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Comment by gridspy | Hacker News Reader

Your two examples don't map to the concern about data privacy.

Speed cameras only operate on public roads. The camera in the store is operated by the store owner. In both cases one of the parties involved in the transaction (driving, purchasing) is involved in enforcement. It is clear in both cases that these measures protect everyone and they have clear limits also.

Better examples would be police searching your home all the time, whenever they want (This maps to device encryption).

Or store owners surveilling competing stores / forcing people to wear cameras 24/7 "to improve the customer experience" (This maps to what Facebook / Google try to do, or what internet wire tapping does).

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> searching your home all the time, whenever they want

What? How does OpenAI map to your home at all? This is pure nonsense. You seem to have entirely dismissed the comparison to driving a little too out of hand.

The internet is, like the roads, public infrastructure. You can't claim that encryption makes all traffic on the public infrastructure as private as staying home.

You sound like one of those "free man of the land" guys: "I'm not driving your honor, I was traveling."

Okay, so lets move back to a driving metaphor, since you seem to prefer that.

If you drive in the US, the contents of your car are somewhat protected by law. It's not trivial for authorities to obtain the right to search your car, though I understand it's common for some to flout the rules and search anyway.

But there are not gates on the highway which scan all cars and subject the contents of all the cars along with details of the drivers to government scrutiny. Not just the number plates, everything in and about the car.

However, it is the goal of several agencies to perform this level of searching to all data transmitted. Why do you claim that people have less right to privacy when transmitting data in the virtual vs the physical world?

It's hard to me to find heads or tails in your argument.

The argument you're sketching out, of an authority (the nebulous government, the mysterious agencies) totally surveilling your car, is completely and totally disconnected from the discussion at hand. This is a case about two private entities that that are trying to resolve their dispute in a court of law. There's no government agency involved. Whatever you believe about the scary agencies has no bearing on the outcome of this suit.

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