Do Americans have a reasonable expectation of privacy that is violated when they are videotaped on public streets? In store dressing rooms? In motel rooms? In cybercafés? On what basis might they be challenged?
When cybercafes began to proliferate in Garden Grove, California, they seemed to bring with them gang activity. The police chief pushed for some control, and the city council responded by passing a law that required cybercafes to install video surveillance systems that could be inspected by the city during business hours. When a California court denied a constitutional challenge to the video-surveillance law, one judge dissented:
Do my colleagues not realize the-there is no other word for it-Orwellian implications of their ruling today? They approve an ordinance which literally forces a "Big Brother" style tele- screen to look over one's shoulder while accessing the Internet....
Cybercafes are not just your ordinary "retail establishment."...
Cybercafes allow people who cannot afford computers ... the freedom of the press. They can post messages to the whole world, and, in theory (if they get enough "hits") can reach more people than read the hard copy of the New York Times every morning.... [They allow them] to access the global bulletin board of the Internet, i.e. the ability to receive what others have posted. Logging on is an exercise of free speech.
Consider that totalitarian governments have always cracked down on unrestricted access to the means of communication. When the Communists were in control of countries such as Albania and Bulgaria, each typewriter was licensed....
And consider that the governments of both Communist China and Vietnam have recently cracked down on cybercafes in an effort to curb the freedom of ideas that they promote-an effort that has entailed learning the identity of cybercafe owners....
Given the constitutional rami?cations of the very nature of cybercafes, I will go so far as to say that there is an expectation of privacy even as to one's identity when using a cybercafe.... Vo v. City of Garden Grove, 9 Cal.Rptr.3d 257 (Court of Appeal, 2004) (Sills, Concurring and Dissenting).
Create a constitutional analysis of the video surveillance requirement passed by Garden Grove.