America Under Surveillance with Michael Soyfer

Surveillance technology is advancing faster than the laws meant to govern it. Across The United States, police departments are deploying automated license plate readers, facial recognition tools, and predictive systems that quietly log the daily movements of millions of people. These tools promise efficiency and safety, but critics argue that they represent a form of warrantless mass surveillance and raise deep constitutional questions about privacy, accountability, and the limits of government power in the digital age. Michael Soefer is an attorney at the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm focused on defending individual rights. His work centers on the Fourth Amendment and the growing use of surveillance technologies by local governments. Michael joins the show with Kevin Ball to discuss the rise of flock safety cameras, the Institute for Justice's lawsuit against the city of Norfolk, Virginia, how decades old legal precedent struggled to keep up with modern technology, and what citizens, technologists, and policymakers can do to protect privacy in an era of pervasive data collection. Kevin Ball or Kay Ball is the vice president of engineering at Mento and an independent coach for engineers and engineering leaders. He cofounded and served as CTO for two companies, founded the San Diego JavaScript meetup, and organizes the AI in action discussion group through Latent Space. Check out the show notes to follow Kay Ball on Twitter or LinkedIn, or visit his website, kball.llc. Michael, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be here. Yeah. I'm really excited for this conversation. Let's start with a little bit of introduction about you and the Institute for Justice. My name is Michael Soefer. I'm an attorney at the Institute for Justice. I've been here since early twenty twenty four. I primarily work on issues related to the Fourth Amendment, especially surveillance of people's movements in public spaces and kind of the growing government surveillance state across the country. The Institute for Justice is a national nonprofit public interest law firm. We litigate cases in a bunch of areas. The one that's kind of closest to my heart is our project on the Fourth Amendment. Yeah. And I think for those wondering listening to a software podcast, what are we talking about here? I think some of these recurring themes around how technology interacts with our rights and the legal system and all of those things are something I'm very excited to dive in with someone who understands the kind of legal half of that. So let's let's maybe look at this particular Fourth Amendment case and flock cameras in particular. So can you kinda give us the high level overview for folks who haven't been paying attention? Like, what even is this situation and how the surveillance state is growing with it? So I'll talk about our case in Norfolk, Virginia first. You know, we'd noticed that Norfolk had installed the network of 172 Flock automatic license plate readers. They're cameras that when you pass them, …