Judging Freedom - In Houston - One Step Closer to 1984

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

Houston requiring certain businesses to install surveillance cameras and give police access without a search warrant https://abc13.com/houston-security-ca...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Here's a crazy story, which we just picked up here in the east this morning. to require certain businesses, bars, clubs, quick checks, bodegas, nightclubs, sexual-oriented facilities, an interesting gaggle of businesses, to purchase at their own expense security surveillance cameras, to put the surveillance cameras all around the building, showing the street, the parking lot, the alleyways, the garbage dumps, everything that you can see outside the building, and to give the police access to the images shown in the video without a search warrant. What? This is the first time I've heard of this in American history. I mean, it's one thing for the police to put up a camera on a government building to surveil people as they come in and out. I think that's wrong, but it's probably not a violation of the Fourth Amendment because the government owns the building.

But for the city to require that a private entity at its own expense put these cameras up so that it will be easier for the police to track people down when they commit a crime, that takes us one step closer to the surveillance world that George Orwell in his famous novel 1984 warned us against. The government cannot engage in surveillance without a search warrant. And it certainly can't force you to spend money to help the police fight crime. Nobody wants crime, but that's the government's responsibility to fight crime. The government can't enact laws that force private entities to spend their money to help the police fight crime. The government can't enact laws that force private entities to spend their money to help the police fight crime. That's called a taking when the government takes property from you or makes you spend your money on some benefit for the government. These people are crazy

if they really think we want to live in a surveillance society. Would it be easier for the police if everywhere you went there was a camera in everybody's face and it helped them find all the bad guys? Yes, it would be. But who would want to live in such a society? None of us. That's why we have the Fourth and Fifth Amendment, which when they're interpreted as they were intended to be, will prevent the government from doing this. When the laws are written to preserve liberty, that is America. When the laws are written to help the government, that's a police state. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.