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The implication of license plates changed from individual tracking (recording the plate during a crime) to mass tracking (recording all plates all the time). That's very different.

Also, misusing a gun is different than misusing information.

When one is in public, out of eyesight of any non-friendlies, one does indeed expect privacy.

When one is moving across several disparate geographical locations, there is indeed an expectation of privacy.

The simple "hurf durf you're in public ergo no privacy ever" argument is horseshit, to put it bluntly.

Not really. Where are these exceptions above you mention defined in the law?

As one example, you are not legally allowed to record a conversation to which you are not a party, and in some states, you need all participants' consent.

But driving down the street and having your unique identifier on the back of your captured via camera isn't against the law.

Perhaps not yet, but it should be illegal to collect and record license plate data en masse. Traffic monitoring for DOT optimization purposes can be done without uniquely identifying vehicles. Individual license plates can be compared against a wanted and stolen list without storing them. Witnesses of a crime can write down individual license plate numbers. But wide-scale recording of innocent individuals' historical movements via license plate numbers (and, for that matter, cell phone towers) ought to be illegal the same way wiretapping is illegal.

You keep saying "should" and "should not" but you're not explaining why.

I have a right to record when I see you. Everyone has that right. If you're free to act, I'm free to record that act, assuming you've acted in public.

Also, what's "horseshit" about "you don't have privacy when you act in public"? I'm not recording your conversations as you're in public, only what you do. Why is that horseshit?

> Why is that horseshit?

Because historically (and also legally) the bounds between what is private and public have been defined by what was plausible at the time, not by what was hypothetically possible.

We know live in a world were what used to a be a hypothetical dream (or science fiction novel) has now become the mundane. The law can either adapt (via judicial rulings), be changed by voters or become an absurd anachronism that's good for nothing but justifying invasive surveillance.

History and legality are not relevant morally.

It's morally wrong to try and stop me from automatically recording the license plates of the people who drive by my house.

But you recording by your house isn't that interesting.

It is more complicated when you start talking about whether you should sell derivations of those recordings or someone aggregating the recordings made by many people.

It's not much more complicated. If I own properties throughout the city, and at each of those properties I record every license plate that drives by, I'm well within my rights to not only do that, but to aggregate that data and supply it to others if they ask.

It's the exact same thing as CCTV, fundamentally. How can you construct an argument that prevents me from doing this without preventing many things we already are okay with?

Legally, probably. Your final question sets a bad standard, present day societal approval is only weak evidence (that is, lots of heinous shit has been normative in various historical periods).

There is also the problem where you are talking about morality as if it is clear cut and all settled.

Anyway, I'm pretty well in favor of trying to find a meaningful definition of a space that exists between public and private, where shared space activities are not just a free for all. Mostly, because I think I would/will be more comfortable in shared spaces if I can expect that other people will mostly have some respect for my wish to not be followed around with technology.

(I would argue this space exists, it's plenty easy to irritate someone by 'getting in their face' in public. This is them expressing strident disapproval of your behavior...)

What is that argument, specifically? So far all I've heard is "this is wrong", not "this is wrong because of x".

The only point anyone's been able to make is that it could possibly be abused, but frankly, everything the government can do can be abused. You'll need more than "it could be abused" to argue against it.

I'm arguing that it makes me uncomfortable and that this discomfort will be widely shared. Go ahead and disagree that morality is something different than that if you want. You are also welcome to think that is weak sauce (but then go ahead and make a habit of making strangers uncomfortable in public and see how that serves you).

I hope you realize this isn't a rational argument.

Go ahead and lay out the one true rational argument for morality then (you brought up morality way up thread there...).

Recording and documenting where you go in no way hinders or interferes with your freedom of action, therefore I retain my right to freedom of action in doing so.

I don't have a right to go into a place where you have privacy. If you come out of a private place, or act in a way that is public, I have every right in the world to track you.

It's also morally wrong to combine a bunch of said recordings to virtually stalk someone.

Why?

For the same reason it's morally wrong to stop you from making the recordings in the first place.

And what reason is that?

Do you not have a reason?

Instead of being pithy, can you hold an actual conversation?

FWIW, it is legal to record wireless transmissions like cellphone calls. It is illegal to pass copies of those recordings on to other people. At least in the USA.

Oh sure, but I can't follow your around whenever you leave your house, and record everything you do. There has to be a line, and we need to decide what is crossing it.

Personally, I have not trouble tracking every car.

Privacy is the difference between a city and a village. Cities are big enough that you don't know everyone you see and remember everything they do, and that lets eccentrics exist. Anonymity should be a sacrament.

Until recent technology, mass surveillance and tracking wasn't possible. It hasn't been an issue until recently. You can't just say that we've always been ok with a lack of privacy in public, because those laws and customs came about long before this was around.

And yes abuse is a perfectly valid reason to ban something. Dangerous things that are allowed are because the amount of abuse is thought to be less than the amount of benefit. Is that true for surveillance? I honestly don't know.

Abuse? Yes. potential abuse is not, however.

so I don't imagine you would have any problem giving me a nuclear weapon. after all it's only a problem after I use it right?

Yes, because recording license plates is even remotely comparable to a genocide machine.

When talking about the subject of abuse of course it is. You yourself made an analogy to guns for crying out loud.

No, it's not. A nuclear weapon is a special case. Guns are not, as it's already accepted that many people can own them despite their risk levels.

"It could be abused" is not a valid reason not to do something, because everything is abused. It's human nature to abuse power. "The consequences of inevitable abuse are too severe to risk." is a better argument. What are the consequences of the abuse of this information? What, of these consequences, are possible only by the abuse of this information? What can go wrong when this system gets abused?

Those are the relevant questions, and what we should be discussing, not quietly yelping, "my privacy" as we're each drug out of our beds into the night.

So are you arguing that this won't be abused? That seems extreme. There is a large probability that government databases will eventually be hacked, that the people using them will do a look-up for personal reasons, that police will use it excessively on some case, or use it to enforce bad laws, etc.

You can say the benefit of it makes it worth it, but I don't see how you can believe these things won't happen at all.

I'm arguing that everything gets abused, and I'm not sure what is special about this that would make it additionally prone to abuse, more-so than any of the other tools the government has at its disposal.