4 ms·

Not just the government. It shouldn't be possible for any random stalker to find someone's daily movements.

nullc 6mo ago
They're also one and the same generally-- at least if the stalker has money or the right friends most kinds of law enforcement access means stalker access. It's not unheard of for an officer themselves to be the stalker, and there are so many people that work in law enforcement that bribing, impersonating, or persuading your way to access is not that big a deal. Not to mention that enabled stalkers can just file a federal lawsuit and issue subpoena for records. The only safe thing is for the records to never exist in the first place.
- soulofmischief 6mo ago
  Further reading: AP: Across US, police officers abuse confidential databases https://apnews.com/general-news-699236946e3140659fff8a2362e16f43 https://apnews.com/general-news-699236946e3140659fff8a2362e1...
- Tangurena2 6mo ago
  > It's not unheard of for an officer themselves to be the stalker This was one of the motivations for passage of the Driver's Privacy Protection Act of 1994. Nowadays, officers need a legitimate reason to run a plate - unless the patrol car is fitted with automatic cameras[1] that look up every plate of every car they drive past. > The Virginia state police used license plate readers to track people’s attendance at political events; > The New York Police Department used license plate readers to keep track of who visited certain places of worship, and how often; > Despite all this surveillance, ALPR technology has been repeatedly shown to be unreliable; like other police technologies, ALPRs can and do make mistakes.[2] Generally, court decisions have held that you have zero expectation of privacy when you are in public spaces. Current license plate standards[3] aim for plates that are not cluttered and are easily read by the human eyeball, despite being wrapped with license plate frames (which usually make the state hard/impossible to read which is the most common failure mode for ANLR[4]). If the reflectivity material (traditionally called "ScotchLite"[5]) is worn out (or defaced), most states require the plate to be replaced. Notes: 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_... Prior to passage, a slang term for running/looking up the plate/registration of a car with a pretty woman driver was "running a date". 1 - https://sls.eff.org/technologies/automated-license-plate-readers-alprs https://sls.eff.org/technologies/automated-license-plate-rea... 2 - https://www.aclum.org/publications/what-you-need-know-about-automatic-license-plate-readers/ https://www.aclum.org/publications/what-you-need-know-about-... 3 - https://www.aamva.org/getmedia/646bcc8a-219b-47d8-b5cd-726240473163/License-Plate-Standard-Edition-3_September-2025-Update.pdf https://www.aamva.org/getmedia/646bcc8a-219b-47d8-b5cd-72624... 4 - https://www.aamva.org/getmedia/0063bf88-cb44-4ab9-90b6-200c8742a06d/License-Plate-Reader-Program-Best-Practices-Guide-Edition-2_final.pdf https://www.aamva.org/getmedia/0063bf88-cb44-4ab9-90b6-200c8... 5 - https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/scotchlite-reflective-material-us/ https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/scotchlite-reflective-material-u... Disclaimers: I used to work for my state's motor vehicle department and had database/developer access to driving licenses and motor vehicle registration records. I graduated from a police academy when I was a youngster.*
jojobas 6mo ago
How is that achievable? PIs can legally do it. Random people can keep tabs on you and exchange gossip. It's the sudden scale and low cost that doesn't sit well with freedom to not be tracked in public 24/7 we took for granted.
- rdevilla 6mo ago
  It's not achievable. The only way is through - everybody should get into the practice of stalking and gossiping about each other in a Molochian environment, where the people who do not do so suffer from the losing side of an information asymmetry. Expect AI, especially post-Mythos, to just enable this at even further scale. Consumer grade wireless networking gear as a whole is a very wide attack surface and is basically never updated.
- buzer 6mo ago
  If PIs can "legally" do it then it sounds like there is a law which allows them to do it. That law can be revoked (unless the power comes from Constitution which would make it effectively impossible to revoke). Note that PIs are effectively illegal under GDPR by default. They would generally need to provide Article 13 notice, i.e. you would become aware of them unless they were just asking around without actually following you. Member states can make them legal though (via Article 23) and likely in many cases they have done so.
  - jojobas 6mo ago
    In the US, PI licensing is only about PIing for hire. The actual act of going through public records, following cars and whatnot do not require a license, you can spy on anyone without a license as long as you don't get paid for it. EU is more complicated, but Article 14.5.b allows withholding notice if it would impair/defeat the purpose of processing. The PI must however apply "safeguards", whatever it could mean.
    - buzer 6mo ago
      Article 14(5)(b) does, but that only applies for Article 14 notice (personal data not directly obtained from data subject). Article 13 (personal data obtained directly from data subject) does not have such exception in GDPR itself. This becomes extremely relevant when you read it in the light of the C-422/24 decision. In that personal data collected via body worn cameras was determined to be "directly obtained". Paragraph 41 from the judgement: > If it were accepted that Article 14 of the GDPR applies where personal data are collected by means of a body camera, the data subject would not receive any information at the time of collection, even though he or she is the source of those data, which would allow the controller not to provide information to that data subject immediately. Therefore, such an interpretation would carry the risk of the collection of personal data escaping the knowledge of the data subject and giving rise to hidden surveillance practices. Such a consequence would be incompatible with the objective, referred to in the preceding paragraph, of ensuring a high level of protection of the fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons. Given this it's very unlikely that PI observing (especially if they record) could be considered to be Article 14 instead of Article 13 type of collection as it's exactly "hidden surveillance practice" that the Court warned about. Member states do have a right to restrict the Article 13 disclosure obligations via Article 23 restriction, but that requires specific law in the member state & the law itself must fulfill the obligations that Article 23 requires. Article 23(2) essentially forbids leaving everything up to the controller. And as far as PI in the US goes, actions between stalking and PI "for self" tend to be so similar that I wouldn't necessarily recommend anyone to try it.
NoSalt 6mo ago
Government ... random stalker ... same thing.

