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Comment by unethical_ban | Hacker News Reader

One cop on a street corner observing the public is one thing.

A group of people with a warrant gathering detailed routines of a suspect is one thing.

An apparatus that can observe the detailed activities and whereabouts (location AND behavior) of all people in a metro area is a completely different thing, and one our courts and Constitution have not yet handled.

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> one our courts and Constitution have not yet handled.

Exactly. It's one thing to say our laws and Constitution should place strict limitations on this kind of surveillance. I agree with that.

But it's another thing to say they already do, when they don't.

What's the difference other than technology makes it more efficient. I'm sure the courts will weigh in eventually but this seems like a legislative issue.

Efficiency is a problem in it's own right. It drives down cost. Which means that surveillance will be used more often and for less important reasons. It's not uncommon for people to need to skirt the law from time to time. This is particularly true of people in the lower classes of society. Is it fair to ding a retail worker whose car registration just expired but needs a few days to get it all straightened out? That's something modern surveillance could easily handle nearly perfectly.

We could also just write laws that allow grace periods to cover problems like that. It is already common legislative practice to do that in many cases...

My original point was I find the "It's too efficient" argument to be a very weak attack angle on the use of technology in surveillance.

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