5 ms·
> Governments that are prohibited by law from tracking faces and locations/times will just buy it from private companies, like has happened with automated licen
by humanistbot 5y ago
> Governments that are prohibited by law from tracking faces and locations/times will just buy it from private companies, like has happened with automated license plate readers on tow trucks.
Because of this, the current battles that many anti-surveillance activists are fighting is in procurement and vendor/contractor policies, mostly at the city and county levels. Lots of West Coast cities and counties (Santa Clara, Oakland, Seattle, San Diego) have enacted all kinds of new bureaucratic hurdles on any public funds used to pay for surveillance. These include requiring RFPs with open competitive bidding, public hearings, testing and certification that it actually works with an acceptable false positive rate, and approval in a public vote by the city/county council.
The Nation has a good overview of this shift in tactics, which is also opposed by some progressives who take a more abolitionist stance to surveillance and say that they don't want it to be legitimized if it passes all the bureaucratic hurtles: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/mass-surveillance-begins-at-the-local-level-so-does-the-resistance-to-it/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/mass-surveillance-...
- mcculley 5y agoI respect the intent behind these efforts. I just don't see how they will prevent ubiquitous surveillance. Imagine this possible near future: Many property owners have installed smart doorbells and security systems with cameras. The data is being fed into aggregation systems and sold, just like clicks today. I can subscribe to an app on my phone for a few dollars a month (below the limit required to get formal approval in most organizations) that shows me where a face has been seen. How will this not happen?
- 542458 5y agoI don’t see why we couldn’t pass a law that says that the government can’t use $technology_x, and that this applies to government contractors and services purchased by the government or used by government employees acting in their professional capacity.
- mcculley 5y agoWhat technology would you prohibit? If a police officer can look up a suspect on Facebook, why couldn't he use one of many other services that are aggregating data?
- 542458 5y agoI mean, you could ban “systems who’s primary purpose is to aggregate personal data on non-criminals” (please don’t nitpick the phrasing, I’m obviously not a lawyer) or something similar. I’m not sure why people are acting like this is an unsolvable problem - patent lawyers can write descriptions of fairly vague technological systems that hold up in court.
- mcculley 5y agoI am genuinely interested how this can be prevented. I don't see how it can. We are not far away from people having eyeglasses that are able to upload photos and download aggregated data. Everyone in your field of vision will have a dossier. It won't just be governments using this. It won't require some prior written permission. The same people that sold browsing data to advertisers will have this technology.