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There were 210M licensed drivers in the US with an expected annual growth rate of 1.6% [1]. Extrapolating this data gives 231M licensed drivers in 2016. From th

by moftz 10y ago

There were 210M licensed drivers in the US with an expected annual growth rate of 1.6% [1]. Extrapolating this data gives 231M licensed drivers in 2016. From the article: "...law enforcement in more than half of all states can search against the trove of photos stored for IDs like drivers’ licenses." Half that number and you get a number that's pretty close to the number of faces in the database. I've got no issue with using law enforcement having access to these pictures for identity verification (i.e. checking to make sure the face on a license matches the face of the person in the database). Although automatic systems setup to identify people in crowds is a bit too Minority Report for me. I understand that I don't have any expectation to privacy when walking around in public but its a bit unnerving to have someone logging my every location and never needing a warrant, as publicly taken pictures wouldn't require one whereas cellphone tracking would. [1] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/hf/pl11028/chapter4.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/hf/pl11028/c...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
white-flame 10y ago
It's my growing opinion that the aggregation of personal data (and "metadata") needs to be regulated. Individual sample points are fine, but analyzing the entire crowd all the time is too intrusive and should constitute a warrant-requiring search of private effects. Maybe we need something like HIPPA for personal data. If you start fiddling with stuff that invades privacy of individuals, things should get touchy and messy legally. I have an expectation of privacy in public while in crowds and during my personal travels.
- zerocrates 10y ago
  This is the idea behind the nascent "mosaic" theory of the Fourth Amendment: that by aggregating together many individual observations that each in themselves aren't a "search," you arrive at a result that gives you so much information about a person and their activities that the aggregate program would be a search that required a warrant. Put another way, each individual "tile" of a search program might not be so controversial, like police being able to take your photo in public, but a mosaic formed by aggregating photos of you automatically taken every block and matching them to your drivers' license photo becomes far more problematic, privacy-wise: the whole is more invasive than the sum of its parts. The theory has made a minor appearance in at least one Supreme Court case: U.S. v. Jones, where police placed a GPS tracker on a car and didn't comply with the restrictions of the warrant they'd obtained to do so. The holding went against the government, but the mosaic theory only featured in a concurrence. The decision was based not around the invasion of privacy inherent in round-the-clock automated location monitoring but instead on the rather mundane and case-specific fact that the police committed a "trespass" to the car by sticking the device magnetically to its underside. It's a tough case because it's really the plummeting cost that's changing things: round-the-clock warrantless public surveillance is legal and basically uncontroversial if done the traditional way, by sticking police officers in a car and following you around. But the growing ability to get the same information at massive scale, at minimal marginal cost, and even retroactively is... not so uncontroversial. The Court, and courts generally, are still firmly in the camp of analyzing searches individually and not in aggregate, but there are glimmers of change on the horizon.
  - white-flame 10y ago
    A HIPPA-style regulation would go beyond government use. I want private companies to have to treat aggregated personal information with the same delicacy and punishments as for medical records.
    - zerocrates 10y ago
      You might well see something in the realm of HIPAA aimed at the Googles and Facebooks of the world relatively soon. I'd have to believe that the federal government, and law enforcement generally, would be excluded from such a law, though (in much the same way they're already excluded from HIPAA itself). Even assuming otherwise, laws restricting what the government itself can do aren't always terribly robust (see, for example, the Patriot Act). I appreciate the idea that private companies are as much or possibly more of a concern in this space as the government, but the problems of the two really move in concert. As the scope of data Google has on you grows, so does the power of the third-party doctrine.
pasbesoin 10y ago
When someone follows you around constantly, against your will, it is called stalking. Even when in public places. And there are laws against this. I think the government and businesses should be subject to the same limitations: "Stalking" someone, even in public, is illegal and is a violation of their rights. As one quick example of restriction of rights, constant, pervasive tracking may inhibit one's right to free speech by assembly and association. Corporations so often insist they are "people", when such claim is to their legal and economic advantage. Well then, treat them like such. Capable of "stalking" and subject to punishment for same. Next up, crazu EULA that are purposely onerously burdensome while, amidst all that mess, claiming to secure the right to e.g. "stalk".
- witty_username 10y ago
  > Corporations so often insist they are "people", when such claim is to their legal and economic advantage. Well then, treat them like such. Capable of "stalking" and subject to punishment for same. This is a misconception. Legally, corporations are people (this is not disputed), but not natural people (humans are natural people).
eveningcoffee 10y ago
I understand that I don't have any expectation to privacy when walking around in public. Of course you have. Naturally anybody can see you, but it does not follow that anybody, especially a state representative can follow you and record your whereabouts. Well, maybe in US you can, I do not know US law this much, but in many EU countries this constitutes as surveillance and requires a warrant.

