Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmitrygr | Hacker News Reader

When laws do not give you privacy, paintball guns will (see speed cameras in Chicago for examples of how citizenry will _rightly_ deal with this)

View on HN

Why do you expect privacy on public roads?

I think the issue is that if you are doing nothing wrong, why do they need to track your license plate and know when you come and go?

Because I contributed for these roads.

Since the OP of this thread is new, they're probably trolling us, but giving benefit of the doubt for a moment, you have no right to privacy on public roads. Whether you paid for them or not is irrelevant. You could make that argument for state action, but not private. Just because you paid your taxes for that road doesn't stop me from recording your license plate, description, time and date of every time I've seen your car, the race, gender, etc. of your passengers, and posting that to the internet.

In the US. In other countries, they have different norms. Therefore, it's debatable.

In my country it's illegal since communism was overthrown. I'm not discussing the current legal status though. People should not be tracked on public property - property built from their own money.

This has nothing to do with who paid for what. Case in point: children, the elderly, or foreigners should enjoy the same right to privacy, even if they aren't (currently) paying taxes. It's not about property rights, it's about a modicum of dignity.

I'm talking about contributions because I want to make an easy distinction between public and private property. Everyone should have a right to do whatever they want on their own property as long as they don't break the non-aggression principle.

Just being the status quo isn't an argument for the legality of such a database. It's true that (most) recordings and data collection in public are currently legal. But the law was created at a time when there were natural limits to the aggregation and connection of such data.

If new technology drastically changes what is possible with such data, it's up to society to change the law. Don't want the whole world to have access to your location data 20+ years back? Find enough people who agree, and it won't happen.

There are many countries (i. e. all of Europe) where such a database would already be illegal, and I'm having a hard time thinking of the possible downsides.

Sure, there's a sort of abstract notion of freedom at stake. But any real harm would require some slippery-slope argumentation. At the same time, there is a direct, obvious, and (in my opinion) rather strong loss of freedom that comes with such a breach of privacy.

All those defending those neo-nazis in Charlottesville and their right to assembly should oppose something like this. Because with such a database, there'd be pretty good lists of everyone who participated in any such rallies in the last decade online right now.

Want to keep your sexual orientation, religion, or political affiliation from your prospective employer? No longer possible. Happened to be in the same place as some criminal more than statistics would suggest? You're now a suspect. Etc etc.

I don't expect privacy, but I do expect anonymity.

When I am out and about, I expect to be the background NPC labeled as "villager", until I do something that would give someone adequate reason to identify me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com