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Technology destroyed the Fourth Amendment. If the government couldn't fly the helicopter themselves, they would just buy the data, as they already do your cellp

Technology destroyed the Fourth Amendment. If the government couldn't fly the helicopter themselves, they would just buy the data, as they already do your cellphone location data, car tag scan data, credit card purchase histories, etc. It's going to be clearly silly for most people to say that multibillion dollar corporations are allowed to conduct unlimited surveillance on you, but the government can't. The 4A was encoding a legal right to the societal expectation of privacy. We've spent the last 30 years blithely destroying that social expectation via tech. Of course no one much is up in arms in it now - we've trained it out. Big Data and the Fourth Amendment are antitheses. Even if you were to somehow rile up enough people to force some sort of legislation against stuff like this, it's going to happen anyway, illegally, and they'll find a way to get away with it. Consider the myriad abuses of the CIA and NSA. What happened when the CIA spied on Congress illegally as Congress investigated their other illegal actions, and then got caught, then lied about what they were doing? Absolutely nothing, and the guy in charge is now considered a hero by a whole political faction and is a frequent media commentator expounding his opinions as a Trustworthy Expert. In a world where you're dealing with human beings, you can't have giant repositories of extremely useful data in centralized locations and think that a "don't look at this" sign is going to do you any good. You have to not have giant centralized repositories of data people care about. The Fourth Amendment could only effectively exist in a world where privacy was valued and invading it meant breaking into someone’s home, or his lawyer’s office, or paying people to follow him around all day.

at_a_remove 4y ago
I think one of the biggest flaws was the use of the word "expectations." Call it a sea change, call it a paradigm shift or a shove on the Overton window, expectations have been changing. Technology can certainly kick that along and often opens new chinks in our armor, but there's a societal and therefore legal bent to it, too.
- Amezarak 4y ago
  Neither exists in a vacuum. Technology changes culture and culture shapes the use of technology. Nevertheless, anytime you have people highly incentivized to use data, and the data exists, it will be used. And in fact our use of technology definitely contributed to this, even when it seemed very innocuous. Logging is invaluable for testing and troubleshooting, forum posts, DMs, login data, and tweets obviously have more value as things that are non-ephemeral...but what you do by logging everything, what you do by having an Internet where things are by default non-ephemeral is change exactly this societal expectation. Going back to the helicopter example in this thread, would we argue that the government shouldn't be allowed to look at the aerial view on maps.google.com? The very existence of this service changed what people understood as private.
ch4s3 4y ago
> It's going to be clearly silly for most people to say that multibillion dollar corporations are allowed to conduct unlimited surveillance on you, but the government can't. Corporations can’t put you in jail and that’s why the 4th amendment needs to be strong now more than ever. The government should be required to get warrants and not just be able to buy that data.
- Amezarak 4y ago
  What kind of actually effective controls do you think could possibly exist in a world where everyone can buy the data except the police? Aside from the fact other people and corporations can do quite a lot of horrible stuff to you, including turn the government on you - the obvious outcome is the police would simply use proxies and parallel construction, no matter how "illegal" you make it. It's one thing to say they shouldn't be able to do it and we need to pass a law, it's another to create a world where they actually can't, and aren't incentivized to. As a whole separate question, do you think companies and individuals should be banned from voluntarily giving data to the police, out of ideological motives or generosity or whatever? That also just intuitively seems weird. Charging a fee for something you're happy to do is just a small jump. The problem is the mass collection of data in the first place. Once you have that, the rest is inevitable. Mass data collection is a massive qualitative change to what we had before.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    Can’t would be ideal, but I’d settle for better rule of law and legal protections.
  - feet 4y ago
    How about make it so that nobody can buy the data?
    - Amezarak 4y ago
      This might be a promising step, but you still have the problem of a) the data exists b) people are highly incentivized to get the data. Ban selling it? They'll share it. Ban sharing it? They'll form byzantine corporate structures that make it not-really-sharing. Or they'll just do so informally. If you want it all to stop, that means banning the collection of data. This of course won't eliminate it altogether, and it will wipe out a lot of the tech industry, but it will go a long way, and proving someone has collected data they weren't supposed to is a lot easier than proving they shared it inappropriately.

at_a_remove 4y ago

I think one of the biggest flaws was the use of the word "expectations." Call it a sea change, call it a paradigm shift or a shove on the Overton window, expectations have been changing. Technology can certainly kick that along and often opens new chinks in our armor, but there's a societal and therefore legal bent to it, too.

Amezarak 4y ago
Neither exists in a vacuum. Technology changes culture and culture shapes the use of technology. Nevertheless, anytime you have people highly incentivized to use data, and the data exists, it will be used. And in fact our use of technology definitely contributed to this, even when it seemed very innocuous. Logging is invaluable for testing and troubleshooting, forum posts, DMs, login data, and tweets obviously have more value as things that are non-ephemeral...but what you do by logging everything, what you do by having an Internet where things are by default non-ephemeral is change exactly this societal expectation. Going back to the helicopter example in this thread, would we argue that the government shouldn't be allowed to look at the aerial view on maps.google.com? The very existence of this service changed what people understood as private.

ch4s3 4y ago

> It's going to be clearly silly for most people to say that multibillion dollar corporations are allowed to conduct unlimited surveillance on you, but the government can't. Corporations can’t put you in jail and that’s why the 4th amendment needs to be strong now more than ever. The government should be required to get warrants and not just be able to buy that data.

Amezarak 4y ago
What kind of actually effective controls do you think could possibly exist in a world where everyone can buy the data except the police? Aside from the fact other people and corporations can do quite a lot of horrible stuff to you, including turn the government on you - the obvious outcome is the police would simply use proxies and parallel construction, no matter how "illegal" you make it. It's one thing to say they shouldn't be able to do it and we need to pass a law, it's another to create a world where they actually can't, and aren't incentivized to. As a whole separate question, do you think companies and individuals should be banned from voluntarily giving data to the police, out of ideological motives or generosity or whatever? That also just intuitively seems weird. Charging a fee for something you're happy to do is just a small jump. The problem is the mass collection of data in the first place. Once you have that, the rest is inevitable. Mass data collection is a massive qualitative change to what we had before.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  Can’t would be ideal, but I’d settle for better rule of law and legal protections.
- feet 4y ago
  How about make it so that nobody can buy the data?
  - Amezarak 4y ago
    This might be a promising step, but you still have the problem of a) the data exists b) people are highly incentivized to get the data. Ban selling it? They'll share it. Ban sharing it? They'll form byzantine corporate structures that make it not-really-sharing. Or they'll just do so informally. If you want it all to stop, that means banning the collection of data. This of course won't eliminate it altogether, and it will wipe out a lot of the tech industry, but it will go a long way, and proving someone has collected data they weren't supposed to is a lot easier than proving they shared it inappropriately.