Cyrus Farivar reports:
Last November, a 74-year-old rancher and attorney was walking around his ranch just south of Encinal, Texas, when he happened upon a small portable camera strapped approximately eight feet high onto a mesquite tree near his son’s home. The camera was encased in green plastic and had a transmitting antenna.
Not knowing what it was or how it got there, Ricardo Palacios removed it.
Soon after, Palacios received phone calls from Customs and Border Protection officials and the Texas Rangers. Each agency claimed the camera as its own and demanded that it be returned. Palacios refused, and they threatened him with arrest.
Read more on Ars Technica.
Can the government just come onto your private property without your knowledge or consent and install surveillance equipment to surveill others? And if they can, is the notion of “private property” all but dead?
h/t, Joe Cadillic
Post-publication, this story was corrected because I had obviously been undercaffeinated when I identified “Ars Farivar” as the reporter. Apologies to Cyrus Farivar, the actual reporter. And thanks to the reader who alerted me to my mistake.
Just a heads up, the Ars Technica article’s author should be Cyrus Farivar instead of Ars Farivar.