Comment by websiteapi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by websiteapi | Hacker News Reader

so even if you don't have your face scanned on the register, unless you're paying cash they'd still know who you are right? don't most people have passports? real ID is also a thing. if you're concerned about a hostile government wearing a mask at a grocery store isn't going to do anything sadly. not even counting things like gait analysis, security cameras or tracking your phone

Katz v. United States is an interesting case if you're interested (tldr one thing the case implied is that if your actions are freely observable by others of the public there's no expectation of privacy).

personally I think the only option these days is to push for very short retention policies governed by law such that use of information is inadmissible in a criminal situation (e.g. say a 1 week retention, they can't go scrubbing footage from months back to convict, wouldn't be allowed during discovery), and making it harder or illegal to share with other non-government entities. stopping collection I think is a ship that's sailed imo. it's pretty unlikely public or private surveillance (for supermarket like stores) will ever be made illegal. in fact I can't think of a country where it is.

- as a side note, suggesting to switch to Whole Foods is hilarious. Whole Foods is owned by Amazon, and you can look for yourself all the tracking they do

https://www.reuters.com/legal/lawsuit-accuses-amazon-secretl...

> law such that use of information is inadmissible in a criminal situation (e.g. say a 1 week retention, they can't go scrubbing footage from months back to convict,

Or, amazing life hack, don’t do crimes, on video or otherwise.

Not saying there are no privacy concerns, but I WANT this used in court against criminals

I don't disagree, but I don't think private companies should be able to both keep videos indefinitely and for those videos to be accessible to the government for arbitrary goals.

Do you agree that all current laws are just and correct, and are you confident that nobody will ever come into power who wants to make illegal something you believe is just and right to do?

I think this is a fair framing. I'll say this: In the US at least (I don't know enough about other laws) I think our society would be way better off if all the current criminal laws were enforced accurately, than it is now where many criminal laws are enforced only a small fraction of the time. And it would be even worse in my opinion if the laws were enforced even less than they are now.

Keep in mind I said criminal law. Yes, I drive over 55MPH. But even these non-criminal law things would be fixed in a week if the 99% of Americans who "speed" were ticketed for it by speed cameras every day, because the politicians who are empowered to make those laws rational would feel immense pressure.

I realize that my feelings for this should and would change if we passed much worse laws. But that's an argument for participating in the process and reforming government. "Let's let most crimes go unpunished" (not saying you're saying this) is a poor solution for the problem of "We're letting corrupt and evil people shape the law."

In response to your last question, it's a good litmus test for whether you believe democracy is okay. Yes, if the majority of my neighbors actually voted on and supported a law I disagree with, and it doesn't violate the Constitution, then I ought to abide by it, or move to a different state. My feelings don't override those of the majority. The Constitution is supposed to be the backstop against horrible laws like "All $RACE must report to prison immediately or be shot." There is, I think, another school of thought that disagrees with me, and thinks that if the voters enact a policy they don't like, then it's the voters who are wrong, and we should neither abide by it, nor try to convince those voters to repeal it, but instead just protest and assert one's opinion as fact. That seems anti-democracy to me. It's more of "me-ocracy."

I do pay cash. I don't have a passport. You can opt out of Real ID.

Anyways, the solution, as always, is noise. They leave their data pipelines open and assume all the data is mostly clean. There needs to be a massive technological development for the population to just clog those channels with so much noise they become effectively useless.

DDoS of the surveillance state.

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