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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

To quote madam secretary, "at this point, what difference does it make".

People have been more then willing to give up their data to FB, Google, Apple, etc. The only difference is this is captured by governments --who at least in theory represent the voting public.

It'll be interesting to see what the outcome is. Will the public demand the government regulate industry as well as ask it to rein in its own capabilities, or will they just get used to it and accept it?

We'll have to see. Some technologists, libertarians and interestingly an intersection of right wing and left wing ideologies will oppose this for different reasons, but in the end, I think they will be a minority in total.

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The license plate cameras are actually a special case.

If you don't like most types of surveillance there are a lot of countermeasures a concerned party can use. Run your own servers, use encryption, etc.

The problem with license plates is that the equivalent thing is to obscure your license plate, which is prohibited by law. So it's not just that the government is collecting publicly available information, it's that you're prohibited by law from not making the information public. Which is a different kind of thing that deserves to be treated differently.

You are welcome not to drive on public roads. Driving is a privilege that you have to take on a wealth of regulations to enjoy.

> You are welcome not to drive on public roads. Driving is a privilege that you have to take on a wealth of regulations to enjoy.

That is just a canned argument applied generically in favor of any citizen-hostile rule that touches cars.

And it's completely inane. The government has created places without access to meaningful mass transit and outside of walking distance to necessities like grocery stores or, for that matter, government buildings, or any piece of land zoned for anything but other private homes. Saying "driving is a privilege" is like saying to those people "leaving your house whatsoever is a privilege". No it isn't.

Obscuring license plate might be prohibited by law, but so far I been pulled over twice for not having license plate AT ALL. Twice got ticket to show up at court, twice case was dismissed because cop did not show up.

I don't think there is law for not having a license plate. License plate are only required in case you commit a crime or break the law using your vehicle so identifying you is required. I was ready to argue in the court that I should be presumed innocent when it comes to driving my car, just like walking on the street I m presumed innocent and do not have to have my state ID plastered to my forehead, in case. I'm currently awaiting to be pulled over for the third time.

It's well within the rights of a state to regulate the vehicles that operate on its roads. Those regulations may (and do) include having a visible license plate with up to date registration stickers.

You are free to drive unregistered vehicles on private land.

> I been pulled over twice for not having license plate AT ALL

Where did this happen? I see tons of cars without plates in California and Oregon. When I was living in New York I saw zero cars without license plates. I can't imagine one is going to get too far without plates in the tri-state.

Not tri-state. Sorry doesn't want to reveal my location but USA indeed.

Out here they make you come in twice if you're going to fight a ticket. The second time is so they can schedule the cop, and they come in on every fought ticket.

> The only difference is this is captured by governments --who at least in theory represent the voting public.

Actually I trust a megacorp like Google, Amazon, Twitter or Facebook more with my data than I trust the state.

The state can arrest me based on that data. The tech giants not, and they are fighting like hell that the government does not get access to that data (as that would compromise trust, and by that their business model). Given the massive amounts of money involved, I have no doubt who will win that fight.

Anything Google, Amazon, Twitter or Facebook store on you is available to the government. If they want to get hold of it to get something to arrest you with, all they have to do is ask. While they may push back on some requests, there's actually very little they can do with FISA/NSA requests, they're almost always complied with.

I've heard them grumble about mass surveillance laws, but I haven't heard about them openly defying them, or using any of their substantial lobbying muscle in Washington against them. If they really cared, they could encrypt a lot of communications data, and simply not store things like real names, GPS co-ordinates and IP addresses as soon as they're not necessary to provide a service. The data wouldn't be as profitable, though.

If it makes you feel any safer, your license plate data is already being sold to private companies who want to build a file on you for profit.

From the EFF[1]:

> Vigilant Solutions' subsidiary Digital Recognition Network, along with MVTrac, are the two main companies hiring contractors to collect ALPR data across the country. The companies then share the data not just with law enforcement but also with auto recovery (aka "repo") companies, banks, credit reporting agencies, and insurance companies. Data collected by private entities does not have retention limits and is not subject to sunshine laws, or any of the other safeguards that are sometimes found in the government sector.

[1]: https://www.eff.org/pages/automated-license-plate-readers-al...

The difference is that, the government has to ask for the data, they can't just casually sift through the universe.

(I'm assuming that FISA courts, at the very least, won't agree to a warrant for "all of your data on everyone forever")

> "all of your data on everyone forever"

As far as we know (which is as little as possible), they can get all the data on you as an individual, if you’re on a data retention list. This is outside of data you generate happening to hit certain search terms

I qualify for such a list; I was/am a subscriber to The Linux Journal, an ‘extremeist publication’ according to the NSA, at least at the time of the Snowden leaks.

Am I still? It’s illegal for me to know. But it’s reasonable to assume that the maximalist approach to data collection is shared by the government and Google et al quite happily.

But that's only because at the moment they align with your PoV. An alternate example might be Tencent, Baidu & others.

You trust a non-government organization more than you trust the state?

Why? As detailed in this article, the government doesn't need to collect the data -- they just buy it from these private companies and get it anyways.

At that point, there's no difference whatsoever. They have the data, it doesn't matter who they got it from.

With companies you can sue them. You can find them, break them up, throw them in jail. With the government, not so much.

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