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Comment by etchalon | Hacker News Reader

At no point did I say it could de-anonymize ballots.

You claimed ballots provided the government with the information they needed to know who voted.

I pointed that is untrue. Ballots explicitly do not.

The fact you posted that tells you know have a Google level understanding of the law in the US, and the fact you posted an article about private citizens using public data as proof of the legality of government-operated mass surveillance data tells me you're a deeply unserious person who should probably read Robert's writing in the majority opinion in Carpenter.

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The 9th circuit upheld the use of automated license plate readers in US vs. Yang. The defense attempted to use Carpenter to argue against the legality of ALPR data, and failed: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca7/21...

I really appreciate the irony of you alleging a "Google level understanding" on my part, when your own argument was tried in a court of appeals and failed.

If you're going to Google a rebuttal to sound smart, please read the opinion before you do.

The Ninth Circuit in US v Yang specifically did not rule on the applicability of Carpenter or whether ALPR's GPS database was sufficiently similar.

It ruled Yang lacked standing to sue on those grounds because you don't have any expectation of privacy in a rental car after you've turned it in.

It ... has absolutely nothing to do with anything.

I helpfully pointed out the actual case you should cite in a different comment.

Try Googling that one.

But crucially, the police used the ALPR data without a warrant. Regardless of the rental car, the police did use ALPR data without a warrant and the court did allow that to be used in court.

It's still a court that came down in favor of warrantless use of ALPR data, even if the situation around the overdue rental car might limit it's application more broadly.

... the entire point of the decision was whether a person has an expectation of privacy in a rental car outside of the rental period.

The court didn't come down in favor of warrantless use of ALPR data. It said that the defendant did not have standing to challenge the use of ALPR data, warrant or not, because said person had no expectation of privacy in a vehicle they had no legal claim to during the period the data covered.

FFS, the court, in the opinion, which you linked to prove you're smart, quoted, verbatim:

"We do not address the potential Fourth Amendment privacy interests that may be implicated by the warrantless use of this ALPR technology because we conclude that Yang does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the historical location data of the Yukon under the facts of this case."

You are deeply dishonest and exhausting.

As I wrote in my comment the court did add a caveat that could limit how broadly this precedence gets applied. But at the end of the day:

1) The police did use ALPR data without a warrant.

2) The court upheld the use of ALPR data without a warrant in this case.

How widely this will get applied remains to be seen.

The court did not say that a warrant would be required had Yang not been in a rental car, which is what people seem to be implying.

... There is nothing waiting to be seen.

The court ruled, as hundreds of cases have been ruled before, that Fourth Amendment protections only apply if there is an expectation of privacy. Its opinion made clear that they were ignoring whether warrantless use of APLR data is a Fourth Amendment issue because you can't have a Fourth Amendment issue if there is no expectation of privacy and there can be no expectation of privacy in Yang's specific situation.

It didn't uphold the use of the data. It said it didn't need to address the use of the data, because it was a moot point.

This is like arguing with someone that a court didn't say Dragons couldn't be charged with a crime because the court only said Dragons aren't real.

Please stop doubling down.

Holy shit, I just realize you linked the wrong US vs Yang case.

You googled, someone mentioned US v Yang, and you found a Seventh Court decision about a different case altogether, that had nothing to do with ALPR data or Carpenter, and linked it. Without reading the link.

I knew the case so I didn't need to read the link to know you were wrong about it. Didn't bother to click it.

That is ... absolutely hilarious.

I link the correct case here, in an earlier comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636421 .

And you were evidently able to find the correct case regardless.

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