I think the courts have ruled that it is perfectly legal to record somebody outside of their home as that is considered public spaces. Many cities are now moving to embed cameras in street lights to deter and record crimes.
I think that it is safe to assume that if you are outside, you are being recorded, either by a check point camera , a store’s security camera , streetlight camera or even your neighbor’s ring device.
You should not have any expectation of privacy once you are outside the confines of your house.
This "_you should not have any expectations of privacy in public_" argument dates back when there was no facial recognition.
The idea was people can see you in the street, maybe exceptionally a wierdo would take a photo of you but nobody could find your identity back from that photo. In case of a crime in the street the police could exceptionally access surveillance cameras to investigate. That's it.
This is what "no privacy in public" meant in 2000/2010, and I was totally fine with that. I was totally pro video surveillance at that time .
Now we're in 2020 and facial recognition is happening. Everything changes.
Today, taking the picture of someone = taking biometric data like fingerprint or DNA. This allows you to have a total control over that person. Law were made at a time when a cameras were not such devastating weapons.
Everywhere you go, everything you eat, each item in the store you look at, each person you look at, heartbeat & stress level, which house you're at, who are you talking to, what did you bought, when, with who, what ads did you watch in the street, which part if the ads, with which emotion, we can find your identity, social posts, private data, health data, intimate message, browsing history, emotions, stress level, etc just by pointing a camera at you because of facial recognition. All this is anaylzed, sold and stored forever.
We're getting in a dystopia the worst case-scenario dystopic sci-fi movie couldn't even imagine and people are like "nah we shouldn't expect privacy anyway ya know"...
> Today, taking the picture of someone = taking biometric data like fingerprint or DNA. This allows you to have a total control over that person.
How does a picture grant total control? Let's say I have a picture of you right now. How do I use that picture to either force you to do something against your will, or prevent you from doing something?
This is a government problem, not a privacy problem. If your government is intent on detaining and torturing dissidents, then privacy laws aren't going to stop them. Who do you think makes and enforces the law? The solution to that is to change your government.
Police, the FBI, and more use stingrays without warrants. The NSA works extensively to destroy encryption, and even have back doors into products for full, unlimited, real-time breaking of encryption.
I could post endless stories about this. Different US agencies, different data, different purposes for that data.
Put them all together.
Now consider that some of these agencies are "fighting" with democratically elected officials. Refusing to comply with democratically elected senators, congressmen, officials. State officials have even less sway.
This data is quite simply too powerful to be in anyone's hands. Literally, too powerful.
Again, if the worry is about a corrupt and hostile government, I fail to see what making it illegal accomplishes. Who do you think the regulators are?
Yes, regulation is great with a just and fair government. If the government can't be trusted, then neither can the regulations. If we can't trust the government, then we need to replace it with one we can trust.
It is not "the government is corrupt, therefore all is pointless". Instead, there are scenarios such as:
- the government is comprised of people, running different departments
- those people seem to think they are doing things for the common good
- courts determine otherwise, and point to laws passed by legislative bodies as validation
- activity stops
"Spy agencies", and "policing agencies" are constantly under these checks and balances. Cases are thrown out, individual careers are axed, when warrants are not used when they should, for example, when searching homes.
Without the laws, and court cases as they are, then the police would simply enter without those warrants, get convictions, and carry on very happy with themselves.
The real problem here is that technology grows so very fast, and that the world is changing quite rapidly. Don't even get me started on bio-tech, or near-Earth space changes over the next decade. Or Interplanetary law!
Legislative bodies, and law, are literally meant to deal with things over the course of decades or more. Legislative bodies tend to sit for 4 years or more! Change is slower, and of course, we like slower change for many things.
But this means that laws much 'catch up' to faster moving change.
Hell just crafting a law, going through the committees, hearing from experts, at least in Canada, then crafting the law, reading it in both houses, and more experts can take more than a year or two.
And that's after the will is in place to enact change.
This is part of the reason I deem the executive branch as having value, but, that is another discussion.
All said, I fear governments with this power most, and private corps next. One law takes care of both of these scenarios.
Lastly?
Never ignore the interest in something. Any old horse trader will tell you, if everyone clamours for something, it has immense value!
Knowing if I farted last week on Tuesday, is of immense information to everyone. Wha? Yet it is! And if it is of such value, if everyone climbs over each other to get that data, to hold it exclusively, to sell it, trade it, there is likely some import to such things.
If this info is so insanely valuable, then shouldn't the creator control it? Control what happens to it?
We have copyrights, patents, trade secrets, and even things like labour laws, acts to protect safety!
The entire purpose of law, is to protect "my stuff" from "that other guy". My life. My belongings. My health.
Yet this? This is all just "OK"?
The current laws surrounding data, are like period of times before labour laws, before human rights legislation, before food safety acts, and on and on.
