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Comment by Dwolb | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's that simple. I believe people do care if they're getting tracked, for what reason, and for the possible repercussions.

We can compare the issues between a marketing on Facebook re-targeting you and the government recording your text messages. In one scenario, your preferences are exposed and used to present you with an advertisment to buy a good. In the other scenario, you can be analyzed for whether or not you've committed a crime or are about to commit a crime.

The two scenarios have vastly different consequences with varying levels of mindshare for thr general public.

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Compare these scenarios: 1 a cop is passing by your house and sees you commit a murder. 2 government finds out from your phone's GPS data + public camera face recognition that you committed a murder 3 you admit to a murder on phone with an accomplice

Why is one way of collecting evidence any better than the other. If you commit a crime, you should be convicted. Just because you are able to hide certain types of evidence today does not make the crime justified.

What makes scenario 2 egregious is how easy it would be to use that evidence to implicate someone for parking nearby the victim's house while the real killer took the bus. That kind of mass data collection lets you get really convenient answers from the data, and I don't trust the police to do the additional work of physically placing me at the scene if they can get a prosecutor to railroad me using my gps data.

How is that any different to the neighbor seeing you park your car in that street and not seeing the actual killer. Is there a difference in whether this evidence got collected by a person or a camera? What you do with this(and all other collected evidence) comes later. Eq - what if the government hires millions of police and place them on every intersection - that is acceptable, but having a camera on every intersection is not?

The issue is the opposite. It's a problem this data is collected for innocent people.

It is indeed very similar to the government hiring millions of police and placing them everywhere (but even worse!). This effects society negatively and restricts freedom of expression due to the very looming presence of law enforcement everywhere.

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