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Comment by hoorible | Hacker News Reader

Your trash analogy doesn’t hold up because trash becomes “public” once it’s on the street which isn’t part of your property. “Publicly visible spot on my property” is a meaningless phrase; it’s still my property, and I’m legally (here at least) allowed to raise an objection to the recording of it.

I can’t and wouldn’t object to someone recoding the sidewalk in front of my house. I can, and absolutely will, object to someone recording my yard. You might not see a distinction but there absolutely is one.

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> “Publicly visible spot on my property” is a meaningless phrase

Indeed, your property or not, it's still a "publicly visible spot", and the creep is legally (in the US at least) allowed to be creepy in this way over your objections

> I can, and absolutely will, object to someone recording my yard.

The creep can, and absolutely will, object to your objections, and be allowed to continue (in the US at least).

Privacy requires constant vigilance, in terms of electing lawmakers.

I can't ask the people who drop their kids at the school across the street not to look at my yard, so why would I complain about a camera? Because it's always on and recording? Still not convincing to me. My exterior yard (the part not surrounded by a tall fence) is for everybody to look at. In fact lots of people stop by my house to look at our amazing maple tree and start conversations with us.

Sorry you are not convinced, but looking and recording are different.

If I hear my neighborhood talking - hearsay

If I record my neighbors talking - admissible evidence

I believe they are both considered hearsay (in U.S. law), and both are admissible depending on the conditions

I think main differentiator is that an individual human is unlikely to stand in one place just watching for an extended period of time. It actually was very expensive to do that kind of surveillance not that long ago, which is why it was not deployed without a good reason. Camera, on the other hand, is cheap. Individual creep is preferable to a panopticon.

Exactly. The high cost of human eyeballs trained on a specific target for long periods of time introduces a negative feedback loop which tames the overreach. Cheap, ubiquitous cameras with virtually unlimited storage eliminates that self-regulating mechanism and degrades the trust between members of a society.

None of these things really bother/worry me. This is mainly a threshold argument- a thing that was hard got easier, but didn't fundamentally change what is possible for a dedicated adversary.

How is that not fundamentally different?

1) Human stands there and watches your property. A description of what happened on your property is subject to whether or not people believe this human, and the fallibility of human memory. This human cannot be there 24/7, and must -- at minimum -- break to sleep, acquire food, and use the bathroom. In reality, they'll have many other demands on their time that mean they can't (or won't want to) spend much time watching your property.

2) A connected, always-on recording device that captures what's happening in high definition, 24/7 (assuming it has an IR light; if not, ok, more like 12/7). This becomes an indisputable, permanent record that can be replayed as often as anyone wants, and that most reasonable people would believe, without question, as reflecting what is truly going on.

How are these two things not fundamentally different? This is approaching "definition of fundamental" territory.

Clearly, we have different premises.

The scale of difference between $25/hr for a human and less than $0.01/day (amortized over the lifespan of the camera/service) changes the economics entirely. The circumstances before and after are paradigmatically different.

Would you also be fine with people filming you through your windows? Why not, after all it's visible from a public space with the right angle. And windows are just part of another kind of "fence".

In the end it's private property and that makes it private by default. Nobody can forbid you from looking at it, but imho filming is just as invasive as parking the car there while having greater potential for abuse. Filming has intent that goes farther than just randomly looking around.

I use drapes and shapes to get privacy for my windows. My intent Here is to prevent school shootings and help investigate crimes that occur on my property or my neighbor's property. Definitely not my intent to stare at my neighbors in their private lives and they understand that completely.

How are cameras supposed to prevent school shootings? The best they can do is let you watch cops do nothing as we could see in Texas. Prevention is much more important and much cheaper but that's not done either.

And I don't know why I'd spend money in anticipation of a potential crime in front of my home, donating data to Amazon in the meantime. The police is already tracking phones and using other methods no single camera can match.

>I can, and absolutely will, object to someone recording my yard. You might not see a distinction but there absolutely is one. You certainly can raise an objection but it has no legal weight behind it. Anything that is in public view can be legally filmed. I think there may be some federal prohibitions against filming sensitive government areas though not sure if these have ever been testing in court. Walk around naked in your front yard or in your house in front of an open window you are eligible to be legally (though maybe creepily) filmed.

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