Software Engineering Daily America Under Surveillance with Michael Soyfer
10 snips
Jan 15, 2026 
Michael Soyfer, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, dives deep into the implications of government surveillance technologies like automated license plate readers. He discusses how these tools, while marketed for public safety, raise serious constitutional questions about privacy. Soyfer highlights the challenges of outdated legal precedents and the rapid rollout of these technologies without oversight. He emphasizes the need for stricter regulations, including warrant requirements and data retention limits, to protect citizens' rights in a digitally monitored age.
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Ground-Level Mass Movement Tracking
- Flock's cameras capture license plates and create searchable month-long location logs for vehicles.
- That builds rich dossiers of citizens' movements without individualized suspicion.
Government Harvests Its Own Location Data
- Governments now gather their own population-level location data as access to private datasets tightened after Carpenter.
- This shifts surveillance from private brokers to direct government repositories vulnerable to abuse.
Outdated Legal Precedents Hurt Privacy
- Courts rely on decades-old precedents that treat public movements as non-private, which poorly fit modern continuous tracking.
- Technology has raced ahead while judicial understanding and rulings lag far behind.
