Mark LaValley and Terri King v. Concord Housing and Redevelopment Authority

  • Filed: Sep 2, 2026
  • Latest Update: Sep 2, 2026
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Summary


On September 2, 2026, residents of housing developments owned and maintained by the Concord Housing and Redevelopment Authority (CHRA) in New Hampshire sued to block CHRA from harvesting sweeping data about tenants’ activity patterns in their homes through surveillance devices purchased from a private company, Mînut Inc.

In the fall of 2024, CHRA began installing Mînut Monitor devices inside people’s apartments across the properties it manages, providing government employees with real-time, remote access to granular data about activity within tenants’ homes. These devices are capable of collecting data such as the decibel level of detected noise, motion detector readings showing physical movement of residents and guests, smoke and humidity levels, and scans for iOS signals, which can estimate how many people are nearby.

Taken together, the information provided by Mînut Monitors can create a mosaic of detail about peoples’ lives, revealing when they wake up, when they come and go from their home, and more. Mînut Monitors near tenants’ beds can even potentially track sound and motion data that could reflect intimate acts. Much of the data is logged on a minute-by-minute basis. For example, each Mînut Monitor logs sound-level readings approximately every single minute, up to 1,440 times a day. For one tenant, the Mînut Monitor logged more than 140,000 motion events within a seven-month period for just a single unit - an average of more than 700 motion events per day. All told, CHRA has amassed hundreds of millions of data points from within tenants’ apartments. The data is stored indefinitely and available to CHRA employees on demand.

The class action lawsuit was filed by New Hampshire Legal Assistance, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, and the American Civil Liberties Union. As the complaint explains, this invasion of privacy in individuals’ homes by a government agency is unacceptable and violates two provisions of the New Hampshire Constitution, Article 19 and Article 2-b. Article 19 prohibits unreasonable searches by the government. Article 2-b, which was added to the New Hampshire Constitution by referendum in 2018, provides that “an individual’s right to live free from governmental intrusion in private or personal information is natural, essential, and inherent.”

Furthermore, CHRA’s implementation of Mînut Monitors over the past two years has been marked by severe lack of transparency and a dismissal of tenants’ objections. Throughout the installation process, significant information was left out of notices to tenants, painting the technology as much less invasive and far-reaching than the Mînut Monitors’ actual capabilities.

 

Partner Organizations:
New Hampshire Legal Assistance; American Civil Liberties Union

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