https://www.heraldnet.com/news/judge-denies-request-to-exemp...
Also:
Redmond temporarily suspends use of Flock cameras - https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/redmond-police-depa...
Absolutely. Govs fight transparency to hide their actions - ultimately so they can avoid accountability.
Oh I agree 100%
We are only a couple steps away from doing the same thing for pedestrians. Why not just take pictures of every single person walking by now? This already happens in some places. Flock is paving the way to make it a government sanctioned mass surveillance program.
Plus, there's the usual concerns of how easy it is to craft narratives by showing only bits and pieces of what happened. If law enforcement is going to be using this footage as evidence for arrests, it's definitely better that that people can have their lawyers review the public record for footage that might paint things in a different light. Sure, prosecutors should theoretically be required to share potentially exculpatory evidence with the defense, but there's no shortage of known instances where that didn't happen, and the system should not be set to to make the availability of information even more unbalanced than it already is
How was all of this data gathered without being a violation?
"We are not legally permitted to blanket surveil/ALPR entire neighborhoods/towns, etc. ...
... and we can't pay a private company to do this for us ...
... but nothing prevents us from paying a private company who is doing it already, to give us that data."
The line between the last two is blurry but also utilized - you can't put out an RFP for a company to capture such data that you're not permitted to, but if that company is doing it because it sees a/your market for it, then it's a free-for-all.
Bets on this strategy having been part of their seed pitch deck? Guess they would've left it out, keeping it as nudge nudge wink wink and discussing during QA.
Ah, and there it is. Why shouldn't Y-Combinator be a force for evil like the rest of them? Paul Graham has been off his rocker for about as long as I can remember now, unfortunately my memories of people like this doing anything good for the world are so far in the past, they're fading. What a shame.
We should figure out a way to hold YC accountable for their helping these companies screw our rights and privacy.
Good thoughts like these are why I’m sort of surprised they still run HN on such an obviously, directly, unambiguously attributable domain name.
The watering hole effect, perhaps.
Ahh that year was somewhere between blockchain and ai - no surprise they would default back to surveillance capitalism, go with what you know.
Another non-paywalled article on the case: https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/investigat...
An offhand picture by a private individual is OK, but a large scale organized hoovering of personally identifying information is not OK.
The finding is also the denial of an exemption appeal which has a much lower legal threshold to clear.
The ruling in Carpenter is essentially that you can't have prolonged surveillance without a warrant.
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
[0] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69288422/schmidt-v-city...
But they don't.
Once my car drove by a Google street view vehicle. I thought it was cool. If a Google street view vehicle (or, nowadays, Amazon truck) drove circles around my neighborhood collecting wearabouts of all cars I'd find that concerning.
The way these camera systems are set up is tantamount to an ankle monitor. Who wants to live like that?
Sure, it's tradition, but license-plates started being required over a hundred years ago and the tradeoffs and dangers were not the same.
Expectation of privacy generally comes from taking steps to preserve it. If you put curtains on your windows, any rando can't install a hidden camera in your house to see what's happening behind them. If you don't install curtains on your windows, any rando can stand in the street and see what they see.
The government prohibits you from concealing the number plate on your car. They can't reasonably prohibit you from doing the thing that would establish an expectation of privacy and then use the fact that you didn't do it to say that you don't have one.
Why use the full name? They are known as Palantir.
> We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact classified@skagitpublishing.com or call 360-424-3251.
Personally I don't know about non-EU/UK countries with GDPR-style (or stronger) laws, so if I were operating a website that needed GDPR compliance (and decided to instead block visitors from the EU/UK), I probably would have no idea about needing to do something about visitors from your country.
So I expect their "true reasoning" is just ignorance.
So I see this as a good ruling: While I don't want my driving data public, I'd rather everyone's be equally public, rather than allowing shady and unaccountable forces to decide who "deserves" privacy and who doesn't.
In other words, if Elon Musk or Local Town Mayor can surveil my daily drives, I should be able to see theirs too.
____
Aside: Imagine a journalistic cooperative that uses similar cameras to record all traffic at the driveways of the rich/politicians, airports, luxury hotels and resorts, etc.
Magically, legislators will acquire opinions against such systems... though not necessarily honest or evenhanded ones, that'll still be a problem.
I truly believe that technology like this, implemented in the way that it is, is incredibly dangerous. They are creating a nationwide spynet, selling everyone's information, and lying about this fact. Both sides of the political isle will inevitably abuse this power. It needs to be pushed back against strongly now and forever more. I encourage people to show up to city council meetings if adding flock to your city is on the agenda. And if it is already in your city then the contract will need to be renewed at some point and you can contest it then. Emailing your representatives is not always effective, but if thousands of people do so then it does start making a dent.
Denver town hall where multiple sources of flock lying and deceiving the government and the people are brought up: https://youtu.be/OR_qolqQ2fM
I suspect they probably do have the data locally integrated (at least for the time period the state allows them to retain the records). But even if they do not, many police departments that would not be an excuse (although you need to request fast, many states only retain for 30 days or less now).
I understand the risks of mass surveillance but we don’t live in a dystopia. We can require certain process for public agencies to have access to the data (like court approved warrants or imminent harm or whatever) and keep it otherwise private. Just like some other information deemed confidential isn’t subject to transparency laws.
p_ing•3mo ago