Sonoma County Nailed With Lawsuit: Criminal Mass Surveillance

CITIZENS IN SONOMA COUNTY ARE SUING TO STOP AN ILLEGAL MASS SURVEILLANCE DRONE PROGRAM

Sonoma County is a lovely place to visit, especially if you love wine and food. But mostly wine. It’s a unique place, being one of several microclimates in California. But the only one that so outstandingly supports making amazing wine. I visited once, and only scratched the surface of all there is to discover there in just 3 days. So when I think of Sonoma County, I think of wine and not enough time to find more free tastings. But for people who live there that’s totally normal, and they think of other mundane things about their home. Yet right now a number of those people are wicked pissed and have nailed the County with a lawsuit over criminal mass surveillance.

FINDING ILLEGAL WEED CROPS TURNED INTO CATCHING PROPERTY CODE VIOLATIONS

We’ve heard about these things before by the dozens, usually in smaller municipalities or sections of cities (and yes, I’m intentionally skipping over how Big Tech helped the Feds engage in illegal surveillance of us all two decades ago and were then indemnified). But usually, this is about overstepping in a small way and then taking a giant leap- at least in terms of authorities violating the hell out of citizens’ privacy. Or, it’s a surveillance program supposedly intended to fight one particular kind of crime, but instead is mass surveillance of everyone. And that’s Sonoma, which started the now 6-year-old drone program to catch illegal marijuana grows.

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ILLEGALLY VIOLATING PEOPLE’S PRIVACY WITH NO WARRANT WAS ALL ABOUT ISSUING FINES

And yes, it’s ironic that this is generally weed friendly California where this has been happening. But at some point early on in those six years, authorities thought it would be a good idea to add the mass in mass surveillance to catch totally unrelated code violations at private residential properties, resulting in millions of dollars in fines. The lawsuit against Sonoma County says that the program has generated 5,600 images from over 700 drone flights. The suit is asking Sonoma County Superior Courts to immediately stop the mass surveillance drone program. If there’s discovery, it will be interesting to see what else the images show, like people naked in their outdoor hot tubs, on their “private” properties.