nullc 6mo ago

They're also one and the same generally-- at least if the stalker has money or the right friends most kinds of law enforcement access means stalker access. It's not unheard of for an officer themselves to be the stalker, and there are so many people that work in law enforcement that bribing, impersonating, or persuading your way to access is not that big a deal. Not to mention that enabled stalkers can just file a federal lawsuit and issue subpoena for records. The only safe thing is for the records to never exist in the first place.

soulofmischief 6mo ago
Further reading: AP: Across US, police officers abuse confidential databases https://apnews.com/general-news-699236946e3140659fff8a2362e16f43 https://apnews.com/general-news-699236946e3140659fff8a2362e1...
Tangurena2 6mo ago
> It's not unheard of for an officer themselves to be the stalker This was one of the motivations for passage of the Driver's Privacy Protection Act of 1994. Nowadays, officers need a legitimate reason to run a plate - unless the patrol car is fitted with automatic cameras[1] that look up every plate of every car they drive past. > The Virginia state police used license plate readers to track people’s attendance at political events; > The New York Police Department used license plate readers to keep track of who visited certain places of worship, and how often; > Despite all this surveillance, ALPR technology has been repeatedly shown to be unreliable; like other police technologies, ALPRs can and do make mistakes.[2] Generally, court decisions have held that you have zero expectation of privacy when you are in public spaces. Current license plate standards[3] aim for plates that are not cluttered and are easily read by the human eyeball, despite being wrapped with license plate frames (which usually make the state hard/impossible to read which is the most common failure mode for ANLR[4]). If the reflectivity material (traditionally called "ScotchLite"[5]) is worn out (or defaced), most states require the plate to be replaced. Notes: 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_... Prior to passage, a slang term for running/looking up the plate/registration of a car with a pretty woman driver was "running a date". 1 - https://sls.eff.org/technologies/automated-license-plate-readers-alprs https://sls.eff.org/technologies/automated-license-plate-rea... 2 - https://www.aclum.org/publications/what-you-need-know-about-automatic-license-plate-readers/ https://www.aclum.org/publications/what-you-need-know-about-... 3 - https://www.aamva.org/getmedia/646bcc8a-219b-47d8-b5cd-726240473163/License-Plate-Standard-Edition-3_September-2025-Update.pdf https://www.aamva.org/getmedia/646bcc8a-219b-47d8-b5cd-72624... 4 - https://www.aamva.org/getmedia/0063bf88-cb44-4ab9-90b6-200c8742a06d/License-Plate-Reader-Program-Best-Practices-Guide-Edition-2_final.pdf https://www.aamva.org/getmedia/0063bf88-cb44-4ab9-90b6-200c8... 5 - https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/scotchlite-reflective-material-us/ https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/scotchlite-reflective-material-u... Disclaimers: I used to work for my state's motor vehicle department and had database/developer access to driving licenses and motor vehicle registration records. I graduated from a police academy when I was a youngster.*