This period of time is ending. Legislative bodies are catching up.
The question is, what will happen during the transformative period, where law catches up, and passes more and more laws about personal privacy, and control over personal data?
What's happening is, effectively, stalking. Stalking laws exist, even if the person is following another in public.
There are limits, you see.
Further, as others have eluded to, this is not about "a person seeing another person". Instead, this is about:
- a non-entity, a device, 'watching' you
- exporting that data from the locality it was taken in
- storing that information forever, if desired
- also scanning you directly, looking for RF signals
To claim that "a person seeing you walking down the street" is the same as this, is not valid.
For example, "stalking" entails following a person, where ever they go.
What else is all of this surveillance, if not 'following' a person where ever they go? And in most legal jurisdictions, this is a crime.
Try this same behaviour as a person? And individual? Follow a person where ever they go, take notes, never leave them alone? Bam! Stalking.
But because it's a corporation doing it, that's OK I suppose?
You keep trying to say that "a person seeing you in public" is the same as "mass surveillance being leveled against you".
It's not. Full stop.
So why not discuss this as it truly is? Please stop this conflation.
Because it's not a single entity following you around from place to place. Each place is keeping it's own records.
If you go to Joe's house and Joe makes a note that you came to his house, then you go to Bob's house and Bob makes a note that you came to his house, nobody is stalking you. Each individual is keeping track of who visits them. That is not stalking.
Yes, maybe later on, the government or someone else could come along and ask to see each person's records of who visited them. But that is their information to share or not share. You went to their place! If someone comes into your place of business or residence, does the record of that person visiting you not belong at least partially to you? Are you not allowed to keep track of who enters your own property?
I think I see where you're coming from, in that you're allowed to have knowledge of other people, and most of the time it's perfectly innocuous. But I don't think that's a very fair comparison. There's a pretty big difference between just happening upon some information (that you would likely immediately forget because it's not important), and actively seeking out and extracting information, often combining it with more information from different sources, saving it to a "profile" associated with you, and often sharing it with third parties, all without your knowledge or consent.
You seem to be implying that there's no difference between having a single piece of harmless information about someone, and having lots of personal and/or intimate knowledge of them, especially if they aren't the ones having given it to you, and even more so if you're strangers.
Right, and the end game is some utterly mundane non-issue like showing me ads that I end up blocking or finding the best spot in the store to put cans of soup.
That's where all this hyperbolic "OMG they took my picture and now they have total control of my life!!1!1" hand-wringing falls flat.
I care about privacy too, but come on. It's not voodoo. If you're not going to be serious about the real risks it's hard to take seriously.
After all this discussion, I've yet to hear an explanation of the actual mechanism by which, say, Macy's having a picture of me in their store allows them to exert control over any action I might want to take.
There are public spaces, and then there are private spaces open to the public. I fight this one all the time with a local park. It is a park that is not city owned public, but privately operated and open to the public. They have a very strict photography policy, and their "employees" will interfere with you if you do not have "permission".
I believe shopping malls are private spaces open to the public. The point is that I would not be shocked to see that there are different rules regarding public spaces vs private spaces open to the public.
> You should not have any expectation of privacy once you are outside the confines of your house.
My first reaction was “what a sad dystopian position.” But then I thought further and while I agree in general, I think “privacy” needs a bit more nuance to it. If you are outside should it be against the law to have a camera that films you for security? No I don’t think so. There is a reasonable expectation that business and home owners will have security cameras to protect their property. But in the case of filming you in order to monetize your likeness and shopping habits, I think this goes a step too far, and becomes broadly unacceptable as too intrusive. Should I only be able to retain my information (likeness, shopping habits) by hiding in my home? That’s the dystopian part.
I don't know why this is downvoted. I thought the same thing.
"Shoppers had no reason to expect their image was being collected by an inconspicuous camera, or that it would be used, with facial recognition technology, for analysis," said federal Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien in a statement.
My default is the opposite, I expect I'm being tracked all the time and that my image, cell signal, and whatever else is being used to try and sell me stuff I don't need.
OP's argument would be that bathrooms, changing rooms, hotel rooms are examples of places with expectation of privacy.
And if you are walking in the middle of a mall with lots of people around you, that would be an example where there is no expectation of privacy.
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OP argument put more simply, if you are in a bathroom, everyone expects that that is private. In fact bathrooms have doors and urinals have privacy screens. If you are taking your clothes off, a reasonable person expects to be private
Whereas, in the middle of the mall where there are tons of people, there are surveillance cameras, and other people taking pictures of each other. That would be somewhere with no expectation of privacy
I think that it is safe to assume that if you are outside, you are being recorded, either by a check point camera , a store’s security camera , streetlight camera or even your neighbor’s ring device.
You should not have any expectation of privacy once you are outside the confines of your house.