Hacker News Reader

Comment by chiefalchemist | Hacker News Reader

> Things like ring doorbells on the other hand should be cracked down - the number of times I see people in the UK posting pictures of public areas on facebook is shocking.

While I do share your concern, the current rule of thumb - at least in the USA - is that privacy is not expected in public spaces. I can see that since, by definition, that's what makes public public.

View on HN

There is a difference between incidentally public (someone can see you, snap a picture, but only on occasion) and surveilence public (someone can track your location and activity continously in public). If someone does the latter, and I know about it, I can still sue them for harassment, and maybe get a restraining order. Can I get a restraining order against Nest or similar?

I understand that this might not be the law, but I'm interested in if it should be.

Again, I agree and empathize.

But the counter argument would be "Harassed by a doorbell, how so?" and "I have a right to protect my property and my family. My camera allows this to happen."

Unless the legal definition of "in public" changes, the surveillance will continue.

Both arguments are valid though imo.

If you take a photo in town square and I'm in the background no worries, that's fine. If you follow me around taking photos of me in town square then that's harassment - not fine.

If your Nest doorbell watches me walk past your house that's also fine. However if your entire street has Nest then has Amazon identified me as having walked down your entire street? If so, that should also be harassment.

The issue isn't that the photo or video was taken, it's the correlation that happens after the fact.

I mostly agree, but disagree with the "taking a photo of me on the pavement" part. It's actually illegal in Sweden. We have some of the strictest camera regulations I know of, and I'm very pleased with that.

I'm NOT a fan of Teslas sentry mode.

> disagree with the "taking a photo of me on the pavement" part. It's actually illegal in Sweden.

It is? Since how long; when was that law changed?

Fixed installations has been regulated since forever.

But "taking a photo of me on the pavement" doesn't sound like "fixed installations"; it sounds like me as a tourist not being allowed to take a snapshot of a picturesque street just because you happen to be standing on the pavement.

I think I wasn't clear enough that I was referring to the nest camera the parent was talking about.

Ah, yeah, good. Because I've taken quite a few snapshots when I've been out and about, always under the impression that what I was doing was perfectly legal. :-)

My understanding was that correlation after the fact with ai is what also allows you to obfuscate identifiers so its technically anonymized until "extracted and inspected". Completely unrelated- you might dig this satellite tracker visualization :) https://platform.leolabs.space/visualization

In the UK we have guidance about how to use CCTV to protect your property and family

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/domestic-cctv-usi...

For example

"you should make sure that the information recorded is used only for the purpose for which your system was installed (for example it will not be appropriate to share any recordings on social media sites)"

This is of course routinely ignored and unenforced

I most often see Nest recordings posted to local community groups warning against and seeing to track down porch pirates. I recently saw extensive footage of young people breaking into a house to have a party while the owner was out. All of their parents were notified and they'll be doing community service.

I think if you're in public, you should assume you're going to be recorded. I don't think it should be this way, but it is.

I think the inflection point between surveillance and home security is "cloud." The footage should not be accessible to third parties without a warrant, and it should be under the individual's control. Questions of life, limb, and liberty should not be offloaded to unelected, self-interested, profit seeking corporations like Amazon and Google.

> used only for the purpose for which your system was installed

So install it for the purpose of sharing on social media. Problem solved!

(I'm only half joking)

Could be stalking. It is known that employees at cloud services access customer data from time to time. Complete data protection is nearly impossible here.

My understanding is that in Finland only the Government (or an other democratic entity such as the Municipality or the City) can execute surveillance on a public space. For example the bike parking area next to my office is deemed a public space, the office building next to it cannot point its security cameras to that direction. Which is a shame since there is a lot of bike theft and vandalism, but the city doesn't want to install their own cameras.

People are allowed to take photos and videos on a public area, but aren't allowed to leave a recording device there.

Yes, and it shows how US[1] interpretations of the constitution and general lawmaking hasn't really evolved. It's one thing to say, "you're in public, deal with it" when (say) taking a photo of me and publishing it is likely to be time-consuming and local and scope; it is another to be able to follow me all day, publish globally, and for essentially zero cost.

[1] The US is hardly alone in this - they just happen to be the point here.

There are about 5 different Ring and security cameras that point into my private property, and one pointing directly into one of my windows. None of them are my cameras.

Just because you can't expect privacy doesn't mean you can exploit it and record everything.

If you can site a law / legal decision that would help.

I can't imagine any civilized jurisdiction not making that distinction.

You typically have to ask for a permit to surveillance any public space and the difficulty of getting one often ranges from hard to illegal.

Will you also be requiring people to avert their eyes when you are nearby such that they dont mistakenly observe you?

Nothing I wrote even hints at that, so obviously no.

But in the UK it's not allowed, however nor is that "not allowed" enforced.

Alas US cultural hegemony pushes strongly the the rest of the world, especially the western anglosphere

Sure, but perhaps this could be seen to come under the purview of stalking legislation, or a similar principle?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com