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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> ask them to confirm that they don't track this stuff in the first place

I could see a reasonable case being made for collecting these data, storing them for a few weeks, and then deleting them, to protect against thieves.

The problem here is that for the government to collect these data, they would need to follow certain processes. A private actor who isn't following those processes is placing those data with the government, thereby circumventing a critical check on police power.

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This seems to be the latest trick. The same thing was happening with the cell phone location data. We should start referring to this as "data laundering".

> "data laundering"

Don't mind if I do start referring to online abuses of privacy as such

Outsourcing detective work has been going on for a long time. When the Marshals or bounty hunters are looking for fugitives, one of the first things they do is pull what is essentially your credit report (with strictly financial details redacted) to get your address history and last known whereabouts from the private sector collective.

All that extraneous data in your credit reports is up for sale to qualifying purchasers-- be it law enforcement, marketing firms, or financial institutions.

> I could see a reasonable case being made for collecting these data, storing them for a few weeks, and then deleting them, to protect against thieves.

I disagree. Everyone shouldn't have to sacrifice everything associated with their license plate info, everywhere they go, because of a few thieves. It's not a reasonable balance; my privacy is worth a lot to me.

The Dutch civil servants collecting census data probably thought it was reasonable to create per-person records that included the tuple {address, religion}, which the Nazis used to create this[1] map of Jews living in Amsterdam (3/4 of the black dots on that map were murdered in the camps).

The problem with storing data that requires "certain processes" to ensure safety is that it might not be your decision. Governments collecting data is one example; others include desperate behavior by companies in bad financial situations or Equifax-style theft.

Someone trying to lose weight is probably able to resist the box of cookies in their pantry most of the time. Unfortunately being human means having occasional bad days where the will isn't necessarily up to the challenge. The responsible person recognizes that weaknesses exist and doesn't keep the box of cookies in the house.

I'm sure data will be handled safely most of the time, when it's easy. The real question is what will happen in difficult, morally problematic situations when the cost of acting ethically might include losing your job (or worse. One of the responsible way to handle that kind of problem is to avoid it entirely by not collecting the data.

[1] https://www.verzetsmuseum.org/uploads/archive/museum/topstuk...

Even if private actors were not involved, there wouldn’t be any way to verify that the information was destroyed by a governmental department. I suppose that is a possible area where a public blockchain that broadcasts the storage and deletion of data could be useful but now everybody has stopped reading this comment so they can talk about how blockchain tech is useless. Regardless, the indefinite/temporary storage of tracking data needs to be addressed at some point.

How exactly could a blockchain publish deletion of data in a way that can't be cheated?

Through a private key mechanism. If there was a mechanism to automatically remove the private key for a record then it would become effectively unreadable (in our life time, anyway).

But what stops you from copying the private key before it gets removed? Or running a client that just pretends to remove the private key?

Half the point of a blockchain is that once data is out there it can't be removed. You can't leverage that to force the removal of something.

>I could see a reasonable case being made for collecting these data, storing them for a few weeks, and then deleting them, to protect against thieves.

So everyone is guilty to proven innocent?

That’s how security cameras work too - if the data is deleted in a reasonable timeframe I dont have a problem with it.

I could see a reasonable case being made for collecting these data, storing them for a few weeks, and then deleting them, to protect against thieves.

I know some mall companies record license plate data on a daily basis to make sure the employees are parking in the way-way-way out employee designated parking areas.

How long that data is stored and who else gets to see it is anyone's guess.

Unfortunately, it you're on the mall's property, you have no legal right to not being surveilled by the mall.

What reasonable case do they have to track the data? What reasonable case is there tgat requires storing for two weeks?

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