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Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

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Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#391
post #370
post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably selling data to CBP/DEA. I went through a combined military and police checkpoint a bit north of Rio Hondo last August and it was surreal.

Surreal in what way? Edit: thanks for the downvotes? Genuinely curious on GPs experience.

In what way is going through a military/police checkpoint while driving ordinary?

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is not generally an expectation of privacy in public. Things in public can be recorded without consent. Filming a car on a street and giving that video to the government is not the same as me giving private information to a third party, and then them giving it to the government such as Carpenter v United states covers. Edit: Note that this is not an endorsement, rather stating that recent supreme court cases ma…

Private citizens filming in public and police forces setting up arrays of surveillance cameras in public somehow don’t seem equivalent. I’m not a lawyer so I can’t properly articulate what the legal difference is. And if there isn’t one then the law needs change. Clearly the majority of citizens agree with me. Is it legal for US citizens to all put cameras on their cars and set up a network where we can all see where…

> Is it legal for US citizens to all put cameras on their cars and set up a network where we can all see where all police are at any given time?

Sure. There's absolutely nothing illegal about monitoring the location and activity of police (unless you broke some other law to do so, like hacking).

Hell, most of them will simply tell you where they are and what they're doing, as they tend to broadcast over unencrypted radio (which is also not illegal to listen to).

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#393
post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like an argument for anarchism. I am very unimpressed by political philosophies that take arguments to their logical conclusion. What seems to me to have worked is understanding that a government is necessary, that it has the potential to misbehave, and therefore we should carefully design laws and processes to constrain it. I would like to see opponents of mass surveillance do this, which seems more prod…

No, it is an argument that the best way not to abuse something is to not have access to it. If you enshrine a ban of total surveillance on a deep and universal level in a country, it'll be a lot more difficult for a future bad actor state to reinstate it. We need the most extreme legal hurdles that can exist. More importantly, if the technology isn't actually physically installed, it becomes even more of an uphill ba…

The modern legally bound nation state has done much better at guaranteeing rights and protecting freedoms than any other configurations despite the fact that it's constained largely by "pinky promises" (i.e. laws, courts, etc).

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#394
post #370
post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably selling data to CBP/DEA. I went through a combined military and police checkpoint a bit north of Rio Hondo last August and it was surreal.

Surreal in what way? Edit: thanks for the downvotes? Genuinely curious on GPs experience.

Surreal in the way that your constitutional rights are being casually violated?

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#395
post #46

It's pretty clear to be that governments shouldn't be able to 'subcontract' their way out of the limits placed on them via the constitution. Thankfully the supreme court seems to agree here in two ways: 1) Just because a third party (Google in Chatrie case but Flock here) collects the data and the government requests it from them, doesn't mean that that isn't a 'search' which requires a warrant ("obtaining someone's…

The other thing that's going on is that Flock is essentially an always-on "dragnet." A "dragnet" is when you set up police checkpoints everywhere and essentially put entire cities under watch to find a fugitive. This happened in Boston after the bombings. "Dragnets" are illegal except in extreme circumstances (like a bombing). Flock is a "dragnet on demand." You have a digital dragnet in place not just in one city bu…

No. It is not and to claim otherwise is hyperbole. The key difference is police stopping and/or questioning people en masse without reasonable suspicion is in fact illegal unless under extreme circumstances. Simply noting everyone’s license plate is wholly legal, and more importantly for this conversation, is drastically less intrusive and qualitatively different from a so-called dragnet. You don’t get to just conflate the two scenarios to better fit your personal preferences of what is or is not legal.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UK for instance It's one of the most dystopian western countries when it comes to that, not sure I'd use it as an example

How are you defining dystopian exactly? The climate is dystopian, all the rest follows naturally from that.

It's not my opinion...

> Britain rated worst in Europe for protecting privacy

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/dec/31/uk.eu

> 'UK surveillance is worse than 1984' says UN privacy chief

https://www.wired.com/story/uk-digital-surveillance-joseph-c...

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#397
post #46

It's pretty clear to be that governments shouldn't be able to 'subcontract' their way out of the limits placed on them via the constitution. Thankfully the supreme court seems to agree here in two ways: 1) Just because a third party (Google in Chatrie case but Flock here) collects the data and the government requests it from them, doesn't mean that that isn't a 'search' which requires a warrant ("obtaining someone's…

I feel this is assuming that the private ventures will not willingly cooperate and can't be forced to comply other than through warrants.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#398

Perhaps its time that YC mentioned explicitly that if they are going to fund a company which holds specific PII data(i would include precise location history to start with) they would have to guarantee: 1. An erase-me feature if they gained over say some X unique/active users. 2. Disclose to their best legal abilities on warrants served in the countries that allow such disclosure. Allow for strong whistle blower prot…

Why would they do that? Venture capital isn't there to serve people like us or to protect any kind of common interest. There is only one thing they know - money.

Sure, but YC can enforce it if they want to. VC after all is a private body governed by private individuals, they can make moral choices. VCs could even support this by offering terms to offset the costs. I cannot believe that a company cannot be profitable but at the same time not build for at least some better privacy guarantees.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#399
post #139

Tangential but why do articles about Flock never have (YC S17) in the title like articles about other YC companies?

great question, which you will either not receive an answer to, or you will receive a deeply unsatisfying generic response from dang/tomhow.

in either case, it really leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Re: Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

#400

Perhaps its time that YC mentioned explicitly that if they are going to fund a company which holds specific PII data(i would include precise location history to start with) they would have to guarantee: 1. An erase-me feature if they gained over say some X unique/active users. 2. Disclose to their best legal abilities on warrants served in the countries that allow such disclosure. Allow for strong whistle blower prot…

You can’t even do that with your HN account..you think Flock, with its lucrative gov contracts…would ever?

You can email dang and co and they’ll delete your HN account (maybe even remove your posts? Might be making that up?) they just prefer folks not IIRC.
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