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Comment by leetcrew | Hacker News Reader

your expectation of privacy is sort of inconsistent here. if you don't have an expectation of privacy when your out in the world, and it's fair game for people to observe you traveling to your friend's house, how can you expect that your presence is private?

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> it's fair game for people to observe you traveling to your friend's house

This is true, but if you follow someone consistently enough then it is considered a crime--stalking.

Exemptions for special cases (PIs, bail bondsmen) were put in place with the expectation that those groups would not abuse the system, being "professionals." And of course the police have been allowed to track people under investigation. But private individuals and businesses do not have the right to stalk people.

It's time to put to rest this notion that occasional incidental observation of other people has anything in common with the persistent surveillance enabled by modern tech. One is expected and is fairly low risk, the other is ripe for abuse.

My problem is the scale of the issue, at least when it comes to phones. If I am at my friens the people involved are apt to forget almost everything in a few days. The cellphone tracking system, in theory, will studiously remember exactly where you are till the end of time by a company wit history of give or selling said data to the government in secret.

Well, they have to give your location information to the government. I think it's a bit naive to expect a company to keep your data secret from the Feds. They're just as subject to the law as we are.

If we use electronic devices at all, we're just best advised to operate as if the government has access to anything we say, write, or record on them. That includes our locations. If you're going to see your weed man, or your mistress, you probably want to leave it at home. And no, don't bother buying a "burner" because they can track that too.

All that said, companies should try to keep your location information secret from anyone other than the government. One of the issues right now is that they don't. They make good money using location to target ads for instance.

> Well, they have to give your location information to the government.

It's not like this requirement was an inevitable outcome of governments. We can change laws.

This is why I included the bit about direct observation. Before dragnet surveillance, you would need to travel near someone who had an active interest in you specifically in order for your location to be marked down. With a dragnet surveillance system every movement you make can be used to unmask your whereabouts after the fact, regardless of whether anyone observed it at the time.

I think we agree then. the classic distinction between public and private space is almost a red herring in this argument. the focus should be on how long are you allowed to store information, or maybe even how widely and indiscriminately are you allowed to collect it in the first place.

My presence in private is a protected right in the United States. Being able to track which office I go into in a complex, tracking which room in a house I am in, etc. These types of things require a warrant based on reasonable suspicion and this has been ruled on numerous times. If you're moving from place to place in public view, sure, that's allowed. The police can also follow you and watch you enter a building, but what is the functional difference between preventing access to my house to watch me move from room to room and using cell phone data to track me. My carrier is someone I contract with. I pay them. They should be working in my favor to the fullest extent of the law. While I sympathize with overburdened police forces and tough crimes there's a reason we have these protections in place, to prevent a police state where the police are more beholden to the state than the public it is expected to be serving.

I can't speak to whether that is inconsistent or not, but in support of HN User'village-idiot', I think it'd be a pretty big bummer for people to find out that any tryst they have with a lover is not private, but public in nature.

Taking your phone or your DNA to any such tryst makes it so apparently.

What's worse, there will likely be a lot of scope creep. It's showing up in criminal court. It's showing up in civil court cases. It's definitely going to be showing up in family court. Etc etc etc.

> I can't speak to whether that is inconsistent or not, but in support of HN User'village-idiot', I think it'd be a pretty big bummer for people to find out that any tryst they have with a lover is not private, but public in nature.

it's a bummer for sure, but it's been this way for a while. it's perfectly legal for your wife to hire a PI to follow you around. the police also don't need a warrant to observe your movements.

the part that's new is that all this surveillance can be done passively without any particular reason to suspect you.

imo, the distinction between public and private spaces is pretty reasonable for targeted investigations and observation by fellow citizens. in my view, the real problem is how long information should be stored, especially when collected passively.

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