71–80 of 120 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there anything stopping me from pointing a laser at the lens in response?
If you know that the laser will damage the camera, probably (destruction of property). If you believe it will just prevent recording of anything but the laser light, probably not. This is of course not intended as legal advice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea is that the length and amount of surveillance is invasive. You expect when you walk out of the house a neighbor might see what you’re doing. Hard to call it invasive if that happens a few times a week. But if your neighbors take turns sitting on their porch, watching every move you make - if you can never come and go without them watching - and they’re taking notes and pictures of every visitor, every packag…
"You expect when you walk out of the house a neighbor might see what you’re doing. Hard to call it invasive if that happens a few times a week." I mean, maybe that's the expectation/argument from the 19th century. Cameras have been around a long time and are increasing in popularity among the general population (Ring etc). It might feel invasive, but there's no reasonable expectation of privacy legally .
I don't like it, but there's nothing stopping your neighbor or anyone else from filming your home from a public/street view. Let's not forget that even if a court decides the police need a warrant to film, a third party could do the filming and police could just buy the data legally. Again, not something I like, but that's how it goes. There are very few details in the article. Now I'm curious how they found out abou…
> I don't like it, but there's nothing stopping your neighbor or anyone else from filming your home from a public/street view This is not a natural occurrence, not a law of physics like gravity. It’s the result of large corporations normalizing surveillance. Recall that some Germans rebelled against Google Street View, and the government made them stop putting photos people’s homes on the web. But the cold logic and…
Well yeah, that's how it goes until the law changes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wonder who owns the pole. Most utility poles are owned by the incumbent utility, not by the government. Who owns the utility? In Canada, for example, it's common for the utility companies responsible for electricity transmission and/or distribution to be owned by provincial or municipal governments.
Utilities in the US are private entities with special regulations around them.
At least in Canada, even when a "private" company is involved, there can be significant government ownership. Hydro One in Ontario is publicly-traded, yet the Ontario Government holds nearly a majority of the shares, for example.
I don't like it, but there's nothing stopping your neighbor or anyone else from filming your home from a public/street view. Let's not forget that even if a court decides the police need a warrant to film, a third party could do the filming and police could just buy the data legally. Again, not something I like, but that's how it goes. There are very few details in the article. Now I'm curious how they found out abou…
> police could just buy the data legally. Doesn't this still fall foul of existing surveillance protections, though? The police can't circumvent legislation by just paying a PI to stalk you instead. Doesn't this fall into the bucket of turning the seller into an agent of the state?
Why would they need to? Stalking you doesn't require a warrant. Breaking into your house, for example, would require a warrant, but a PI can't do that any more legally than the police can.
I don't like it, but there's nothing stopping your neighbor or anyone else from filming your home from a public/street view. Let's not forget that even if a court decides the police need a warrant to film, a third party could do the filming and police could just buy the data legally. Again, not something I like, but that's how it goes. There are very few details in the article. Now I'm curious how they found out abou…
> Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the court ruled that the use of thermal imaging devices to monitor heat radiation in or around a person's home, even if conducted from a public vantage point, is unconstitutional without a search warrant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a lawyer or a legislator it's not my responsibility to write law phrasing to your satisfaction. This would be handled the same way other plausibly deniable things like fraud and harassment are handled. By evaluating the context, subpoenaing records and conversations, questioning under oath, looking at the effects and history of actions of the individuals involved.
>write law phrasing to your satisfaction I wasn't trying to be combative, I just thought you had an idea that I hadn't thought of that would satisfy the privacy concerns with the freedom to photograph in public concerns. >By evaluating the context, subpoenaing records and conversations, questioning under oath, looking at the effects and history of actions of the individuals involved. So a lady gets arrested for photo…
Writing good laws is hard sure but you're approaching this having already accepted the framing that the only way to prevent this police overreach is to restrict everyone from doing similar things. We can just prevent the police from doing this. We don't need to write a perfectly generalizable restriction on everyone's ability to take pictures or whatever. The cops aren't the public and should be subject to additional restrictions beyond what the public is subjected to.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder who owns the pole. Most utility poles are owned by the incumbent utility, not by the government. If an ordinary citizen attached a camera to property they did not own and it was, say, pointed at a police officer's home, I think a conviction would be a near guarantee. If an ordinary citizen cannot do it, I don't think police should ordinarily be permitted to do it; there should be a review. Given this lasted…
> an ordinary citizen attached a camera to property they did not own and it was, say, pointed at a police officer's home, I think a conviction would be a near guarantee Conviction for what?
I don't like it, but there's nothing stopping your neighbor or anyone else from filming your home from a public/street view. Let's not forget that even if a court decides the police need a warrant to film, a third party could do the filming and police could just buy the data legally. Again, not something I like, but that's how it goes. There are very few details in the article. Now I'm curious how they found out abou…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>write law phrasing to your satisfaction I wasn't trying to be combative, I just thought you had an idea that I hadn't thought of that would satisfy the privacy concerns with the freedom to photograph in public concerns. >By evaluating the context, subpoenaing records and conversations, questioning under oath, looking at the effects and history of actions of the individuals involved. So a lady gets arrested for photo…
No I'm just trying to avoid that classic HN situation of being talked into making specific assertions outside my expertise and then technical flaws being used to dismiss the broader point I'm making. Writing good laws is hard sure but you're approaching this having already accepted the framing that the only way to prevent this police overreach is to restrict everyone from doing similar things. We can just prevent the…
My position is people should be free to photograph in public anything they can see. That's currently how the law is written. I don't think it's perfect, but I can't think of a better alternative (thus this discussion).
>The cops aren't the public and should be subject to additional restrictions beyond what the public is subjected to.
I agree as an ideal, but in practice there are a lot of barriers.
- They can legally arrest you, even if you didn't break any laws and aren't required to even know the law.
- They aren't legally required to help anybody.
- They have blanket qualified immunity granted by the SCOTUS.
- Each police department and sheriff's department is their own jurisdiction, so any blanket restraint would need to be done at the federal level.
- They have one of, if not the strongest unions in the country.
- They have strong political support that is just now eroding a bit in blue states.
An interesting irony is that the more laws / restrictions we ask the government to put on people, the broader jurisdiction the police have over our everyday lives.
An old example is jaywalking. Since jaywalking became a crime, the police can stop / detain you, legally require you to identify (and arrest / charge you if you refuse) and possibly Terry frisk you just because you walked across the street in a certain way.
Because of this, when people propose making a law to prevent people from doing something not-egregious, like say smoking at the beach, I'm against it. It's not worth the intrusion for me and my kids and my kids' kids, etc.
Anyway, I've gotten way off topic. Thanks for the discussion.