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Comment by Houshalter | Hacker News Reader

True but that's just a matter of technology to search the data. The data itself is fine.

So if you forced police to manually go through the list of license plates every camera recorded, and find the one they want, that would be ok? But if they made a script to do the exact same thing automatically, it's illegal?

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Automation is the game changer. Long term data storage, new algorithms, combining databases, new algorithms that find out stuff etc. lead to huge changes that must be taken into account when designing systems.

Leave the house with the zipper down on Monday. Have a silly argument with a neighbor on Friday. Isolated incidents that will end up in the "Worst of Houshalter" - file, either available for everyone, or just a group of decisionmakers.

Am I seeing this right, or am I exaggerating?

My point is it's the same thing, just faster/cheaper. Perhaps it should be banned or controlled. But calling it unconstitutional is a stretch I think. If that's the case, regular "dumb" surveillance cameras should be too.

Good point, but what's a regular, "dumb" surveillance camera? Does such a thing even exist any more? I imagine that as old systems are replaced by newer ones, they automatically get more digital, intelligent, connected and store data in a more compatible and accessible format.

I see warning signs all over the place, that this train/building/place etc. is under video surveillance.

Cool story bro. Details? Who's looking at the data? How long will it be stored? How is that data protected?

I tried out SimpleCV recently, and was fascinated how much already works out of the box. Face recognition from a video is basically the "Hello World" program.

The phrase "Wake up sheeple" has been discredited as wannabe-enlightened, but in this case I feel like opening my window and shouting it out loud. Sigh.

On the other hand there is tremendous potential for such technology. Stores will be able to significantly reduce their losses to shoplifting. A ton of jobs will be open to automation - including things that were previously too expensive to do with humans. Robotics will significantly advance. And we can virtually eliminate crime.

These privacy laws could be really damaging to progress. In some cases it basically makes it illegal to make a machine do the same thing as a human.

> we can virtually eliminate crime

No, we virtually eliminate crime of anyone that isn't friends with the bureau that manages the cameras

We already have surveillance cameras everywhere and this doesn't seem to be happening.

Crime doesn't seem to be eliminated either.

How would you know if it were happening? Quis custodiet...

These privacy laws could be really damaging to progress. In some cases it basically makes it illegal to make a machine do the same thing as a human.

I don't automatically have a problem with that. Progress at any cost isn't something I take as "obviously good" and machines don't have rights to employment.

That's ignoring the fact that you want the machine to do it because it's not doing "the same thing", it's doing something slightly different.

I take objection to that. Far more harm is done by being conservative and resisting new technologies, than is caused by just embracing them. Every generation thinks the present is just fine and that the future is scary.

> And we can virtually eliminate crime.

If you make a comb with teeth too fine, it will rip out your hair.

Useless analogy.

Who is innocent of all crimes?

You don't want omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient mechanical enforcement of the law. You may think you do, but you really don't.

That's not really what this is. You can see people committing violent crimes in public. You can track the path robbers and terrorists with security cameras. But victimless crimes take place behind closed doors and are never reported.

If you think that use of such tools would be restricted to robbers or terrorists, you are incredibly delusional. If you think that all victimless crimes necessarily take place in the privacy of homes, you are so naive it seems like you are trolling.

You clearly have some strong biases against this that I can't help. But this is the future whether we like it or not. Name calling doesn't change anything.

That's a reasonable line. There's another that's gaining traction, put forth by Justice Sotomayor in US v. Jones:

'“It may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties,” Sotomayor wrote in 2012. “This approach is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks.”'

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/how-sotomayor-undermined-obamas-n...

At the point they have such a script, that’s right, it becomes no longer okay. They should need to get a warrant before they can do anything with the data, and we should have an open public debate about exactly what data they should be allowed to store, for how long.

Yes.

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