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Comment by aeturnum | Hacker News Reader

I think we have a mass re-assessment coming for how we think about data collected in public spaces. The realities of mass surveillance and mass data correlation come to very different outcomes than they did when we established our current rules about what is allowed in public spaces.

I don't really know what a better system looks like - but I suspect it has to do with the step where the info is provided to a third party. We can all exist in public and we can all take in whatever is happening in public - but it's not clear that passing that observation on to a third party who wasn't in public is an important freedom. Obviously this cuts both ways and we need to think carefully about preserving citizens rights to observe and report on the behavior of authorities (though also you could argue that reporting on people doing their jobs in the public space is different than reporting on private citizens).

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> [I]t's not clear that passing that observation on to a third party who wasn't in public is an important freedom.

It's not hard to imagine a restriction on reporting one's observations failing any number of First Amendment challenges.

> we can all take in whatever is happening in public

People have the right to take in what is in public, but maybe cameras should not?

This could apply to everyone in public spaces. No video, audio or surveillance without obtaining permission. Better blur anything you share, or you might get busted. The least we could do is restrict corporations from possessing such data.

Similar to what Germany does with doorbell cameras, making it illegal to film anything outside of your property, like a public sidewalk or the neighbors house. It is my understanding that people there will confront someone taking pictures of them without their consent.

    > People have the right to take in what is in public

You write this as if it is a fundamental human right. I disagree. I could imagine this could be treated differently in different cultures. As an example, Google Maps has heavily censored their Street View in Germany to scrub any personal info (including faces). Another common issue that is handled very differently in different cultures: How to control video recording in public places.

>You write this as if it is a fundamental human right. I disagree.

It's more common sense than any real sense of law. If something is a public space, how do you stop people from "taking it in"?

Recording is a different matter, but people existing is what comprises the "public".

> how do you stop people from "taking it in"

Please take a moment to draw for us detailed faces of all the people you've "taken in" today while you were outside. Use a sketch artist if you need to. Now compare those results with what you'd have if you did the same with a photocamera. And for good measure, add in the amount of effort it took you to recall, and the effort it will take you to describe to every reader on HN who you saw today.

Do you really not see any difference between the human process and what a digital camera can do?

I think we're agreeing but our frequencies are mixed. I was just saying "you can't stop people from using their eyes in public".photography and recording laws are very different.

for more context, the chain started with this:

>People have the right to take in what is in public, but maybe cameras should not?

and then the direct reply disagreed with this notion. I just wanted to distinguish between "taking in" and cameras, because it appears that user made a similar mistake.

> Google Maps has heavily censored their Street View in Germany to scrub any personal info

I remember when this first launched in the UK, automated face-scrubbing was in place. It was about 90% accurate on scrubbing faces from pictures. One of its best screwups was showing people's faces as they were standing outside a branch of KFC but blurring out the Colonel.

I dunno - I think there are uses of surveillance in pursuit of enforcing laws that I don't think are harmful. Like...maybe you can record the public and pass it on to the police when there's a specific request for a time and place that a crime was allegedly committed? Like - if an organization has a legitimate interest in what happened there you can pass on your recording. But you can't just sell it to some random data broker, because they don't have a specific reason to want a recording of that place at that time.

My jaded AF crystal ball called history says that these things never change until the petite-bourgeoise (I'm no Marx fan, but I think he did a good job with that part of his social class classification system) are seriously harmed by it. The rulers don't care. The poor have real problems. This sorts of crap happens or doesn't happen at the behest of the materially comfortable people in the middle. And it seems like they never learn except the hard way.

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