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Comment by oldpersonintx | Hacker News Reader

that ship sailed with Google Streetview, and now sat imagery

look up "privacy" in the Constitution...that's right, you don't have an explicitly spelled out right to privacy in the US (you should though, and we should fix that)

in the US, if you want privacy, go inside and close the blinds...sad but this is pretty much what it has come to

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Your right to privacy is your security against unreasonable search and seizure. Fourth amendment. No wonder it's so easy for the government to infringe our rights - we are not taught we have them!

imho that is a limit on Government power, that particular amendment doesn't clearly speak to an inalienable privacy right for an individual (which requires an entirely new definition in the modern era)

A personal right to privacy and limitations on government actions/inquisitions are different.

For instance, if someone wants to start filming me and following me in public then there's nothing I can do unless they city or state maintains some kind of statute against it (and some do.) A government privacy law would not defend you against that. Even uploading my likeness to YouTube and showing that video to thousands or millions of people is legal. A personal right to privacy would require releases for that kind of content to be made standard. Our current laws hinge heavily on anything in public being public domain which is simultaneously good and problematic.

A right to privacy has to be defined inclusive of "what," and "to whom?" Your right to privacy at an alcoholics anonymous meeting wouldn't extend to other present members for example but it reasonably could extend to nonmembers.

Our right to be secure in our papers and persons was interpreted as including our mail, and our mail (in present form) is being "opened" by the government today. That means we have a right that could be called a right to privacy and is clearly being infringed. I can wish wisdom for the people tasked with determining the exact nature of the rights we have but some current events are beyond the degrees of freedom in that discussion given some precedents as old as our country itself.

That's narrower than a right to "privacy" as most people would understand it.

> look up "privacy" in the Constitution...that's right, you don't have an explicitly spelled out right to privacy in the US

You don't have explicit rights to most things in the US. The Constitution is an explicit grant of powers to the government (reserving anything else to the people), not an explicit grant of rights to the people (letting the government do anything not prohibited).

I think it is reasonable to say that most of the Bill Of Rights is exactly that in both strict reading and principle - rights bequeathed to individuals directly

No, because of the Ninth Amendment. The Bill of Rights is quite explicit that it is not an exhaustive list of rights.

GP didn't say it was an exhaustive list.

You claimed "the Constitution is an explicit grant of powers to the government (reserving anything else to the people), not an explicit grant of rights to the people", to which they responded that a lot of the Bill of Rights is an explicit protection of specific rights to people (such as in the First and Fourth Amendments [among others]; what rights are being granted the government in those amendments?)

You have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in your back yard. Not in the street.

Presumably that's the aspect that needs fixing.

Not anymore with police drone and helicopter surveillance.

The "reasonable expectation of privacy" is referring to legal arguments which are made about individual privacy in public spaces. I don't study these things so I may simply be naive but I don't think this argument has been made in the context of a drone camera seeing someone commit a crime in their own backyard.

Wrong. As someone else said, the fact that the police could observe you masturbating in your back yard or plotting a crime, for instance, doesn't mean that they could prosecute you for it. Because you have the aforementioned expectation.

For the "plotting" thing they'd need a warrant.

> under the Fourth Amendment, aerial surveillance of an individual’s property does not inherently constitute a search for which law enforcement must obtain a warrant.

> What these cases, among others, underscore is that the aerial surveillance doctrine only provides courts with a blueprint–not a clear, unambiguous pathway–to reach a judgment in Fourth Amendment cases.

> [16 states] have passed laws requiring that law enforcement obtain a search warrant before using drones for surveillance purposes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_surveillance_doctrine

It's not cut-and-dry, depends on the courts whim and your state.

So you may have privacy rights, or not. SCOTUS to rule someday.

The expectation of privacy is changing with technology, and the police are actively pushing these boundaries. For instance, see: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/new-york-police-drones-m...

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