Those are not merely administrative questions. They are questions about personal liberty.
If elected legislators believe that such surveillance is necessary, they should publicly debate it, enact specific legislation mandating warrants, establish meaningful limitations and accept responsibility before the voters. The decision should not be buried in a police procurement process or treated as an ordinary equipment purchase.
Liberty cannot depend upon the benevolence, restraint or good intentions of government employees. The premise of the Constitution is that government power must be limited, checked and divided because government officials are human beings who possess power and will inevitably have incentives to abuse it.
The answer is not better government surveillance. The answer is what the Fourth Amendment requires: No government surveillance without search warrants.
The constitutional question cannot be reduced to whether someone was physically standing in a public place. A police officer seeing a car pass by is one thing. A government database capable of reconstructing months of a person’s movements is something fundamentally different.
The difference is the difference between observation and surveillance.
A free people should be profoundly suspicious of any governmental system that makes surveillance the default position. No person should have to fear that every trip down the street is being permanently recorded, whether his movements can later be reconstructed or whether a government official can search his history without individualized suspicion.
The U.S. Constitution mandates that the government leave people alone unless it has a legitimate, articulable reason to interfere with their liberty. That principle is not an obstacle to public safety. It is one of the defining characteristics of a free society.
Police cameras embody the opposite philosophy: Collect first, investigate later; monitor everyone, suspect someone later; expand governmental capacity and trust officials to exercise restraint afterward. That’s not the philosophy of a constitutional republic. It’s the philosophy of a surveillance state.
The constitutional objection is not that fighting crime is unimportant. It is that government must fight crime chained down by the U.S. Constitution, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson.
Safety cannot become the magic word that dissolves every constitutional limitation. Privacy cannot be treated as a luxury available only when government determines that it is convenient. And police departments cannot be permitted to acquire, deploy and normalize technologies that fundamentally alter the balance of power between individuals and the state.
If the police could track all movements, stop anyone on a whim, search and photo as they pleased, would we have less crime? Perhaps. But who would protect us from the criminals in uniform? And who would want to live in such an authoritarian state?
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, was the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel and hosts the podcast Judging Freedom. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.
Published by permission of the author.
COPYRIGHT 2026 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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FORE!!! Planet Earth has been under “A State of Surveillance,” [24/7, 365, for YEARS]!!!
“It represents a fundamental change in the relationship between the individual and the state.” Judge Napolitano.
Concluding, *FASCISM IS HERE!” This is NOT a Drill” (Chris Hedges/Roger Waters).
“We” the people, were warned, YEARS, ago:
…..1) “Big Brother is home. He is installed in the item you just dragged home from the Apple store.” Julian Assange.
…..2) “Once democratic institutions are hollowed out, a process begun before the election of Trump, despotism is inevitable. The press is shackled. Corruption and theft take place on a massive scale. The rights and needs of citizens are irrelevant. Dissent is criminalized. Militarized police monitor, seize and detain Americans without probable cause. The rituals of democracy become farce. This is the road we are traveling. It is a road that leads to internal collapse and tyranny, and [August, 2026, WE ARE VERY FAR DOWN IT].” Chris Hedges/Mr. Fish, JANUARY 28, 2018.
…..3) “Within days of Donald Trump’s [SECOND] term, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights disappeared from the White House’s website. While the Trump Administration insists the removal of these foundational documents will eventually be restored to the site, the timing and symbolism of their removal is hard to ignore. Especially in light of the flurry of executive orders issued by President Trump as a means of bypassing the very rule of law those documents were intended to ensure.” John & Nisha Whitehead, @ *“The Constitution Has Gone AWOL: From Presidential Power Grabs to Martial Law.” JANUARY 22, 2025.
…..4) “Look, there’s a lot of stuff happening here all at once; AND, that precisely is what we’re trying to wrap our minds around.” Adam Tooze, MARCH 7, 2023. “This is actually a collective experience. This is why ‘polycrisis’ is a useful way of looking at the world right now.”
…..“Stay Wild!” TY!
* hxxps://consortiumnews.com/2025/08/01/the-chris-hedges-report-this-is-not-a-drill/
* hxxps://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-useful-idiocy-of-donald-trump/
*hxxps://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_constitution_has_gone_awol_from_presidential_power_grabs_to_martial_law
* hxxps://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/03/polycrisis-adam-tooze-historian-explains/
No one objects of having a cop on the beat who walks the neighborhood each day and who knows everyone in town. So what is the difference if we have an electronic cop on the beat?
