Baltimore Police Plane Data Search Ruled Invasion of Privacy (1)

Baltimore’s police department lost its bid to block a lawsuit over surveillance planes in a Fourth Circuit ruling that found searching data collected by the planes amounts to an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.

At issue is how much information the police planes equipped with cameras can collect on people. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said in a Thursday ruling that the planes go beyond other surveillance systems, like security cameras on city streets or police stakeouts at a home.

“The AIR program,” as the police planes are known, “records the movements of a city,” the ruling ...