jojobas 6mo ago

How is that achievable? PIs can legally do it. Random people can keep tabs on you and exchange gossip. It's the sudden scale and low cost that doesn't sit well with freedom to not be tracked in public 24/7 we took for granted.

rdevilla 6mo ago
It's not achievable. The only way is through - everybody should get into the practice of stalking and gossiping about each other in a Molochian environment, where the people who do not do so suffer from the losing side of an information asymmetry. Expect AI, especially post-Mythos, to just enable this at even further scale. Consumer grade wireless networking gear as a whole is a very wide attack surface and is basically never updated.
buzer 6mo ago
If PIs can "legally" do it then it sounds like there is a law which allows them to do it. That law can be revoked (unless the power comes from Constitution which would make it effectively impossible to revoke). Note that PIs are effectively illegal under GDPR by default. They would generally need to provide Article 13 notice, i.e. you would become aware of them unless they were just asking around without actually following you. Member states can make them legal though (via Article 23) and likely in many cases they have done so.
- jojobas 6mo ago
  In the US, PI licensing is only about PIing for hire. The actual act of going through public records, following cars and whatnot do not require a license, you can spy on anyone without a license as long as you don't get paid for it. EU is more complicated, but Article 14.5.b allows withholding notice if it would impair/defeat the purpose of processing. The PI must however apply "safeguards", whatever it could mean.
  - buzer 6mo ago
    Article 14(5)(b) does, but that only applies for Article 14 notice (personal data not directly obtained from data subject). Article 13 (personal data obtained directly from data subject) does not have such exception in GDPR itself. This becomes extremely relevant when you read it in the light of the C-422/24 decision. In that personal data collected via body worn cameras was determined to be "directly obtained". Paragraph 41 from the judgement: > If it were accepted that Article 14 of the GDPR applies where personal data are collected by means of a body camera, the data subject would not receive any information at the time of collection, even though he or she is the source of those data, which would allow the controller not to provide information to that data subject immediately. Therefore, such an interpretation would carry the risk of the collection of personal data escaping the knowledge of the data subject and giving rise to hidden surveillance practices. Such a consequence would be incompatible with the objective, referred to in the preceding paragraph, of ensuring a high level of protection of the fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons. Given this it's very unlikely that PI observing (especially if they record) could be considered to be Article 14 instead of Article 13 type of collection as it's exactly "hidden surveillance practice" that the Court warned about. Member states do have a right to restrict the Article 13 disclosure obligations via Article 23 restriction, but that requires specific law in the member state & the law itself must fulfill the obligations that Article 23 requires. Article 23(2) essentially forbids leaving everything up to the controller. And as far as PI in the US goes, actions between stalking and PI "for self" tend to be so similar that I wouldn't necessarily recommend anyone to try it.

NoSalt 6mo ago

Government ... random stalker ... same thing.