4 ms·

That puts them in a weird, paradoxical position: 1) Illegal: Placing a mark on your tires that will quickly fade with time and invades your car just enough to

by SilasX 7y ago

That puts them in a weird, paradoxical position: 1) Illegal: Placing a mark on your tires that will quickly fade with time and invades your car just enough to reveal whether you adhered to the limits. 2) Legal: Monitor the area with video surveillance and take pictures of every license plate that ever parked there, with timestamps and a photo of the occupants, and store that information for eternity, to be shared with any LEO who wants it. (2) feels a lot more invasive than (1), but courts consider (2) okay because it just uses stuff visible to the public, while (1) actually physically modifies your car. Edit: See also the conflict with the long-standing, uncontested practice of leaving a fingerprint on a car's tail light at the beginning of a stop before observing any wrongdoing that warrants such a "search": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19730452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19730452

mtgx 7y ago
I feel like because all of this is so new, we haven't had time to fully think about this stuff, and law enforcement is abusing this. But if we take things one by one, we could see that some real restrictions could be put on the use of this technology, even in the context of existing laws. For instance, "video surveillance is allowed because everything it sees is public." But then you can go like "Okay, but..." 1) A regular person wouldn't remember everything it saw in public a year from now, a month from now, or even a day from now. 2) A regular person wouldn't try to build all sorts of automatic connections between various identities it sees in public over longer periods of time (say more than a few hours) 3) A regular person wouldn't be able to take punitive action with the might of the government and taking up weapons against crimes it sees happen in public (so perhaps someone like a government entity needs to be more restricted than regular people when doing certain monitoring activities, because of their inherit potential for abuse?) Suddenly when you consider all three of these ideas, and there are probably more like them, we can realize that public surveillance doesn't have to be the "free for all" governments would like us to believe that it should be (because the more true that becomes, the more power they have against each individual, way before there's even a hint of a case against someone).
kempbellt 7y ago
Strange how a chalk mark is illegal, but placing a ticket under the windshield wiper, or sticking a "vehicle to be towed" sticker on the window isn't. To add: I'd personally much rather local LEOs use the chalk method than the camera method.
- SilasX 7y ago
  In fairness, the argument is about what you can do to a car before you have evidence of wrongdoing, and the sticker/tickets happen after they have observed an infraction, so that's less problematic in the context of the ruling. Edit: >To add: I'd personally much rather local LEOs use the chalk method than the camera method. Me too!
- vanniv 7y ago
  The ticket is legal, because by the time you get the ticket, they know you've committed the offense. The chalk is only illegal because they have to mark your car before you've overstayed, and at that time, the search is unreasonable, since they're just assuming that you're going to overstay.
lhorie 7y ago
If the logic is that it's illegal to "modify" the car, couldn't they just get away with standing a domino or similar piece of wood behind one of the tires? If the car moves out, it topples the domino.
SkyBelow 7y ago
Kinda like the difference between wiretapping laws and recording what people say verses video recordings (which when in HD can have very rough audio encoded inside of the video).

by SilasX 7y ago

mtgx 7y ago

I feel like because all of this is so new, we haven't had time to fully think about this stuff, and law enforcement is abusing this. But if we take things one by one, we could see that some real restrictions could be put on the use of this technology, even in the context of existing laws. For instance, "video surveillance is allowed because everything it sees is public." But then you can go like "Okay, but..." 1) A regular person wouldn't remember everything it saw in public a year from now, a month from now, or even a day from now. 2) A regular person wouldn't try to build all sorts of automatic connections between various identities it sees in public over longer periods of time (say more than a few hours) 3) A regular person wouldn't be able to take punitive action with the might of the government and taking up weapons against crimes it sees happen in public (so perhaps someone like a government entity needs to be more restricted than regular people when doing certain monitoring activities, because of their inherit potential for abuse?) Suddenly when you consider all three of these ideas, and there are probably more like them, we can realize that public surveillance doesn't have to be the "free for all" governments would like us to believe that it should be (because the more true that becomes, the more power they have against each individual, way before there's even a hint of a case against someone).

kempbellt 7y ago

Strange how a chalk mark is illegal, but placing a ticket under the windshield wiper, or sticking a "vehicle to be towed" sticker on the window isn't. To add: I'd personally much rather local LEOs use the chalk method than the camera method.

SilasX 7y ago
In fairness, the argument is about what you can do to a car before you have evidence of wrongdoing, and the sticker/tickets happen after they have observed an infraction, so that's less problematic in the context of the ruling. Edit: >To add: I'd personally much rather local LEOs use the chalk method than the camera method. Me too!
vanniv 7y ago
The ticket is legal, because by the time you get the ticket, they know you've committed the offense. The chalk is only illegal because they have to mark your car before you've overstayed, and at that time, the search is unreasonable, since they're just assuming that you're going to overstay.

lhorie 7y ago

If the logic is that it's illegal to "modify" the car, couldn't they just get away with standing a domino or similar piece of wood behind one of the tires? If the car moves out, it topples the domino.

SkyBelow 7y ago

Kinda like the difference between wiretapping laws and recording what people say verses video recordings (which when in HD can have very rough audio encoded inside of the video).