Compton secret surveillance : How Police Spied on a Whole City

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department confirmed earlier this week that it paid a private company to conduct surveillance flights for nine days in 2012 over the Compton area of southeast Los Angeles, the Los Angeles NBC News affiliate reports.

As has become the custom of law enforcement officials forced to justify their violation of the Fourth Amendment, a spokesman for the LA County Sheriff claimed the purpose of the surveillance was to “enhance public safety and impact criminal activity.”

According to authorities, the residents of the city have nothing to worry about, as the program has been scrapped because the images produced by the aircraft’s cameras were ineffective. The cameras that reportedly captured the footage were active for six hours a day during daylight hours. Again, the powers-that-be at the Sheriff’s Department reassure Compton’s citizens that no one has been spied upon, as the footage was captured at such a high altitude that it would not have been possible to catch anyone in their most private of moments.

That might be well and true, but the fact remains that residents living in the city were not notified of the test flights. Efforts should have been made to inform citizens of the program’s existence and its initial testing phase, rather than intruding on the people’s right to privacy. This type of program also raises questions about whether this kind of surveillance is constitutionally permitted. The Fourth Amendment guarantees Americans the right to not have their privacy invaded by government authorities without a warrant signed by a judge that specifically names the individual and what the police are searching for.

Agencies/Canadajournal