by moftz 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

white-flame 10y ago

It's my growing opinion that the aggregation of personal data (and "metadata") needs to be regulated. Individual sample points are fine, but analyzing the entire crowd all the time is too intrusive and should constitute a warrant-requiring search of private effects. Maybe we need something like HIPPA for personal data. If you start fiddling with stuff that invades privacy of individuals, things should get touchy and messy legally. I have an expectation of privacy in public while in crowds and during my personal travels.

zerocrates 10y ago
This is the idea behind the nascent "mosaic" theory of the Fourth Amendment: that by aggregating together many individual observations that each in themselves aren't a "search," you arrive at a result that gives you so much information about a person and their activities that the aggregate program would be a search that required a warrant. Put another way, each individual "tile" of a search program might not be so controversial, like police being able to take your photo in public, but a mosaic formed by aggregating photos of you automatically taken every block and matching them to your drivers' license photo becomes far more problematic, privacy-wise: the whole is more invasive than the sum of its parts. The theory has made a minor appearance in at least one Supreme Court case: U.S. v. Jones, where police placed a GPS tracker on a car and didn't comply with the restrictions of the warrant they'd obtained to do so. The holding went against the government, but the mosaic theory only featured in a concurrence. The decision was based not around the invasion of privacy inherent in round-the-clock automated location monitoring but instead on the rather mundane and case-specific fact that the police committed a "trespass" to the car by sticking the device magnetically to its underside. It's a tough case because it's really the plummeting cost that's changing things: round-the-clock warrantless public surveillance is legal and basically uncontroversial if done the traditional way, by sticking police officers in a car and following you around. But the growing ability to get the same information at massive scale, at minimal marginal cost, and even retroactively is... not so uncontroversial. The Court, and courts generally, are still firmly in the camp of analyzing searches individually and not in aggregate, but there are glimmers of change on the horizon.
- white-flame 10y ago
  A HIPPA-style regulation would go beyond government use. I want private companies to have to treat aggregated personal information with the same delicacy and punishments as for medical records.
  - zerocrates 10y ago
    You might well see something in the realm of HIPAA aimed at the Googles and Facebooks of the world relatively soon. I'd have to believe that the federal government, and law enforcement generally, would be excluded from such a law, though (in much the same way they're already excluded from HIPAA itself). Even assuming otherwise, laws restricting what the government itself can do aren't always terribly robust (see, for example, the Patriot Act). I appreciate the idea that private companies are as much or possibly more of a concern in this space as the government, but the problems of the two really move in concert. As the scope of data Google has on you grows, so does the power of the third-party doctrine.

pasbesoin 10y ago

When someone follows you around constantly, against your will, it is called stalking. Even when in public places. And there are laws against this. I think the government and businesses should be subject to the same limitations: "Stalking" someone, even in public, is illegal and is a violation of their rights. As one quick example of restriction of rights, constant, pervasive tracking may inhibit one's right to free speech by assembly and association. Corporations so often insist they are "people", when such claim is to their legal and economic advantage. Well then, treat them like such. Capable of "stalking" and subject to punishment for same. Next up, crazu EULA that are purposely onerously burdensome while, amidst all that mess, claiming to secure the right to e.g. "stalk".

witty_username 10y ago
> Corporations so often insist they are "people", when such claim is to their legal and economic advantage. Well then, treat them like such. Capable of "stalking" and subject to punishment for same. This is a misconception. Legally, corporations are people (this is not disputed), but not natural people (humans are natural people).

eveningcoffee 10y ago

I understand that I don't have any expectation to privacy when walking around in public. Of course you have. Naturally anybody can see you, but it does not follow that anybody, especially a state representative can follow you and record your whereabouts. Well, maybe in US you can, I do not know US law this much, but in many EU countries this constitutes as surveillance and requires a warrant.