Posted on 05/11/2024 10:54:00 AM PDT by CFW
In December 2022, Reason reported that both state and federal wildlife agents routinely trespass onto private land and plant cameras. Two Tennessee homeowners successfully sued the state over the practice, and a three-judge panel ruled in their favor. The state appealed the decision, and this week the court of appeals ruled in the homeowners' favor.
At issue is a state law allowing officers of the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency (TWRA) to "go upon any property, outside of buildings, posted or otherwise," in order to "enforce all laws relating to wildlife." In the case of Terry Rainwaters and Hunter Hollingsworth, TWRA officers not only entered their respective properties but also installed trail cameras to look for hunting violations, all without a warrant and ignoring "No Trespassing" signs. A lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice (I.J.) on behalf of Rainwaters and Hollingsworth asked the court to declare the law unconstitutional and issue an injunction against the TWRA, barring it from carrying out any further unwarranted intrusions.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
It would have been nice had the homeowners confiscated the cameras, which, if nothing else, are a form of squatting.
I know someone that works for a State transportation agency in the Northeast. During COVID they allowed employees to work from home. This person has a particularly nasty boss, I know the boss and this is a nasty character. The boss prompted the Inspector General to investigate the person working from home. At this time the women working from home was on paternity leave and was called in for an interrogation WHILE on maternity leave. Long story short, the interrogation didn’t go well, imagine that.
Sometime later the husband of the women working at home is in the front yard and notices a camera on the telephone pole in front of their house. They have two small children and their first fear was that this might be some pervert, so they call the County Sheriff (rural area). Sheriff says: “That is not us, but I have seen this before, it’s your employer.”
The legality of this has never really been challenged in term of civil rights. There is also the consideration of whether the telephone pole is in the “public right-of-way” (adjacent to the road) or is the pole on private property where the utilities have easement to enter onto the property to maintain the pole.
Anyway, people should know this is being normalized.
As I've posted above, when agents of the government plant cameras on your property, it's squatting quartering.
-PJ
Yes, and wear a gorilla outfit while doing it.
Camera? What camera? You put cameras on our propertiy?
Re: 7 - I think that’s a stretch - Plaintiffs Rainwaters and Hollingsworth did not raise 3rd Amendment issues as far as I have have to date.
Does sound like the case was properly decided.
With that said, Hollingsworth sounds like a turd. He plead guilty to dove baiting, paid a $3,000 fine and lost his TN hunting privileges for three years.
You could grab the cameras and sell them on eBay. They were abandoned on my property, so I took them.
With any number of restrictions.
This was posted private land and the JBTs had no warrants.
Maybe set up a few bear traps lol
The British used to house soldiers in the homes of suspected insurrectionists in order to spy on them. The 3rd amendment's intent was to keep the home free from "prying eyes and ears" of the government.
In that sense, it's not a stretch to ban the government from placing cameras and microphones on someone's property without a warrant of probable cause in order to observe the goings on. They can do it from public property, but not directly on one's own property.
Coming onto one's property to search for crimes without a warrant would violate the 4th amendment; planting permanent cameras and microphones on one's property to watch for crimes would violate the 3rd amendment.
-PJ
The government can take your land anytime they want it... That has been established for centuries. As many post have pointed out... You don’t really ‘own’ it... You pay for it, then you are taxed on it... And if you don’t pay your taxes they can take it from you. If they want it for a highway or any type of infrastructure, they can take it from. All land truly belongs to the state, or the crown. The concept of land ownership is purely an illusion.
Private lake would be one thing, but riparian rights are a thing as well. Just because a river passes over your property does not mean you can treat the river and anything in or on it as yours while it is within your property boundaries.
Most people do this voluntarily with cell phones.
It’s all about the revenue.
No. They can not.
“Do property owners have to pay property taxes in Al.? If so then you don’t own your land, you rent it from the sovereign.”
Without property taxes there would be no roads, no sanitation, no lights, no enforcement of property rights and no civilization.
If that happened to me, I’d find a buddy with a scope’d .22 who likes target practice. And most everyone here owns such, so finding the “perp” would be just about impossible...
That’s one reason I still have my “ancient” flip phone...
But it fits in a pocket a LOT easier too. :-)
...”we don’t need no stink’g badges!”
You think a telephone pole camera is bad? I have seen things you would never believe.
I will guarantee, because you are here, and agent of the powers that be who lives within a mile of you, has listened inside your home to what you assumed were private conversations.
Check my tag.
.22 takes care of that camera.
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