[_iyig]

Fairness of the U.S. immigration system aside, what is wrong in principle with law enforcement using driver’s license photos to uphold and enforce the law? When you drive on public roads, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Tinted windows which obscure the driver’s face are, to the best of my knowledge, illegal in most of the U.S.

I would be much more concerned if law enforcement were, for example, using these photos to profile drivers by race or using them in an otherwise illegal manner. That doesn’t seem to be the case here.

[gizmoduck]

>When you drive on public roads, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

False. Until the observer effect occurs, I - essentially - do not exist but as a record in a database. Someone who knows me, my car, or has the ability to ascertain who I am from identifiers on the vehicle, is able to collapse that sense of privacy but, until that happens, I am just one of the many of the nameless mass. In that, I have privacy and you would be hard-pressed to prove otherwise.

>Tinted windows which obscure the driver’s face are, to the best of my knowledge, illegal in most of the U.S.

False. Tinted windows which obscure the driver's view is illegal. It's perfectly legal for you to have a high iridescent finish on the outside of your tint, which will obstruct the outside view of the driver (in sunlight).

>...or using them in an otherwise illegal manner.

When - in the history of ever - has law enforcement never abused the resources afforded to them? Your credulous, at best, belief in law enforcement's use of the system largely ignores the prevailing example given in the article - which was that they used the system on someone who was under "suspicious circumstance". The "suspicious circumstance" bar is so low that even a two-dimensional being couldn't limbo under it.

Some might argue that since the agreements were made that the three-lettered agencies would only use them for criminal investigations, that the example of the "suspicious circumstance" that was given just now is in fact illegal.

[shados]

> Your credulous, at best, belief in law enforcement's use of the system largely ignores the prevailing example given in the article

Law enforcement will always be a compromise. There will always be some who abuse it, and there will always be a need for it (if you want a reasonable level of civilization anyway). It's not binary. It's not "Give up all freedom and rights for infinite security" vs "Give up absolutely nothing for absolute freedom" with nothing in between. The line has to be drawn, but it is arbitrary, and a lot of people have different opinions on where it should be drawn (rightly so! there's not an obvious place to draw it).

We certainly have to be careful not to draw it too far on one side, but that doesn't mean it has to be completely on the other side.

Eg: I personally think it's too far to put surveillance cameras everywhere, but I'd be ok with cameras and facial recognitions on some major roads (they already have pictures associated with driver's licenses and various other documents for acceptable reasons).

Yeah, it might get abused sometimes, but everything can be. Everyone for themselves and hope for the best hasn't historically worked out so hot either. Law enforcement being completely neutered with zero tools and powers isn't very effective.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Law enforcement will always be a compromise.

The problem with the compromise argument is that it only ever goes one way. We had certain law enforcement capabilities in 1965 and civilization didn't collapse. Why would we expect it to collapse if they had exactly the same capabilities today?

Whenever this argument is used, it's always to add new invasions. Databases that were never needed before, facial recognition that was never needed before. Why are they suddenly needed now, just because we can? Moving in only one direction over time isn't balance, it's marching toward a cliff. Meanwhile anything that does improve privacy, like encryption, is used as an excuse for new police powers as well.

It isn't necessary for law enforcement to catch everybody. And they wont anyway. Which is fine, because 99% of their purpose is deterring people from committing serious crimes, which they can do well enough without any fancy new technology.

You don't actually have to catch fugitives as long as being a fugitive ruins your life sufficiently that hardly anybody is willing to do it.

[homonculus1]

Today's compromise is tomorrow's status quo. Then a new compromise is needed so the government can solve some new problem that gets headlines precisely because it's as rare as lightning. Rinse and repeat till all our rights are washed away.

[throwaway2048]

part of the issue is technology makes being a criminal more sophisticated too.

If police were limited to 1965 tech, you could see any police car coming miles away due to radar and radio detectors.

[liberte82]

Good.

[dlgeek]

> False. Tinted windows which obscure the driver's view is illegal. It's perfectly legal for you to have a high iridescent finish on the outside of your tint, which will obstruct the outside view of the driver (in sunlight).

That's not true. Most states have a limit on reflectiveness. I checked Alabama and Wyoming (first and last alphabetically), and both specifically limit you to no more than 20% reflectivity by statute.

[toast0]

Law enforcement doesn't get a blanket right to all government data.

If drivers licensing agencies are allowing my records to be used against my interests (being returned as a potential match is certainly against my interest), it makes me consider the value of being a licensed driver.

I consider anything that encourages unlicensed driving to be a big problem -- unlicensed drivers are likely to be less well trained and less safe on the road, and are less likely to have evidence of financial responsibility (eg insurance) and may not be able to pay a judgement, and likely will drive unlicensed vehicles as well, so may be very difficult to track down in case of a hit and run.

Fundamentally --- drivers have consented to their photos being collected for a specific purpose, and using it for other purposes against the interest of the driver is a big problem.

[Ididntdothis]

"When you drive on public roads, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy."

I think in the age of automated large scale image recognition we need to revise the concept of privacy. I don't think we should lose our privacy completely as soon as we leave our home. And with devices like the Echo we don't even have privacy at home. There need to be restrictions on mass processing of this kind of data. Otherwise we'll create a version of the world of "1984" where nobody can escape surveillance.

[brokenmachine]

I agree 100%.

At least we can opt-out by not buying an Echo.

People can't choose to not have a face when they want to go outside.

[aasasd]

> When you drive on public roads, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy

Would you say that someone stalking you all day every day is alright if it's in public?

(Also, you seem to have missed that the police aren't using photos from just road cameras, but that's beside the argument really.)

[_iyig]

Sorry, I think I failed to clarify my point. I don't think ubiquitous vehicle position tracking is legal, or a good idea. I do think that if you're a driver on public roads, your face will be photographed at some point (such as for your license), and _that's_ legal and to be expected.

[aasasd]

As far as I know, the problem here is police running photos that it has from some cameras against the DMV database. Which is a) apparently of dubious legality because it's a biometric search and should be done in a criminal case but is instead done promiscuously left and right; and b) is ethically dubious because it creeps into the territory of ubiquitous surveillance.

Vehicles and roads don't enter the equation apart from people having gotten driver licenses. The licenses just make the largest database of US citizens' faces.

[_iyig]

As far as I know, there isn't a problem here.

> [...] of dubious legality because it's a biometric search and should be done in a criminal case [...]

That is not the law. You have been misled, perhaps as the article's author intended. The author's feelings on whether such searches should be legal are not the same as democratically-enacted laws on the matter.

[ma2rten]

Just because I am in public doesn't mean that I want to be tracked by government all the time. The idea that FBI constantly knows where I am sounds Orwellian and unconstitutional to me.