Brie McLemore is a PhD candidate in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation situates smart street lights, which are equipped with cameras and automatic license plate readers, as a proxy for understanding how technologies became a tool of the Carceral State, even when this was not their intended use, and the consequences for the right to privacy. The Frances S. Coles summer research grant will support the development of her dissertation chapter, titled “‘The Supreme Court is Not Going to Save Us:’ Technology, Policing, and the Legal Uncertainty of Privacy Rights,” which explores these central research questions: (1) how are regulations pertaining to technology and privacy interpreted, enacted, and/or disregarded by decision-makers when considering the adoption of surveillance technologies? and (2) what expectations of privacy do residents have in a city adopting a surveillance technology and do these expectations differ from the decision-makers who determine whether a technology is acquired? Her analysis, which is informed by qualitative research methods, suggests that the courts, as well as state, federal, and local governments, are reluctant to contend with how technology has transformed expectations of privacy, which has resulted in a patchwork of antiquated regulatory measures. This deficiency in legal protections has afforded law enforcement the ability to enact various strategies to circumvent privacy rights. As a result, statutes and legal doctrine designed to limit law enforcement’s surveillance capabilities are instead interpreted, negotiated, and ultimately defined by the very institution it seeks to regulate.
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