Public Housing Tenants Sue Over Sensors in Apartments

Tenants in Concord, New Hampshire, say they're paying for low-cost housing with their privacy. The city's public housing authority has installed Minut sensors—popular with Airbnb hosts—in roughly 300 affordable apartments to flag illegal smoking and loud noise, but the sensors also log motion and Bluetooth signals, creating minute-by-minute records of daily routines, reports the New York Times. This week, two tenants filed a proposed class-action suit in state court, calling the system a "continuous warrantless government search" and demanding the monitors and collected data be removed.

"It's an incredible imposition on people's privacy in their homes," Nate Wessler of the ACLU tells New England Public Media. "This is the government putting a surveillance device operating 24 hours a day, minute by minute, into people's homes, and then claiming total discretion to save that data for as long as it wants." Minut, which isn't being sued, insists the data can't reveal specific activities. "It's camera-free, and it doesn't record any sound or listen in to what you say or do," read notices placed around buildings. The housing authority declined to comment, but it previously said the sensors would help detect when people were violating their leases by smoking or exceeding noise limits. The backlash comes amid a similar one on Flock traffic cameras.