Hacker News Reader

Comment by rubyfan | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think you hold an unreasonable position on that issue. If everything is operating as it should then many would agree.

We’ve long ago entered a reality where almost everyone has a device on them that can track their exact location all the time and keeps a log of all their connections, interests and experiences. If a crime occurs at a location police can now theoretically see everyone who was in the vicinity, or who researched methods of committing a crime, etc. It’s hard to balance personal freedoms with justice, especially when those who execute on that balance have a monopoly on violence and can at times operate without public review. I think it’s the power differential that makes the debate and advocacy for clearer privacy protection more practical.

View on HN

I shouldn't have to remind everyone that cops already can skip getting a warrant for things like phone location data.

Plenty of big services will just give cops info if they ask for it. It's legal. Any company or individual can just offer up evidence against you and that's fine, but big companies will have policies that do not require warrants.

Despite this atrocious anti-privacy stance, cops STILL clear around half of violent crimes, and that's only in states with rather good police forces, usually involving higher requirements than "A pulse" and long training in a police Academy. Other states get as low as 10% of crimes actually solved.

When you've built a panopticon and cops STILL can't solve cases, it's time to stop giving up rights and fix the cops.

> Plenty of big services will just give cops info if they ask for it. It's legal. Any company or individual can just offer up evidence against you and that's fine, but big companies will have policies that do not require warrants.

I think this is where policy is failing. No clear protections on privacy and collusion between corporations and the state is allowed. It’s outdated and impractical to have the limits on search and seizure at physical boundaries but not electronic ones.

And in a way, I see some mapping of this to the recent FCC vs Jimmy Kimmel situation. Sure, Kimmel's case was more overt, because the FCC guy was very obviously threatening a private company so that the company would do that the government wanted, and in this case, it's more like companies are "sponteneously" coming up to help, but I still think that such spontaneity can be suspicious, specially if we are talking about companies with large contracts with the government, or interest in influencing policy.

In other words: if it's Joe Schmoe's Haberdashery forwarding CCTV footage to police to elucidate a crime right in front of their door, sure, it's fine and dandy, they do have an interest in not having crime in front of their door. But when Revolving Door MegaCorp builds a dragnet of surveillance AND is also selling cloud contracts to the government by the billion, it becomes a lot more murky if they just start snitching on everything they see.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com