Comment by carapace | Hacker News Reader

Comment by carapace | Hacker News Reader

I had some chickens on my lawn the other day. Someone driving by stopped, started video recording me, my family, my neighbors, and the birds with their phone (I assume that's what he was doing, that's what it looked like) for a minute or two, then he drove off. He didn't say a word. He didn't respond when I waved.

By my standards of social behavior that dude is a fucking creep and (years ago) I would have tried to go over and confront him, and get his license plate, and maybe even call the cops on him. I know it's not illegal to photo/film people in public, but (again, by my personal standards of social decency) this guy's behavior is hella creepy.

Of course, the answer is: he's a millennial and (to him) what he's doing is perfectly normal. Everybody is a tactless voyeur now, and all your photons/base belong to us. Anything worth looking at is already getting mobbed by the panopticon.

(My solution is to buy some land in the woods, cover it with surveillance gear and build large, intimidating robots to patrol the fence. But that won't scale.)

The problem is, our whole civilization is that guy: the advertisers, the NSA, the crooks and creeps, all of them are after your data and have a head start.

We can't put the tech/genie back in the bottle (I don't believe we can.) So that leaves us with creating a kinder, gentler dystopian hell.

Or you can approach them in a friendly manner and talk about your Chickens, why are they so fascinated and make a new friend.

My advice is to try to understand that your judgement is probably not aligned to malice of the intruder, instead verify with friendliness and if they’re still “creepy”, by all means proceed with your action plan.

Love each other and our neighbors. Dude probably just wanted to send it to his girlfriend what he found interesting on the way. Sure the means of communication has changed, but back in the day it would be a photo taken on a Kodak disposable camera and majority of the narrative would have been through story telling.

You're missing the point. I'm not Oscar the Grouch.

agreed - if this was once a year or something, maybe, but this is slowly becoming a new "right", the right to record anything at anytime - which is madness

edit: and it is the new norm - no escaping it

Why would you be friendly towards somebody who has just taken unwanted photos of you without your permission?

It's public space. Permission is not needed.

His lawn is a public space?

Would your reaction be different if they were taking pictures of his pets through his window?

I was on the opposite side of this a few years ago. I spent a lot of my childhood in Germany and had the opportunity to go back and see my childhood home and walk along the street. The street was a lot nicer than I remembered so I took some pictures to show my family. At one of the houses I started taking a picture with my callphone and within ~ 10 seconds the front door opened and a woman appeared and started asking me what I was doing and a few seconds later a man appeared next to her and I got the impression that if I didn't leave right away a call to the police would be made.

I'm a millennial and indeed, it seems perfectly normal to take pictures of things you want to remember later. Photographing a person without asking them is more questionable and I can imagine creepy ways to do it, but photographing a house seems 100% unobjectionable. I don't feel that I have any right to privacy when I'm in a public space, someone else taking a photo of me doesn't harm me in any way.

> someone else taking a photo of me doesn't harm me in any way

With today's facial recognition technologies, if that photo has GPS coordinates and timestamp attached (most likely it has) it means now somewhere (most likely in several places - cloud, social networks, ad networks, etc.) it is registered that you were at that place at that moment. Not everyone is happy that their movements and whereabouts are being registered.

Well, you can argue that we all carry a smartphone so anyhow our mobile operators (and so, the government (yours and maybe others too)) register our movements history, but at least you can choose not to carry a smartphone, but how can one choose not to be photographed/videotaped?

Really insightful comment and I could not agree anymore. Reading your story really puts it into perspective what we've grown to accept as normal.

It's unfortunate that the solution seems to be to just leave—(I don't think stopping and trying to make a friend is realistic the vast majority of the time, or even safe sometimes)—and I'm realizing I'm at that same conclusion.

Cheers!

> It's unfortunate that the solution seems to be to just leave—(I don't think stopping and trying to make a friend is realistic the vast majority of the time, or even safe sometimes)—and I'm realizing I'm at that same conclusion.

It works out in my case: I'm a huge Venture Bro.'s fan and my dream is to create a 1:1 scale model of the Venture Compound complete with H.E.L.P.eR. and G.U.A.R.D.O.. I'm even going to make the tunnels underneath and invite people to live there (but only if they stay in character as VH1-imitating troglodytes.) You better believe the laser turrets will be very realistic.

As for everybody else, yeah, I think the average person is already screwed, and doesn't care because it's comfortable enough. Maybe the Amish will see an uptick in converts but I doubt it.

- - - -

I want to point out, because some of the other sib comments miss it, my gripe isn't so much with one clueless tourist snapping photos, it's that his camera is connected to the world-wide internet and all that entails. For all I know the video has been seen by millions of people by now, eh? Keeping chickens in the city isn't illegal but I don't want to attract attention. (They're not supposed to be on the front lawn, they got out of their run.)

On the other side of the coin: maybe he didn't see you wave because he's on a video call and looking at the caller's face. Maybe he didn't want to step onto your property or disturb your day because that is often seen as aggressive behavior. Maybe he didn't actually stop for the reason you think he did and just happened to notice the chickens and pointed to take a photo.

Calling the cops is a ridiculous reaction to just about anything these days other than someone has been shot.

>> Someone driving by stopped, started video recording me...

> ... maybe he didn't see you wave because he's on a video call and looking at the caller's face ...

So maybe the creeper was on a video call looking at the caller's face, while driving? Nope. There's no excuse for that creepy behavior.

How is taking photos/video of someones chickens creepy.

Hi!

If you were a sociologist, they'd called this a "generational gap in behavior norms." Greybeards would mutter something about "getting off my lawn" and "kids these days."

Old people are used to people complying with laws that require release forms being signed before publishing someone's likeness.

That went out the window, oh, 25 years agoish.

Because it's also his entire family and chickens. It is creepy unless you're a professional photographer. Social boundaries are there for a reason.

With respect I don't appreciate being second-guessed like that. To me it feels like you're implying I'm some kind of idiot that can't see what's in front of his face. Just letting you know.

> Calling the cops is a ridiculous reaction to just about anything these days other than someone has been shot.

You don't understand, I'd be calling the cops because this guy is about to get shot. Some folks in my "hood" have strong and definite opinions about personal boundaries.

Not calling cops because the mass media is trying to convince everyone that all cops are stone cold killers is ridiculous. You are far more likely to die on your way to the grocery than you are to get death by cop

Perhaps it's a generational thing because I don't see a problem with what happened, at all.

I’m a millennial and I don’t understand how this is not a problem. People need boundaries and ownership in order to thrive. Yes some things should be shared but everything is a balance. You cannot just have anyone walking into your house. Similarly, taking photos of you and your family in a private space ) (albeit public-facing) is a socially indecent and disrespectful move. While not legally enforceable, I can understand why this concerns privacy.

Perhaps it's a jurisdictional thing, then? Where I live, if it's in public, it's fair game. The only exception is when it's in public but there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. For example, even though a fenced backyard is outside, someone reaching a camera above the fence to record is an invasion of privacy. Recording someone in their unfenced front yard from the street is not an invasion of privacy, unless the recording was meant to record what's inside the house through the windows.

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