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Comment by ianterrell | Hacker News Reader

There is a significant difference between the expectation of privacy as a platonic ideal and the real life expectation of privacy.

For the former, you're of course right: not much has changed! The local police could have posted someone on every street corner to record every license plate that passed -- probably multiple people to account for traffic!

That's no different than cameras, in theory. You have no less privacy with cameras! But in practice, the police didn't do that (to that scale).

So, given that my expectations of privacy are not about logical possibilities, but rather about actual realities, they certainly have changed.

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The point is: just because it is easier doesn't mean the rules have changed. It is still and always has been legal for someone to track you driving around town, be that by paper and pen, Polaroid, or streetcorner mounted camera with wifi.

That actually isn't the point. No one is saying it's illegal. They're saying it's creepy that the government has a database of your physical whereabouts that they can store and search through for all time.

Of course, the "rules" have indeed changed. It's pedantic to the point of ignorance to only consider laws and reject the context in which those laws were made (pre-wifi-enabled-streetcorner-cameras). The words on paper might not change, but a rule effectively changes when the environment changes around it. Consider also: every other legal issue that intersects with technology.

I guess I see it the other way, in that just because a computer can calculate where you were last Friday "quickly" in seconds, vs. a group of cops comparing a bunch of notes "slowly" doesn't change anything. It was still possible then to track you as easily as it is now given the right amount of manpower or attention.

> It was still possible then to track you as easily as it is now given the right amount of manpower or attention.

You realize that you contradict yourself in the same sentence? That's the kind of thing I tell people who ask me "Is so-and-so (technically very hard) possible?": "Most things are possible with enough time and money".

The fact is, technology makes previously impossible things possible, and previously difficult things easier. The law should absolutely account for that.

This argument came up in the GPS tracker Supreme Court case.

The Supreme Court's decision effectively said that having to use people to tail suspects or whoever put a brake on the government. The GPS trackers removed that restriction. They proceeded to rule GPS trackers without a warrant as unconstitutional.

That is not what the GPS tracker case said. Scalia wrote the majority opinion of the court, and that opinion was based on the physical intrusion necessary to install the GPS tracker. Physical intrusion into a protected space (your car is one of your "effects") has always been a search requiring a warrant.

See: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf.

This is actually a whole different issue vs. driving under an intersection stationary camera that snaps your picture as you drive by.

So why not make it illegal to record the location of a license plate, unless related to a specific traffic stop or target of a specific criminal investigation?

ANPR is an excellent system for finding stolen cars, fugitives, etc and responding to the hits immediately. The issue is archiving the data. So don't ban ANPR, ban the retention of license plate geolocation data without suspicion.

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