“No one objects of having a cop on the beat who walks the neighborhood each day and who knows everyone in town. So what is the difference if we have an electronic cop on the beat”
???
Because …now we have ‘millions’ of (electronic) Cops on station everywhere and anywhere you might wish or need to venture who not only ‘observe’ your presence, but write-down when, where, for how long and how often and other ‘specifics’ into a (what will, make no mistake eventually become permanent’) record EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY …that can be accessed in almost real-time by each other regardless of their assigned station /beat throughout the ENTIRE Country!!
Are you ‘OK’ with that?
In public? Yes.
As with all technology it is down to how it is used by rogue states or bad actors within those states that we should all be concerned about. Reduction in crime?, finding missing persons or property? All sound like positives. But we all know how data can be manipulated. How long before convincing AI images are produced as evidence of someone being someplace they were no where near, or doing something that they were not. This tech will be owned and operated by mega rich corporations and inviduals accountable to no one, all acting as agents of the state. (Just check out Mike Ludwigs’ article on CN). We ordinary citizens should be very aware.
The judge’s fundamental premise is wrong. The government does not own this technology, corporations do. They collect, store, and parse the data out under license, for which governments pay a hefty sum out of the tax dollars it collects from citizens. This model effectively skirts any constitutional arguments against public surveillance, no matter how tenuous, as the judge’s arguments are. If anything, this system points to oligarchical rule (police depts that don’t pay for the service are denied the surveillance, despite having cameras around) rather than government overreach.
The technology is being trialled in Australia as we speak with barely a squeak from the public: hxxps://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-11/ai-police-face-screening-trial-sparks-privacy-concern/107009644
I’m mostly ambivalent about it. I’ve been to China many times over the last 20+ years and it’s uncomfortable that the authorities know where you are all the time and can find you any time they want. The “but” is, there has been an observable reduction in crime from petty pickpocketing to serious violence and you do feel very safe in public now. It’s also helped that no one carries cash to steal now. It’s all pay-by-phone over there (which is another way to assert control over you through technology). I’m feeling that the horse has bolted as the majority are putting up with these controls and seeing positives. Of course, this all relies on having a government and authorities that have our best interests at heart. In Australia I consider that we do, but of course that’s not the case in many other countries.
Here is what was not said in Judge Napolitano’s essay:
When an authoritarian society attains total “State of Surveillance”, any individual will be subjected to a state of fables and fabrications. This means anyone can say anything about anybody, because they have the receipts, even without presenting the proof. Furthermore, facts will be a hindrance and the best sounding jerk will be the, “Rule of the World.”
From one jerk to another, “Not Good!”
The State cameras are only a part of the problem. Look around your home, and try to spot every surveillance camera pointed your direction. Especially by your neighbors. I can count five from my neighbors. Cameras watching a fence that instead point at my windows. Cameras watching parked cars but still pointed at other windows. Doorbell cameras. Consider that the doorbell cameras on houses on either side of you can record which vehicles stop at your home, just by the fact they did not show up on the other side, but in my case, those are not part of the five. If there are commercial businesses nearby, they certainly have their own cameras and almost certainly closely cooperate with the police. Again, I did not count that to get to the five private cameras pointed directly at where I live.
If the police see a camera, they can go ask for the footage. Many of your fellow Americans would say yes without objection. If police find a rare person they can not convince or threaten into turning over the footage, they can go get a warrant from a judge, who usually used to be in the prosecutor’s office working with the police on a daily basis.
We need more articles from Napolitano that –like the current one– declare forthrightly that which has been so purposely obscured.
Isn’t it apparent by now that the objectivity of the truth in the Constitution is illusory: — akin to a windsock. It merely reflects the direction the wind is blowing at a specific time in history.
False, we are in a better state than any other nation because of the US Constitution.
In a functioning democracy, the rules should be continuously updated to reflect the latest advancements in democracy. The very fact that America enshrines its Constitution as some sort of perfect ideal only goes to prove that America does not have a functioning democracy. And has not for a very long time. The only effective change that has occurred is that the Elites have gotten rid of that annoying Bill of Rights that they never wanted in the first place.
