alt Hacker NewsNo. The law doesn't prohibit it because it's simply automated gathering of information they could gather anyway. It becomes illegal when the police use technology to bypass barriers (for example, seeing your weed from a drone), but not when they simply use technology to automate handling with what they can see.
>they simply use technology to automate handling with what they can see
A police dept with 500 employees can't see at 10000 places at once. So, it isn't "simply to automate".
It would be like saying that rifle is just a simple automation of how one can use a hammer to drive a nail into a victim, and thus if one is allowed to own/carry a hammer and nails then the one is allowed to own/carry a rifle.