4 ms·

A public protest is, by definition, in public. There isn't what the Supreme Court would call a "reasonable expectation of privacy".

by tharne 6y ago

tpxl 6y ago
Yes, however a surveilance camera cannot simply be pointed in the street to record everything.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  isn't that essentially what a ring camera is, assuming your door faces the street? if so, where are all the legal challenges?
- OminousWeapons 6y ago
  Ring cameras don't have continuous recording, they will only record on motion events. To my knowledge, there is also no way to set up alerting and capture preferences separately (ie if the camera detects motion and starts recording, you are getting alerted unless you turn off alerts for the camera entirely). If someone set their camera to record a public street they would literally get DOSed with alerts, so this is not what people do. Also, to my knowledge there are very few restrictions on recording people in public.
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  Of course it can: https://www.weatherbug.com/traffic-cam/ https://www.weatherbug.com/traffic-cam/
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - devchix 6y ago
    I feel like replies in this subthread that asserts: "a person has no expectation of privacy in public space therefore recording a person in that space is unsurprising, expected even", is flippant and pat. The existence of the camera changes the space and the behavior of the subject. If you would imagine your Ring camera faces a Planned Parenthood entrance, or a homeless shelter. You've recorded a woman entering PP. Several people come and go at the homeless shelter. There's no other context for these images. I would not argue that these are not public spaces, but the people making entries and exits here are in probably in a part of their life needing the most protection of privacy. The camera's existence now provides a record, one that may live on without the subjects' knowledge. That record + ML + facial recognition + $future_tech will sketch a different future for these people, vs. one without the recording. Surely you can see that? I don't know what the answer should be. It's all going that way it seems. Cams recordings go to the cloud, it's harder and more expensive to install a system with only local storage. Ease of use is funneling society into an exploitable place. Bruce Schneier in one of his posts a long time ago exhorted his readers to resist ID'ing people in images. I wonder how he feels now, after the Jan6 incident. Bellingcat and crowd-sourced Twitter are ID'ing rioters. I'm not making the comparison of PP/homeless shelter visitors with the rioters, to be clear.
    - qwertycrackers 6y ago
      I don't see how you can have an expectation of privacy when moving through the street and entering / exiting buildings. How is this morally different than if a busybody lived across the street from PP and make a habit of keeping an eye on the door so (she?) could gossip about her observations at book club. This behavior is most certainly rude, but legal. It seems strange to argue this is immoral but hold the underlying crimes being recorded as immoral. The anti-reporting stance seems to be a veiled argument that the entire law is illegitimate.
      - DanBC 6y ago
        > I don't see how you can have an expectation of privacy when moving through the street and entering / exiting buildings. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3689049.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3689049.stm > Miss Campbell had objected to the publication of pictures of her leaving drug addiction treatment in early 2001. > Lord Hope, who voted in favour of Miss Campbell, said on Thursday: "Despite the weight that must be given to the right to freedom of expression that the press needs if it is to play its role effectively, I would hold that there was here an infringement of Miss Campbell's right to privacy that cannot be justified." (This is about fees, but contains links and references to the previous cases) https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/eu/cases/ECHR/2008/1255.html&query=(naomi)+AND+(campbell) https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/eu/cases/ECHR...
      - devchix 6y ago
        I'm not litigating to redline pockets of public space. The first principle I'm arguing from is that our pasts should be palimpsests which should be allowed to recede with time further into the past. Imagine a terrible argument you had with someone. Time passes, the wrong and hurt has attenuated, you have changed or he has changed and you've both forgotten a bit. You could be friends again if you wanted. Now imagine that fight preserved in text. You both can read it again and remember exactly what terrible things have been said. Now imagine you have a visual and audio recording of the fight, and you can feel the wounds anew. There exists this constant inescapable reminder. You make the comparison to the busybody, I think that comparison is wrong because of the scale. At one time lending books, musics, was not anything publishers would concern themselves about, because one could only loan a copy to one person at a time. Digital copies changed the act of distribution. The recording camera preserves the image more permanently than the busybody ever could, and the vector of distribution is incomparable. I think the limits of our memories makes us human. Of all the criticisms launched at Zuckerberg, I think the most unfair one is that in his twenties, he said something like, "They trust me, the idiots!" He's a significant figure unlike you or me, but imagine saying or doing something monumentally stupid in your twenties and having it follow you the rest of your life and that's the first thing someone knows about you.
- notyourday 6y ago
  > Yes, however a surveilance camera cannot simply be pointed in the street to record everything. Yes it can.
- judge2020 6y ago
  You could make a better argument if, instead of saying "you cannot do this" when it is both physically and legally possible to do so, you said why you think U.S. law should disallow continuous recording in public spaces. @devchix below has not been downvoted because they make such a case.