A government system that stays frozen in stone for most of two and a half centuries does not say “Freedom”. Freedom means that the people are free to change things. Instead, we see a supposed democracy and Land of the Free where the people have been steadily losing their freedom to the point where we are now under full-time surveillance. But we are still told by every lying politician that we are Free and our Freedom is important to defend with massive wars.
Are you willing to die for this Freedom?
These are utterly ludicrous arguments, not worthy of the judge. The fourth amendment says: “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated …”
There is absolutely NOTHING here against observation of persons actions in the public sphere. That is for the very good reason that it’s ludicrous to expect privacy when acting in the public!
The judge argues several times that machine observation is somehow different from a policeman observing the public. This is because he realizes that the latter is an accepted standard of policing that we are used to and accept and so he needs to somehow show that cameras and computers doing the same thing is somehow different. But the two are identical. If police departments had unlimited budgets and personnel and could station police officers at every street cross section, and the police had good memory, how would that be different from what is being done with AI/cameras?
In 99% of human history on earth, we were members of small to medium-size bands of people or village communities who all knew each other and there was zero anonymity in public. If Bob ran through town waving a spear over his head and acting crazy, people would immediately find him and try to keep him from doing harm to himself and others. I think the problem is that people in modern society have gotten used to anonymity and confuse it with privacy and expect that they can act any way they wish in public without being identified and becoming subject to social or criminal sanction. My question is: is this actually a value we want to keep?
But police forces don’t have such budgets and it’s a good thing. Is this a world you want to live in, with a cop observing us at every intersection?
>>If police departments had unlimited budgets and personnel and could station police officers at every street cross section, and the police had good memory, how would that be different from what is being done with AI/cameras?<<
Note that we are talking about actions taken in the public, not in people’s homes. That was my main argument with the judge.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a society where everyone knows everyone else and people take community responsibility for taking care of each other in public like humans have historically done … we have defrayed this responsibility to police. In this society, it is indeed important to observe and respond. How many times a day do you see people who obviously are a danger to themselves (mostly) and others and are left to their own devices simply because society ignores them and the police triage to the worst cases? That we have become used to this situation does not make it good.
For a very basic example, I see dangerous drivers every day, endangering their own and others’ lives through thoughtlessness built on anonymity. Tens of thousands of people get killed and hundreds of thousands are injured by drivers every year. If these people were observed and sanctioned reliably, they would either reform their behavior or lose their ability to harm others.
From Cordwainer Smith:
“Poor communication deters crime,
good communication promotes crime,
perfect communication stops crime.”
When you are in a Public Bathroom are you subject to being videotaped either by the Government or by a Private Corporation or Private Individual?
You mentioned: “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated …”
The FIRST PART OF THE Constitution reads: “the right of the people to be secure in their persons”
The founders never envisioned the advances of technology that would threaten the Rights they believed to be “self-evident.”
Being “SECURE IN THEIR PERSONS” includes WHEREVER THEIR PERSONS MIGHT BE which is not only limited to inside one’s home.
When you are inside a friend or acquaintance’s home are you in PRIVATE or PUBLIC since that is NOT YOUR HOME?
Private property is well understood: yours or someone else’s. Govt is not supposed to intrude w/o court order.
Personal privacy in public does not include visual or aural recording … you are in public, you are in full view by your choice. People can observe you and note your actions.
Simple stuff, for reasonable people.
Whilst I have the upmost respect and admiration for Mr. Napolitano, I’m of the same mind here and I thank you for saving me the time to write out similar reasoning. I write this to offer my support for your sound reasoning.
What I fear far more than my every trip down the street being permanently recorded (which like another has stated is already commonplace in the UK and certainly when it comes to fighting actual crime, it works exceptionally well – I actually miss the day when there’d be a local bobby always walking their beat, it made me feel safe!) is the shadowy unnamed and unelected individuals/organisations running our countries with the freedom to use this kind of tech well outside of the Law to steer the country and their whims in any direction they choose.
We’re not getting away from AI anytime soon and we’re still ruled by overlords of sorts, so we can either fight the current and drown trying, or ride with it hoping the current drags you near the bank letting you climb out or cling on and stall the inevitable and painfully slow self-immolation of the human species as we either ‘evolve’ into something resembling the ‘Borg’ from Star Trek, or wipe ourselves out via spite.
Thanks. I have a feeling we will eventually figure it out. But it may be decades from now in a much diminished world.
the UK has been subjected to cctv for decades.