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by nonameiguess 1916 days ago
The problem is this isn't even about privacy. Courts have always held that you have no right to privacy as soon as you step outside and that is never going to change. News broadcasts and most film making would become impossible if they needed the consent of all people who might incidentally make their way into a frame by walking in front of a camera. And if you go into someone else's business, there's usually a sign right out front telling you that by stepping inside you consent to them monitoring and recording everything you do. The only reason this never used to scare people is there was no practical and scalable way to collate all of these sources of public data into a usable profile that could identify and locate an arbitrary person.

Well, now there is.

How do you fight it? I don't think you can. The obvious answer is don't commit crimes and nobody is going to care enough to try and find you. Unfortunately, law enforcement has never proven particularly trustworthy about only going after actual criminals, so that answer doesn't generalize, but the vast majority of people are very unlikely to ever find themselves the victim of political persecution. What do we do for those who are?

Right to encryption and constitutional amendments for privacy are great and all, but that still means absolutely nothing for a case like this. This technology relied entirely on public data. You're never going to have the right to not be photographed when you go out in public. The paparazzi literally killed a member of the royal family doing this and suffered no consequences for it.