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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 09 2017, @08:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the big-brother's-private-sector-sibling? dept.

If the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a San Diego-based Republican state senator have their way, it will soon become legal for Californians to cover their license plates while parked as a way to thwart automated license plate readers.

Those devices, now commonly in use by law enforcement nationwide, can capture license plate numbers at a very high rate of speed, as well as record the GPS location, date, and time that a particular plate is seen. Those plates are then run against a "hot list" of stolen or wanted cars, and a cop is then alerted to the presence of any vehicle with a match on that list.

As written, the new senate bill would allow for law enforcement to manually lift a cover, or flap, as a way to manually inspect a plate number. The idea is not only to prevent dragnet license plate data collection by law enforcement, but also by private companies. A California company, Vigilant Solutions, is believed to have the largest private ALPR database in America, with billions of records.

Do we have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public?


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  • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:27PM (6 children)

    Before we tackle the legal question - which is really just an exercise in pedantry - we must ask ourselves: should we have an expectation of privacy in public?

    I think that's the wrong question. The right question is "Should we have an expectation of anonymity in public?"

    There's no reason for law enforcement or other government agency to know who we are and where we're going, unless there's a public safety issue (and that's a pretty broad category), even if they are surveiling public places.

    Both public agencies and private entities are within their rights to mount cameras and identify those who are on their premises. As such, privacy isn't really practical in public spaces. However, at least as far as government is concerned, they should not attach a name to a person, car or other conveyance unless there is a specific, legitimate reason to breach someone's anonymity.

    Perhaps I'm splitting semantic hairs, but I don't think so.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
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  • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:43PM (5 children)

    by meustrus (4961) on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:43PM (#507137)

    No, I think anonymity is quite a different beast. As we've seen on the internet, giving people anonymity in a public space leads directly to harassment. It should not be impossible to identify an individual, because that's the only way to provide consequences for their actions.

    Anyway, the meaning of privacy here is "only the people you mean to engage with know what you are doing". That's not the same thing as anonymity.

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    If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
    • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:37PM

      It should not be impossible to identify an individual, because that's the only way to provide consequences for their actions.

      You make my point for me. I said:

      There's no reason for law enforcement or other government agency to know who we are and where we're going, unless there's a public safety issue (and that's a pretty broad category), even if they are surveiling public places

      The technology is in place. You can't stop folks from watching/tracking you. Which means that when you do stuff in public, others can and will see it. As such, you already don't have privacy in public spaces. The privacy in public spaces ship has sailed, and I don't think it's coming back into port anytime soon.

      What we can do (or at least try to do) is to create a framework where law enforcement and other government entities are forbidden from identifying you unless there's a public safety issue. That's (relative) anonymity.

      --
      No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday May 10 2017, @01:25AM

      by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @01:25AM (#507231)

      As we've seen on the internet, giving people anonymity in a public space leads directly to harassment.

      That's a price I'm more than willing to pay. I care more about anonymity than I do about stopping 'bad guys' or "harassment" (an incredibly broad term). Bring on the unbreakable anonymity (which doesn't exist anyway), I say.

    • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Wednesday May 10 2017, @02:13PM (2 children)

      by Justin Case (4239) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @02:13PM (#507542) Journal

      on the internet... anonymity in a public space leads directly to harassment. It should not be impossible to identify an individual, because that's the only way to provide consequences for their actions.

      Wait, are you talking about speech ("harassment" on the internet) or actions?

      Because some of us are free to speak our thoughts, and we find that a good thing.

      What "consequences" do you think are mandatory in response to certain words you don't like? Mandatory, because you must be able to impose those consequences on an actual identifiable non-anonymous person and not just by replying with other words.

      • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:55PM (1 child)

        by meustrus (4961) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:55PM (#507594)

        I'm talking about swatting and doxxing in the most extreme, as well as general mass shit-talking at the most basic. In the extreme, people need to be held legally accountable for committing criminal acts. In the most basic, people need to be held socially accountable for being assholes. I'm not advocating for any consequences that don't already exist outside of the internet.

        --
        If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
        • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Wednesday May 10 2017, @08:27PM

          by Justin Case (4239) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @08:27PM (#507724) Journal

          OK thanks for the clarification; I'm with you on swatting and doxxing because they spill over into the "real" (non-online) world.