> The courts have found that legally, one officer recording one person is no different from a large-scale, automated surveillance system recording everyone.

If you're talking about US courts, then no. If they had, then we wouldn't see -for example- SCOTUS ruling that "geofence warrants" were searches that require Fourth Amendment analysis, rather than being equivalent to picking up a recording of events that happened in plain sight. We also wouldn't see at least one Federal judge openly noting that the judges that cite US vs. Knotts really need to read the entire opinion, rather than just the bit that agrees with what is convenient for them.

US v. Knotts is the forty-year-old case that is the source of the "You've no right to privacy when you're on public roads" idea that both people and judges have been parroting for quite a while now. In addition to establishing that principle, it also considered a possible future where the electronic surveillance that -at the time-

* had to be manually installed into cargo destined for the target's vehicle

* was only capable of tracking a single target vehicle

would become sufficiently advanced as to permit 24/7 dragnet surveillance... at which time, courts would need to reconsider what was just and right in light of such dreadfully advanced mass surveillance capabilities.

Pages 28 (starting at section C.) through 38 of this judge's opinion and order [0] are good reading... it can be hard to tell, but the judge really takes other judges who rely on Knotts but clearly haven't actually read it to task. If you have a half hour free, you should really read the whole thing.

[0] <https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.oknd.76...>

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