Manuel_D

The plain view doctrine dates back to the 70s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_view_doctrine

Both of those two above cases involve tracking people both in public and in private. Furthermore the former involved compelling a company to fork over private information.

Traffic cameras, by comparison, only record people's in public. A police officer isn't violating privacy laws by standing at an intersection and writing down the plates of cars passing by is he? Flock is just automating that task.

The whole reason why we have license plates is to facilitate monitoring cars. If we really think that people have a right to keep their vehicular activities private, then surely the bigger privacy violation is the fact that we require cars to display unique identifiers in a prominent manner?

Because most of the American public is not as reflexively anti-Flock as HN would lead you to believe. People acting like cameras recording their activities in public is some sort of grave privacy violation are not the norm.

Cameras recording tour activity in malls, and on public roads has been the case since the 90s. Flock became a lightning rod of attention due to ICE, but they don't actually represent any change from the status quo.

Correct, at least in the US you can record people in public pretty much at any time.

The police can, in fact, operate cameras in public spaces and they have done so for decades. ALPRs have been widely deployed since the 1990s.

I'm frequent surprised by how many people think that privacy laws block the police from recording their activities in public. For whatever reason, Flock is getting a lot of press, but this is hardly a new field.

Automated License plate readers are a half century old at this point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni...

Bear in mind that "illegal broadcast" is important here. A pirate radio station does not have a license to play the music it's playing. If recording pirate broadcast is legal, then effectively all copyright laws are moot so long as the copyrighted material is transmitted over radio.

Tivo is legal because cable providers are legally transmitting their cable programming.

Things get different on Netflix because recording Netflix requires circumvention of DRM, which is its own can of worms.

The argument is that it doesn't create another copy, so it's more analogous to receiving a broadcast. Like, if a pirate radio station plays copyrighted music, then the mere act of receiving those signals isn't a copyright violation. But recording that broadcast would be.

It's quite clearly explained on the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_aspects_of_file_sharing

> In the case of file sharing networks, companies claim that peer-to-peer file sharing enables the violation of their copyrights. File sharing allows any file to be reproduced and redistributed indefinitely. Therefore, the reasoning is that if a copyrighted work is on a file sharing network, whoever uploaded or downloaded the file is liable for violating the copyright because they are reproducing the work without the authorization of the copyright holder or the law.

Both uploading and downloading is a violation. All the major cases are against distributors, because those are the big fish. But rights holders have gone after individuals: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/lit...

For streaming yes, but downloads are still copyright infringement on the part of the downloader. An unauthorized copy is being made on the recipient's machine. It's true that copyright holders rarely pursue cases against individuals, and tend to focus on distributors though.

Correct: it's copyright infringement, not theft.

Jones vs USA involved physically interacting with a person's vehicle. Furthermore, the device would track users even if they were on private property.

By comparison Flock only operates in public, in places that are in plain view.

No, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy whole driving on public roads. This was the case even before Flock. ALPRs were invented in the 70s and started getting widely deployed in the 90s. It's remarkable how many people don't realize this technology decades old.

When did I ever mention small towns?

If that's the standard you want to draw, that's fine, but the page description should reflect that.

The opening of the page claims that these companies' goods and services are directly being used in Gaza:

> Their products, services, or infrastructure have been used extensively in military operations in Gaza resulting in mass civilian casualties, widespread destruction that amount to war crimes, and genocide.

But this is untrue for many of the companies listed.

Assets can be streamed in for non-browser based games as well. Star Craft 2 would stream in FMV cutscenes. In fact, most recent Blizzard games have allowed players go start playing after only downloading ~30% of the game. At least that's what I remember from Diablo 4.

The new WA basically did nothing except re-state existing laws. Ebikes cannot be more powerful than 1 horsepower (750 watt) and cannot go faster than 20 mph on throttle or 28ph on throttle + pedal assist.

"Moped-style ebikes" like Surrons were already illegal on public roads.

Eliminate the double negative, and you're making the same statement as the comment above.

Many of the companies in that list have essentially zero link to the events in Gaza. E.g. a Swiss company that supplies coal to Israel is considered complicit in genocide. Because Israelis having electricity means complicity in genocide, apparently. Hyundai is included because it sells vehicles to Israel, allegedly those machines were used to destroy Palestinian building but the cited source doesn't mention Hyundai: https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ahrc5923-...

Might as well have titled the page "companies that do business with Israel".

To the contrary, companies have been found liable for discrimination solely based on having the wrong percentages outcomes in its objective hiring assessments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

It is exactly that. These cameras are only recording cars on public roads (and sometimes e.g in the parking lot of Home Depot, but those areas are still in plain view).

Is there a reasonable expectation of privacy operating a car on public roads?

People generally don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public. That's why you can record and photograph people in public whether or not they agree to be recorded. It's the same logic that makes red light cameras and parking license plate scanners legal.

Why would it fall apart? The plain view doctrine holds that the police don't need a warrant to observe things in plain view. Like your car driving on the public roads.

Privacy laws are generally about protecting what you do in private, not in public. In the US, anyone can film you in public, government or otherwise.

I'm referring to the case I linked.

Uranium is a heavy metal, like lead. It always was, and will be toxic. Naturally occurring uranium is toxic, even without any enrichment.

The movement of tectonic plates is something that takes millions, not thousands, of years. Not to mention Yucca Mountain is far from the edge of any tectonic plate.

I link the correct case here, in an earlier comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636421 .

And you were evidently able to find the correct case regardless.

> I dare you to try hanging around a school with a DSLR taking pictures of kids in the playground and defend yourself with "But I'm in public."

You'll probably get harassed by school staff and parents, but the police will have no grounds to arrest you.

> If you take a picture, or ten, ostensibly of Times Square, no one cares. You can't piece together a person's day.

Yes, you can. Private investigators often do exactly that.

You don't need storage if you have enough non-intermittent power to satisfy peak load.

Canada uses 1,500 GWh of electricity per day. 12 hours of storage is 750 GWh of storage. Estimated for grid storage costs range from $125 to $250 per kwh for fully installed and connected systems (not just the cost of the cells alone). At $200/KWh Canada would be looking at $150 billion for 12 hours of storage.