Eagle Eyes: How the Chicago Police Department’s Video Surveillance Network is Used to Fight Crime and its Fourth Amendment Implications

Chicago, Illinois, is home to over 2.7 million individuals living under the supervision of a vast network of over forty thousand cameras integrated into a network of advanced technology run by the Chicago Office of Emergency Management. With little transparency, the City of Chicago has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past two decades rapidly expanding the network throughout the city while incorporating new technologies each year, posing substantial privacy risks for the millions of residents unaware of the ever-present eyes on them. To determine whether the network violates the Fourth Amendment, particularly in the wake of Carpenter v. United States, the city must increase transparency by releasing a complete accounting of the technologies integrated into the network. By building on contemporary Fourth Amendment research, while incorporating previously nonpublic details regarding Chicago’s surveillance capabilities, this Comment will show how these technologies pose a radical threat to the Court’s view of the Fourth Amendment in the twenty-first century.

The Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment doctrine is ill-suited for the digital era, and Congress has abrogated responsibility for regulating domestic surveillance technologies. The explosion of artificial intelligence technology has accelerated the ability of governments across the country to surveil their residents. This surge in technology coincides with growing public concerns over safety, as reflected in recent polling. This has enabled governments to pour taxpayer funds into opaque surveillance networks under the pretext of crime deterrence. However, the effectiveness of these networks has not been adequately studied, particularly in America’s largest cities. This Comment offers a new lens through which the Fourth Amendment should be viewed in relation to these new technologies. Far from advocating abolition of these camera networks, this Comment reframes the public policy debate to show how a properly supervised and transparent network can be embraced to fight crime, increase community trust between residents and police, and support principles of good governance.