6 ms·

I mean, its possible to subpoena cellphone records and geographically track your movement based on which cell towers you connect to. But regardless, I always f

I mean, its possible to subpoena cellphone records and geographically track your movement based on which cell towers you connect to. But regardless, I always find it funny that most of the rhetoric for personal liberties revolves around being able to do illegal things.

simonw 11mo ago
That is exactly my point: no subpoena or warrant is required for access to license plate scan databases.
- ActorNightly 11mo ago
  I want you to tell me in exact words that you firmly believe that when the current regime starts requesting records without any legal oversight, cell companies won't comply, because users trust is worth to them more than shareholder value.
  - simonw 11mo ago
    What's the point you are trying to make here?
    - ActorNightly 11mo ago
      That things like subpoena matter very little to actual fascists.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
holmesworcester 11mo ago
The most important reason for privacy is that without it, social norms calcify. If a norm is outdated, oppressive, or maladaptive in some way and needs to be changed, it becomes very difficult to change the norm if you cannot build a critical mass of people practicing the replacement norm. It is even harder if you cannot even talk about building a critical mass of people practicing the replacement norm. For many norms, like the taboo on homosexuality which was strong in the US and Europe until recently and is still strong in many places today, the taboo and threat of ostracism are strong enough that people need privacy to build critical mass to change the norm even when the taboo is not enshrined in law, or the law is not usually enforced. This was the mechanism of "coming out of the closet": build critical mass for changing the norm in private, and then take the risk of being in public violation once enough critical mass had been organized that it was plausible to replace the old oppressive/maladaptive norm with a new one. But yes, obsolete/maladaptive/oppressive norms are often enshrined in law too.
thewebguyd 11mo ago
> revolves around being able to do illegal things. The problem is, what is legal today might not be tomorrow. Especially depending on the regime in power at the time. Mass surveillance can implicate someone in a crime if later on some regime decides that what they did or where they went is now a crime when it wasn't before. Remember the push back against Apple's proposed client side scanning of photos to look for CSAM? What happens when the hash database starts including things like political memes, or other types of photos. What used to be legal is now not, and you get screwed because of the surveillance state. Absolutely no data should be available without a warrant and subpoena, full stop. Warrants issued by a court, not a secret national security letter with a gag order either. Warrants only issued with true probable cause, not "acting suspicious."
- sroussey 11mo ago
  Absolutely all your data is available for sale by data brokers. Need to get rid of those first. Then the government would need warrants where they don’t need warrants to just buy your data.
  - Spooky23 11mo ago
    If you've worked in government, you'd know that that bar for getting a subpoena or warrant is far lower and less strenuous than getting a purchase order.
    - thewebguyd 11mo ago
      Which is also a problem that needs fixed. A search warrant should be extremely difficult to get. "The person is suspicious and we think we will find xyz illegal item" is not enough. An arrest alone shouldn't be enough either. Police/detectives should have to prove, beyond all reasonable doubt, that what they are looking for is actually there to get the warrant.
      - Spooky23 11mo ago
        That’s not the standard for a warrant. That standard is “reasonable belief”.
Spooky23 11mo ago
For good reason. Being "investigated" for illegal things is a key way to violate personal liberties. If you believe in freedom, you have to accept that some people who are not nice people benefit from those human rights. You may find yourself an "enemy of the people" for a variety of reasons. In most cases, cell tower data is sold in the open market in aggregate. A commercial real estate developer can buy datasets that provide the average household income of passers by by hour of the day and month of the year, for example. The police can request tower ping data, generally by warrant. There are exceptions, especially in the federal space. The Feds have a massive surveillance network. Every journey on the interstates between Miami and the border crossings near Buffalo, Watertown, Plattsburgh, Vermont and Maine all the way down to Miami is logged and tracked by a DEA program, which has likely expanded. You can get breadcrumbs of LPR hits and passenger photographs throughout the journey. Flock is a cancer, as it is deployed by individual jurisdictions (often with Federal grants) and makes each node part of a larger network. They help solve and will likely eliminate some categories of crime. But the laws governing use are at best weak and at worse an abomination. Local cops abuse it by doing the usual dumb cop stuff -- stalking girlfriends, checking up on acquaintances. The Federal government is able to tap in to make it a node in their panopticon. Unlike government systems, stuff like user ids aren't really governed well and the abuses are mostly unauditable. The private camera networks are a problem for commercial abuse and Federal abuse. They aren't as risky for local PDs because they generally require a paper trail to use. Corrupt/abusive cops don't like accountability.
- ActorNightly 11mo ago
  >The police can request tower ping data, generally by warrant. Or Trump can just put legal pressure on cell providers and they will bend the knee like everyone else, and CPB can easily have that data without problems. Lets not pretend that that is the line they won't cross.
  - mrguyorama 11mo ago
    Those companies have been selling the data to the government without warrant for quite some time actually. No pressure necessary. Cops have money and Verizon wants it.
onlypassingthru 11mo ago
Only a review of your dossier by the House Un-American Activities Committee† can verify you have not demonstrated any subversive behavior, citizen. † https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_C...
into_ruin 11mo ago
> [M]ost of the rhetoric for personal liberties revolves around being able to do illegal things. What are you basing that on? Conjecture?
- ActorNightly 11mo ago
  No, simple logic and how society is evolving.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]

simonw 11mo ago

That is exactly my point: no subpoena or warrant is required for access to license plate scan databases.

