111–120 of 150 posts
Some advice about cellphone OPSEC seems appropriate. Protesters, or at least key organizers, need to be running apps to detect and block IMSI catchers. And everyone not using them needs to put their phones in Faraday bags. I don't use smartphones, and so don't know what works best. Searching on "detect IMSI catcher" yields hits for Android, but I see no apps for iOS. AIMSICD looks like a good app. Maybe someone who k…
If you're shutting off the phone. What's the point?
Some advice about cellphone OPSEC seems appropriate. Protesters, or at least key organizers, need to be running apps to detect and block IMSI catchers. And everyone not using them needs to put their phones in Faraday bags. I don't use smartphones, and so don't know what works best. Searching on "detect IMSI catcher" yields hits for Android, but I see no apps for iOS. AIMSICD looks like a good app. Maybe someone who k…
If you're shutting off the phone. What's the point?
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Also an unpopular opinion is that some people (I am not one of them FYI) think mass surveillance of the population is a good thing. It can be hard to understand that position, but there are people who believe mass surveillance, security theater, and the like really are protecting them and that it is all for their own good. As long as sufficient numbers of these people exist there will be not shortage of people who ar…
It a tool like any other. It can be used for good or evil. What you are doing in the middle of a Baltimore street isn't in any way private information. It's a public as you get. Sure, it could be used to perpetrate a Holocaust or something, but so could the 101st airborne. If the government wanted to go all Hitler on us, they already can get google data, facebook data, medical records, essentially everything that is…
Does the US govt ask Google and Apple for data from android and iphones which are in that area.
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Anything the BPD is doing to circumvent warrants is obviously bad and needs to stop. I'm not arguing they should be allowed to do any of that stuff. What I am saying is there's nothing inherently wrong with arial surveillance, to the point where everyone who works for companies offering such services is "evil".
I think the problem a lot of people have is with the "mass" part, not the "surveillance" part, of mass-surveillance.
Flying in public airspace taking video of public locations is just another GoPro ad though. Except, apparently, when it's the police taking the video (though in fairness, the Supreme Court has restricted what police can look at and what sensors police can use, even from public airspace).
But, I've got a good solution: Strap the cameras onto the police officers in the plane and call it "body cameras" and all of a sudden it's 100% kosher progressive again, no?
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Do we really want to tie a noose at the end of all the rope we already hand the authorities? There are tools people with power shouldn't have access to, because people with power do not have a good track record of using them in good faith.
We trust the federal government with the power to, no exaggeration, annihilate the world. If the government were going to use its power for evil, it'd go knocking on google/facebook/visa/amazon/comcast/grocery store/school/medical/whatever database to find its enemy. What do you honestly think is a bigger risk for you? Getting murdered by a criminal or the US government via drone. Cause it's like 40k:2 for the past c…
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Depends on what their gear is. If they're only looking at things an average person can already see, but on a large scale? Eh, can't really argue with that. If it's in the public eye, it ain't private. If they're trying to read the heat coming off of buildings, or laser-micing windows, or otherwise trying to look into areas that are not public, they need to knock it off and get a warrant based on probable cause first.
What about my backyard? What about the roof of my house? My neighbors can't see all of that area due to one reason or another (fences, trees, lack of windows on their house, etc. etc.) As many others have already noted, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
" Among the companies offering this technology are major defense contractors working for the Pentagon and an Ohio company called Persistent Surveillance Systems, which is trying to sell it to local police departments." I know this is an unpopular opinion these days but the people working for these companies should be ashamed. There is little use for this technology, especially on US soil, except mass surveillance of…
I'm torn between the two positions. I really like the libertarian idea that the government's power should be limited and surveillance is scary and intrusive.
On the other hand I think the technologies are really cool. When license plate readers first started coming out I read a bunch of stuff about them and thought they were really fascinating. Same with facial recognition or speech recognition, etc.
I love the sci fi idea that we will eventually have a society with zero crime, besides crimes of passion or insane people. Anytime a crime happens, police could go back and see everything that happened. The utopia in the novel Manna had an extreme version of this. I thought it was really cool and challenged the standard cultural trope that surveillance is evil.
People today are so afraid of crime that they refuse to let their kids go outside (https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/1202/1579/4m/i.dailymail.co.uk/i...). People lock their doors and buy guns and live in fear. You can argue that it's not rational but that's not relevant. I'd really love to see the fear of crime disappear and this is a practical way to achieve that.
It should of course be a local issue. Some cities would have surveillance drones and others wouldn't. People could then vote with their feet to some extent and raise families where they felt the safest, and I think that's a desirable thing.
I think there should be balance. What most people fear is someone constantly watching them or listening to them. I think the cameras should only be reviewed after the fact when there is a crime, and the data deleted when they it's no longer relevant.
But I've never posted about my opinion on this before and I'm not likely to again. I'd just get shouted at and voted down as I've seen happen to others. People don't want to have a rational debate about this. They don't have a reason to be against surveillance, they just feel it's wrong and creepy and intrusive and mistrust the government. Or are scared they might not be able to get away with a crime if they needed to. And I feel all of those things too, which is why I said I'm torn.
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Perhaps, but that's an open question with a different resolution. It would take nothing short of an act of congress, possibly even constitutional amendments to redefine the current legal doctrine surrounding public and private spaces into what you suggest. Me, I find it very hard to get worked up over someone recording what I'm doing in public.
Not at all. The right to privacy, while not spelled out explicitly in the Constitution, is recognized by the Supreme Court and the basis of most modern boundaries on what government can and cannot do with regard to surveillance without a warrant. New technology that makes it possible to observe "public" behavior in ways that were previously impossible is still subject to the right to privacy, and courts may well rule…
The Supreme Court decision you speak of also makes very clear in its ruling that there is, legally speaking, no such thing as a "general right to privacy". It simply doesn't exist in U.S. jurisprudence. There can be a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in many situations, but that's not quite the same thing.
Of course, courts can rule things unconstitutional and break with prior precedent anyways. But until they do police aerial surveillance is not only "not illegal", but it's been to the Supreme Court already and upheld.
> New technology that makes it possible to observe "public" behavior in ways that were previously impossible is still subject to the right to privacy, and courts may well rule it intrusive and unconstitutional.
Airplanes are simply not "new" technology. Nor are helicopters. Nor are cameras, or radio control. I watched helicopter footage of O.J. fleeing in a white Bronco as a child. None of this is "new".
" Among the companies offering this technology are major defense contractors working for the Pentagon and an Ohio company called Persistent Surveillance Systems, which is trying to sell it to local police departments." I know this is an unpopular opinion these days but the people working for these companies should be ashamed. There is little use for this technology, especially on US soil, except mass surveillance of…
There are plenty of people that support mass surveillance, they are just in the minority and unlikely to speak up about it in a place like HN. I'm torn between the two positions. I really like the libertarian idea that the government's power should be limited and surveillance is scary and intrusive. On the other hand I think the technologies are really cool. When license plate readers first started coming out I read…
