Defeating the Fourth Amendment

This is rather scary stuff:

Liberty Defense is developing Hexwave, a new disruptive technology that was exclusively licensed from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) uses 3D radar imaging and artificial intelligence to detect concealed weapons in urban settings.

Hexwave could be the next technology that replaces X-ray machines, such as for scanning bags in airports or other venues, and it also provides 3D scans of a person’s exterior as where X-ray can only provide 2D scans.

“Hexwave provides 3D imaging at a rate that is in real time — it can assess for threats while the person is still walking, which means it is well suited for higher, faster throughput,” Riker told VentureBeat.

The urban security market by 2020 to 2025 in North America is set to increase by 33%. The new 3D detection machine can revolutionize security at indoor high traffic crowded areas, like schools, malls, hotels, and places of worship, and protect outdoor high traffic areas, like airports, sports venues, government buildings, and bus/subway stations.

Will this sneak by the Fourth Amendment? If used in a common access public place, does this constitute an unwarranted search? The courts danced around the Fourth Amendment issues when doing searches at airports by saying, in essence, “You can still drive, ride a bus, and walk without being searched hence you are consenting to these searches.”

Also of great concern is the often used phrase “concealed means concealed” will no longer be true. Statists will use this technology to claim you don’t need to have a gun to protect yourself because they have the ability to prevent bad guys (everyone except agents of the state) from having a gun. While individual and groups of criminals are of obvious concern and a reasonable justification for private ownership and carry of self-defense firearms that isn’t the primary reason we have the Second Amendment. The primary reason is defense against the state. This technology could tip the balance in favor of dependency of the state for personal protection. This leading to inability to justify in the public eye the private carry and eventual ownership of firearms. This, of course, puts people at great risk of wholesale slaughter when our government goes completely rogue:

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11 thoughts on “Defeating the Fourth Amendment

  1. As a lawyer, I don’t see how this can fail to come through, since the sounds that are triangulated by computer are sounds that can be heard by people (the triangulation part, is just mathematics). It’s the same thing that allows police or another government police agency to drive down the street and measure emissions, whether temperature or chemical, or whatever can be devised in the future, and have those emissions be the basis for a warrant. If you could actually smell something 100 feet away, or detect on your skin the differences in temperature, they you could do this too.
    I remember reading about the triangulation hardware and software twenty years ago as a means to zero in on gangland shootings. Why and how this is just getting installed now is a mystery to me.

    • Are you perhaps conflating this with ShotSpotter?

      That has indeed been deployed, and by what I’ve read doesn’t do a good job at all.

      It also has a problem I see existing with this system also if deployed in a public place: after an alert is given, a human actually has to be sent to deal with it. It does no good to have an accurate ShotSpotter event register if police don’t arrive for half an hour. Then again … drones, camera coverage and facial recognition might make that aspect irrelevant.

  2. If there is a legal reason to stop a person carrying concealed then open carry becomes by default the legal carry method. If open carry is legal, who cares?

    At least, in my utopia.

  3. IANAL, nor do I play one on TV, but my take would be that if widespread use of surveillance cameras doesn’t violate the Fourth amendment, neither will this. I would also expect that due to cost and manpower needed to followup on identified armed individuals, this technology will see limited use as a general area monitoring tool, but will (at least initially) be deployed as a point defense for high value targets. If the cost is lowered to the point that the system is deployed on the streets, I wonder if tinfoil lined hoodies will become a “thing” in certain urban areas, or perhaps pocket jammers will become an investment opportunity.

    • Cameras are passive, “hexwave” is active. May make a huge difference, legally.

      If this becomes a real thing, I foresee a market for hexwave-opaque clothing.

  4. I would think the major market for this would be private actors. If it is not against the law as is the case in many states, then the 4A wouldn’t come into play. However, the hotel, mall, restaurant, store, etc could still exclude you.

    So the violation of our civil rights is once again outsourced to corporations, with the approval of the libertarians no doubt.

    We really need to focus on expanding public accommodation law to cover all legal activity.

    Some hostile attention to Liberty Defense would not be untoward either. They appear to be located in GA. Our friends there should look at seeing whether their products can be outlawed or regulated into oblivion. They look like they are a defense contractor so some decisions not to purchase their stuff would be useful.

  5. If it’s outside, in public. No argument to be made.
    On another 4A note. SOCTUS ruled crap in your trash out front is fair game. How about crap in your “recycle bin” of your computer? just wonder’in Joe.

  6. Up to now, Shotspotter has been found to be worthless for civilian purposes. The early city adopters have tossed the system, even here in Cali, so you know it is bad.

    One of the avenues to fight this new type of search might be health reasons. What are the possible health impacts of radiating this energy at humans?

    MTHead:
    if you are using Win10, some of your data is automatically stored on someone else’s hard drive in the “cloud”. Worse, I have heard that the system is a keylogger, so you can’t actually delete things you have inputted. The cloud remembers all…

  7. They will use the justification that it will reduce criminal activity, but misses the point.

    Being able to defend myself from criminals is only one benefit of CCW. In the worst case, I will CCW to protect myself from the government’s jack-booted thugs.

  8. If I am allowed to carry, open or concealed, according to the 2nd amendment then the 4th amendment is a straw argument. It doesn’t matter if you can tell I am carrying, I am allowed to carry. It does still seem to be a violation of the 4th.

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