3 ms·
> For all the frequency I hear that "privacy is dead" or that "there is no expectation of privacy in public," we're constantly reading evidence to the contrary.
by BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
> For all the frequency I hear that "privacy is dead" or that "there is no expectation of privacy in public," we're constantly reading evidence to the contrary.
No we aren't. What we actually see is policing agencies continually finding new ways to abuse privacy, doing those things for half of a decade or more at great public expense, and then moving on to other new ways to abuse privacy, rinse and repeat. What we actually see is policing agencies all over the country instituting intensely invasive policies without concern, and then each individual case has to be struck down one-by-one slowly over long periods of time because first the programs need to become public, then they need to work their way through the courts, then they need to go through appeals and more appeals and more appeals. And in the meantime similar programs in other cities are legally unchallenged because none of this establishes very broad rules for what surveillance behavior is allowed.
This program has been publicly in place since at least 2016 and it took until now for the reactive legal process to stop it in one city.
As long as the process for ensuring privacy continues to be reactive and slow moving at the fringes rather than proactive at the root, we will not have meaningful privacy.
- loteck 5y agoYou're essentially arguing that legal precedents against any government behavior at all are ineffective and pointless. Or do you believe 4th amendment issues are somehow unique in this regard relative to other civil rights?
- BugsJustFindMe 5y agoNone of these cases establish rules delineating what behavior is allowed vs not allowed populationwide, nor do they ever establish any punishment for constitutional violation. They only say that a very specific collection of behaviors can no longer be performed all at once by the same group on a very specific group of people for a very specific period of time. And none of them prevent policing agencies from just doing it again and again and waiting out the legal challenges each time. Ok, so 45 days is too much in this particular case. The next program will spin up recordings for 35 days and run for another 6 years and try again. Or they'll use wifi beacons on street lights instead of aerial cameras and the details will be different requiring a new set of legal processes. Cops don't care if it gets challenged in court because they're not paying the court fees. The public is. They get their inflated budgets regardless with zero consequences. Chipping away tiny fragments of a growing lava flow long after they cool is not my definition of progress. We've had ~250 years of time for so-called "progress" since the establishment of the fourth amendment, and several decades since global adoption of a public internet. Do you feel like the government has more information about you today, or less? Why?