[VanillaLime]

I guess I don't see the distinction. If I see your license plate at the supermarket and post online that "license plate AAAAAA was seen at Whole Foods on December 6th", how is that qualitatively different from a license plate reader scanning your plate and storing that "license plate AAAAAA was at coordinates XX.XXXX, XX.XXXX at 2015-12-06?"

Unless you want to draw a line between information which is directly observed by people and information which is collected by machine, this seems like a difference of degree, not of kind.

[msandford]

Quantitative differences eventually become qualitative ones.

Nobody cares about any one particular data point being published; it's the collection of all of them that's revealing. See the "metadata" debate that's been going on for a year or two now.

I suspect that most folks would be willing to self-publish their checking account balance on one random day. But every day for a year, or their whole lives? Probably not. You have to marry me if you want to have that kind of information.

[Lawtonfogle]

>I guess I don't see the distinction.

Do you see a distinction between me taking a photo of you by being out in public being my right and me using a special camera to pick up photons emitted by your body and not blocked by your clothing and creating an image from these?

Do you see a distinction between me being able to look into your window from the public sidewalk and me using infrared technology to map out everything you do in the house?

What if I invent a camera that can take a photo of a letter and reveal all the contents inside in easily readable detail, without needing to touch the letter. By you grabbing a letter out of your mailbox, you are letting me see the outside of it, so if this camera can capture the content is there any significant difference?

[peteretep]

As with most pieces of surveillance, it's that there's a cost difference.

To find out where I am, you'd currently need to have me tailed. The cost involved gives me a reasonable degree of privacy in my estimation. You'd need to have some kind of reasonable cause, and assets, and need to think there was something in monitoring my movements worth spending for.

If it costs you $5 to pull up a complete driving history, you can surveil 1,000 people for the same cost, and go for a fishing trip. See if anyone moderately wealthy has been in a bad part of town, etc

[scentoni]

Quantity has a quality all its own.