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Comment by EvanAnderson | Hacker News Reader

I have similar, albeit probably more radical, views.

All dragnet surveillance done by law enforcement or given to law enforcement by private entities should be public. (Targeted surveillance by law enforcement is a different thing.)

We should all be able to "profit" from this data collected about us. There are likely a ton of interesting applications that could come from this data.

I would much rather independently run a "track my stalker" application myself versus relying on law enforcement (who have no duty to protect the public in the US, per SCOTUS) to "protect" me, for example.

It might be that such a panopticon would be unpalatable to political leaders and, ideally, we'd see some action to tamp down the use of dragnet surveillance (and maybe even make it illegal).

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You may want to check out David Brin's work, he covers the implications of this idea extensively in The Transparent Society: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

I found it really interesting he frames privacy, surveillance, and power through the lens of information asymmetries.

> All dragnet surveillance done by law enforcement or given to law enforcement by private entities should be public

You can FOIA the cameras outside your local police station today, if you like. Private company data like Flock's is the new grey area.

It's doesn't seem like much of a grey area to me. Presumably Flock serves the useful function of satisfying the third-party doctrine, making the surveillance they gather immune from 4th amendment protection (since I "willingly shared" my location with them by passing one of their cameras). If law enforcement has access to that data without a warrant it's de facto public to me.

FOIA isn't the same thing as having the data at my fingertips like LE does. I think the public deserves the same access LE has. If they can run ad hoc searches so should the public.

Personally I'd rather see all dragnet surveillance just go away.

> law enforcement has access to it without a warrant it's de facto public

I think the public would be entitled to the specific data that was purchased or accessed by the government, but absolutely not the entire corpus of broadly available data. What if law enforcement were required to "pay per search" a la PACER or journal subscriptions?

> What if law enforcement were required to "pay per search" a la PACER or journal subscriptions?

My immediate reaction is that it changes the nature of the surveillance enough to require further reflection. It would put a time-bounded window on the ability of law enforcement to abuse the data (albeit assuming the ALPR companies actually removing data per their stated policies).

I appreciate your comment, for sure. I'll have to ruminate on it and see how it meshes with my more-strongly-held-than-I'd-like reactionary (and probably not well thought out) beliefs. >smile<

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