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I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

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Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#101

Post by tadfisher »

snowwrestler wrote: post #56
kstrauser wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you put up a Ring camera on a stand in front of your house for the specific purpose of selling that I drove past at this specific timestamp? If so, yes. The CCPA[0] gives me explicit legal rights: * The right to know about the personal information a business collects about them and how it is used and shared; * The right to delete personal information collected from them (with some exceptions); * The right to opt-…

“Personal information” has a legal definition and photos of you in a public street might not satisfy it, regardless of the photographer’s intent.

Well, it matters if the photographer is the government (or contracted by the government, or subpoenaed by the government): see Chatrie v. United States [0]. The Fourth Amendment exists, and it remains to be tested whether querying massive surveillance networks is a "reasonable" search.

[0]: https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/chatrie-v-united...

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#102

Post by danudey »

uoaei wrote: post #81
kstrauser wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it'd be challenging to rule that a license plate number is not personally identifiable information, when the same regulations often state that an IP address is.

"Anyone could have been driving my car, you can't positively identify me in the driver's seat with the evidence you have submitted" is routinely used to toss out cases involving traffic violations. It's not necessarily common but it does happen. By this logic a license plate does not personally identify the person driving, only the person the car is registered to.

Yet the same is true of IP addresses. You (typically) cannot know for certain whether traffic from an IP address was originated by a specific person and yet it's typically considered PII because it can be used in conjunction with other information to identify you.

Even your full legal name and birth date cannot be guaranteed to refer only to you specifically (as there could be someone else with an identical name and birth date), but it's obviously still PII because it helps narrow the field immensely if you can combine it with other information - for example, your IP address.

So yeah, "anyone could have been driving my car", but if you also know that the car drove from your home to your work then that narrows down the list of likely individuals immensely.

Conversely, if your license plate was spotted parked near an anti-ICE rally, then they can be pretty confident that you or someone you know was near an anti-ICE rally, which means they can harass you about it, follow you around, shoot you in the street, etc.

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#103

Post by [deleted] »

carefree-bob wrote: post #8
kstrauser wrote: post #2

I wrote this. I had/have absolutely no expectation that Flock would comply with my request, but figured I should try anyway For Science. Their reply rubbed me wrong, though. They seem to claim that there are no restrictions on their collection and processing of PII because other people pay them for it. They say: > Flock Safety’s customers own the data and make all decisions around how such data is used and shared. wh…

They were saying "don't write to us, talk to the people who own the cameras and ask them to delete the data". A company that manufactures video cameras is not the one to talk to when someone records you, talk to the person who recorded you. But a reasonable person would say -- the data is stored on Flock servers, not with the camera owners. And Flock would say, just because we sell data storage functionality to camer…

[deleted]

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#104

Post by ezfe »

_moof wrote: post #90

They seem to be implying that because they are a "service provider," they aren't responsible for complying with CCPA rules even though they are the ones with the data. Does this hold water? I'm reading the CCPA rules now but if anyone knows, it would save me some tedious research.

I guess if one likens it to AWS S3 holding your data on behalf of Apple it makes sense

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#105

Post by patrickmay »

necovek wrote: post #87
snowwrestler wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Personal information” has a legal definition and photos of you in a public street might not satisfy it, regardless of the photographer’s intent.

Personal information usually does include photos of someone in public without their consent: exceptions usually hold for taking photos of people where it is in the public interest to be able to show them or impractical to get consent. This covers large gatherings and celebrities, but a portrait photo of a stranger might put you on the wrong side of the law. Obviously, the idea is to not disallow having someone take a…

> Personal information usually does include photos of someone in public without their consent

This is not the case in the United States. There is no presumption of privacy in public. In fact, there is a whole genre known as "street photography" that involves taking pictures in public without explicit consent of the subjects.

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#106

Post by _moof »

kube-system wrote: post #49

I don't think they need your permission to use ALPR on your publicly displayed license plate. > (2) (A) “Personal information” does not include publicly available information [...] > (B) (i) For purposes of this paragraph, “publicly available” means any of the following: > (I) Information that is lawfully made available from federal, state, or local government records. > (II) Information that a business has a reasona…

The information being collected isn't your license plate, it's your location. (Still might not be personal information.)

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#107

Post by tomwheeler »

uoaei wrote: post #81
kstrauser wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it'd be challenging to rule that a license plate number is not personally identifiable information, when the same regulations often state that an IP address is.

"Anyone could have been driving my car, you can't positively identify me in the driver's seat with the evidence you have submitted" is routinely used to toss out cases involving traffic violations. It's not necessarily common but it does happen. By this logic a license plate does not personally identify the person driving, only the person the car is registered to.

The standard of proving someone's guilt in a crime or civil infraction is higher than the one for inferring that someone could plausibly be the person you want. This is the basis of parallel construction, wherein a government agency plays a game of "pin a crime on the suspect."

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#108

Post by snowwrestler »

necovek wrote: post #87
snowwrestler wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Personal information” has a legal definition and photos of you in a public street might not satisfy it, regardless of the photographer’s intent.

Personal information usually does include photos of someone in public without their consent: exceptions usually hold for taking photos of people where it is in the public interest to be able to show them or impractical to get consent. This covers large gatherings and celebrities, but a portrait photo of a stranger might put you on the wrong side of the law. Obviously, the idea is to not disallow having someone take a…

You’re getting mixed up about commercial use and personal information.

Re: I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program

#110

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #38
yabutlivnWoods wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example is apples and oranges. Flock maintains private infrastructure that stores data. If the DSLR uploaded them to Rent-A-Center owned/leased servers it would in fact require Rent-A-Center to take the necessary steps. As Rent-A-Center would be the only group with proper access to data storage they would have inserted themselves into the chain of custody, and thereby have such obligation to ensure others data i…

AWS also maintains private infrastructure that stores data. Go write them asking to purge data pertaining to you from S3 and see how that goes.

[deleted]
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