The FBI says its surveillance cameras need to be secret to protect the privacy of the people it's watching

The FBI is keeping its surveillance cameras a secret.
(Image credit: Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

A federal court has ruled in the FBI's favor in a dispute with the city of Seattle over whether the city can disclose in response to public records requests the location of FBI surveillance cameras affixed to city-owned utility poles.

Among the federal agency's arguments in support of surveillance secrecy was the bizarre contention that to reveal the location of the cameras would be a breach of privacy for the people the cameras are recording, because those people have yet to be charged with any crime:

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.