A public protest is, by definition, in public. There isn't what the Supreme Court would call a "reasonable expectation of privacy".

by tharne 6y ago

A public protest is, by definition, in public. There isn't what the Supreme Court would call a "reasonable expectation of privacy".

tpxl 6y ago

Yes, however a surveilance camera cannot simply be pointed in the street to record everything.

leetcrew 6y ago
isn't that essentially what a ring camera is, assuming your door faces the street? if so, where are all the legal challenges?
OminousWeapons 6y ago
Ring cameras don't have continuous recording, they will only record on motion events. To my knowledge, there is also no way to set up alerting and capture preferences separately (ie if the camera detects motion and starts recording, you are getting alerted unless you turn off alerts for the camera entirely). If someone set their camera to record a public street they would literally get DOSed with alerts, so this is not what people do. Also, to my knowledge there are very few restrictions on recording people in public.
jdminhbg 6y ago
Of course it can: https://www.weatherbug.com/traffic-cam/ https://www.weatherbug.com/traffic-cam/
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- devchix 6y ago
  I feel like replies in this subthread that asserts: "a person has no expectation of privacy in public space therefore recording a person in that space is unsurprising, expected even", is flippant and pat. The existence of the camera changes the space and the behavior of the subject. If you would imagine your Ring camera faces a Planned Parenthood entrance, or a homeless shelter. You've recorded a woman entering PP. Several people come and go at the homeless shelter. There's no other context for these images. I would not argue that these are not public spaces, but the people making entries and exits here are in probably in a part of their life needing the most protection of privacy. The camera's existence now provides a record, one that may live on without the subjects' knowledge. That record + ML + facial recognition + $future_tech will sketch a different future for these people, vs. one without the recording. Surely you can see that? I don't know what the answer should be. It's all going that way it seems. Cams recordings go to the cloud, it's harder and more expensive to install a system with only local storage. Ease of use is funneling society into an exploitable place. Bruce Schneier in one of his posts a long time ago exhorted his readers to resist ID'ing people in images. I wonder how he feels now, after the Jan6 incident. Bellingcat and crowd-sourced Twitter are ID'ing rioters. I'm not making the comparison of PP/homeless shelter visitors with the rioters, to be clear.
  - qwertycrackers 6y ago
    I don't see how you can have an expectation of privacy when moving through the street and entering / exiting buildings. How is this morally different than if a busybody lived across the street from PP and make a habit of keeping an eye on the door so (she?) could gossip about her observations at book club. This behavior is most certainly rude, but legal. It seems strange to argue this is immoral but hold the underlying crimes being recorded as immoral. The anti-reporting stance seems to be a veiled argument that the entire law is illegitimate.
    - DanBC 6y ago
      > I don't see how you can have an expectation of privacy when moving through the street and entering / exiting buildings. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3689049.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3689049.stm > Miss Campbell had objected to the publication of pictures of her leaving drug addiction treatment in early 2001. > Lord Hope, who voted in favour of Miss Campbell, said on Thursday: "Despite the weight that must be given to the right to freedom of expression that the press needs if it is to play its role effectively, I would hold that there was here an infringement of Miss Campbell's right to privacy that cannot be justified." (This is about fees, but contains links and references to the previous cases) https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/eu/cases/ECHR/2008/1255.html&query=(naomi)+AND+(campbell) https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/eu/cases/ECHR...
    - devchix 6y ago
      I'm not litigating to redline pockets of public space. The first principle I'm arguing from is that our pasts should be palimpsests which should be allowed to recede with time further into the past. Imagine a terrible argument you had with someone. Time passes, the wrong and hurt has attenuated, you have changed or he has changed and you've both forgotten a bit. You could be friends again if you wanted. Now imagine that fight preserved in text. You both can read it again and remember exactly what terrible things have been said. Now imagine you have a visual and audio recording of the fight, and you can feel the wounds anew. There exists this constant inescapable reminder. You make the comparison to the busybody, I think that comparison is wrong because of the scale. At one time lending books, musics, was not anything publishers would concern themselves about, because one could only loan a copy to one person at a time. Digital copies changed the act of distribution. The recording camera preserves the image more permanently than the busybody ever could, and the vector of distribution is incomparable. I think the limits of our memories makes us human. Of all the criticisms launched at Zuckerberg, I think the most unfair one is that in his twenties, he said something like, "They trust me, the idiots!" He's a significant figure unlike you or me, but imagine saying or doing something monumentally stupid in your twenties and having it follow you the rest of your life and that's the first thing someone knows about you.
notyourday 6y ago
> Yes, however a surveilance camera cannot simply be pointed in the street to record everything. Yes it can.
judge2020 6y ago
You could make a better argument if, instead of saying "you cannot do this" when it is both physically and legally possible to do so, you said why you think U.S. law should disallow continuous recording in public spaces. @devchix below has not been downvoted because they make such a case.