ActorNightly 11mo ago
I want you to tell me in exact words that you firmly believe that when the current regime starts requesting records without any legal oversight, cell companies won't comply, because users trust is worth to them more than shareholder value.
- simonw 11mo ago
  What's the point you are trying to make here?
  - ActorNightly 11mo ago
    That things like subpoena matter very little to actual fascists.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

holmesworcester 11mo ago

The most important reason for privacy is that without it, social norms calcify. If a norm is outdated, oppressive, or maladaptive in some way and needs to be changed, it becomes very difficult to change the norm if you cannot build a critical mass of people practicing the replacement norm. It is even harder if you cannot even talk about building a critical mass of people practicing the replacement norm. For many norms, like the taboo on homosexuality which was strong in the US and Europe until recently and is still strong in many places today, the taboo and threat of ostracism are strong enough that people need privacy to build critical mass to change the norm even when the taboo is not enshrined in law, or the law is not usually enforced. This was the mechanism of "coming out of the closet": build critical mass for changing the norm in private, and then take the risk of being in public violation once enough critical mass had been organized that it was plausible to replace the old oppressive/maladaptive norm with a new one. But yes, obsolete/maladaptive/oppressive norms are often enshrined in law too.

thewebguyd 11mo ago

> revolves around being able to do illegal things. The problem is, what is legal today might not be tomorrow. Especially depending on the regime in power at the time. Mass surveillance can implicate someone in a crime if later on some regime decides that what they did or where they went is now a crime when it wasn't before. Remember the push back against Apple's proposed client side scanning of photos to look for CSAM? What happens when the hash database starts including things like political memes, or other types of photos. What used to be legal is now not, and you get screwed because of the surveillance state. Absolutely no data should be available without a warrant and subpoena, full stop. Warrants issued by a court, not a secret national security letter with a gag order either. Warrants only issued with true probable cause, not "acting suspicious."

sroussey 11mo ago
Absolutely all your data is available for sale by data brokers. Need to get rid of those first. Then the government would need warrants where they don’t need warrants to just buy your data.
- Spooky23 11mo ago
  If you've worked in government, you'd know that that bar for getting a subpoena or warrant is far lower and less strenuous than getting a purchase order.
  - thewebguyd 11mo ago
    Which is also a problem that needs fixed. A search warrant should be extremely difficult to get. "The person is suspicious and we think we will find xyz illegal item" is not enough. An arrest alone shouldn't be enough either. Police/detectives should have to prove, beyond all reasonable doubt, that what they are looking for is actually there to get the warrant.
    - Spooky23 11mo ago
      That’s not the standard for a warrant. That standard is “reasonable belief”.

Spooky23 11mo ago

For good reason. Being "investigated" for illegal things is a key way to violate personal liberties. If you believe in freedom, you have to accept that some people who are not nice people benefit from those human rights. You may find yourself an "enemy of the people" for a variety of reasons. In most cases, cell tower data is sold in the open market in aggregate. A commercial real estate developer can buy datasets that provide the average household income of passers by by hour of the day and month of the year, for example. The police can request tower ping data, generally by warrant. There are exceptions, especially in the federal space. The Feds have a massive surveillance network. Every journey on the interstates between Miami and the border crossings near Buffalo, Watertown, Plattsburgh, Vermont and Maine all the way down to Miami is logged and tracked by a DEA program, which has likely expanded. You can get breadcrumbs of LPR hits and passenger photographs throughout the journey. Flock is a cancer, as it is deployed by individual jurisdictions (often with Federal grants) and makes each node part of a larger network. They help solve and will likely eliminate some categories of crime. But the laws governing use are at best weak and at worse an abomination. Local cops abuse it by doing the usual dumb cop stuff -- stalking girlfriends, checking up on acquaintances. The Federal government is able to tap in to make it a node in their panopticon. Unlike government systems, stuff like user ids aren't really governed well and the abuses are mostly unauditable. The private camera networks are a problem for commercial abuse and Federal abuse. They aren't as risky for local PDs because they generally require a paper trail to use. Corrupt/abusive cops don't like accountability.

ActorNightly 11mo ago
>The police can request tower ping data, generally by warrant. Or Trump can just put legal pressure on cell providers and they will bend the knee like everyone else, and CPB can easily have that data without problems. Lets not pretend that that is the line they won't cross.
- mrguyorama 11mo ago
  Those companies have been selling the data to the government without warrant for quite some time actually. No pressure necessary. Cops have money and Verizon wants it.

onlypassingthru 11mo ago

Only a review of your dossier by the House Un-American Activities Committee† can verify you have not demonstrated any subversive behavior, citizen. † https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_C...

into_ruin 11mo ago

> [M]ost of the rhetoric for personal liberties revolves around being able to do illegal things. What are you basing that on? Conjecture?

ActorNightly 11mo ago
No, simple logic and how society is evolving.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]