[pyre]

  > As an example, in France it is forbidden to count the
  > number of people who get in & out of a subway at a given
  > station.

That seems lame. That number is highly anonymous. How does a statement like "between 8am and 9am 250 people boarded the subway, and 130 people exited the subway" affect a person's privacy?

[anigbrowl]

In July 2009, civil society groups opposed the implementation of intelligent advertising LCD screens in a Parisian subway station.[163] These screens not only broadcast messages but can also count the number of people passing by and measure the time spent looking at the screen thanks to a face scanning sensor. Since these actions, the French data protection Authority, the CNIL, has issued a report considering that this technology must take into consideration the data protection rights of individuals as provided under the Data Protection Law: individuals must receive proper notice and the devices must be notified to the CNIL.

https://www.privacyinternational.org/article/france-privacy-...

European law tends to work on the assumption that it's up to the owner of a technology to show how it will safeguard against the abuse of it. Failure to do so in the past has had disastrous consequences in some parts of Europe.

[0x12]

And that was before large scale facerecognition software that could be employed to determine not only how many people are walking by the device but also who. Now doing this in real time with a large crowd is still not technically feasible but at some point we will probably cross that line.

Good to know there is at least one country where you'll be safe from that.

[randallsquared]

Good to know there is at least one country where you'll be safe from that.

Well, until it gets so cheap that there's no way to know whose glasses or contacts are recording and compiling information about you as part of their lifelog. This sort of thing is like the tide coming in: legislation against it can only ultimately be effective by severe restrictions on allowed technologies for the people of the country.

[dredmorbius]

Well, until it gets so cheap there's no way to know whose glasses or jacket contains a gun capable of shooting you dead on the street. This sort of thing is like the tide coming in: legislation against it can only ultimately be effective by severe restriction on allowed technologies for the people of the country.

Substitute whatever anti-social mechanism you prefer.

The drone wars are coming: pilotless aircraft, possibly autonomous, from the size of a small car to the size of a gnat, with intel or lethal payloads.

Bioweapons or nukes. We've had suitcase nukes for a few decades, fortunately they haven't been used. Suitcase-sized conventional explosives are rather frequently deployed in some parts. Weaponized chemicals or biological agents are another option.

It's trivially possible to adulter drugs or drinks. Some of the oldest laws on the books deal with food and alcohol purity.

Having the technical capability to do something doesn't mean it must needs be accepted. Legal sanctions may be swimming upstream at times, but other norms (social, cultural, religions. technological) generally help keep us from tearing one another to pieces, most of the time.

[rue]

I certainly suspect that most people make a distinction between shooting someone, and videotaping someone. This leads me to believe that surreptitious surveillance would be a far more widespread problem than random shootings.

[dredmorbius]

Surreptitious surveillance to what ends?

If the <i>use</i> of any of that data -- for profiling, legal process, advertising, contact, etc. -- is prohibited, and the action of performing the surveillance exposes the entity to plausible legal consequences and/or obligations (notification, deletion requests, etc.), then its practice will be limited. Undisclosed phone recording in some states, for example (not admissible in legal processes, a violation of law of itself, etc.).

Much crime is economically motivated (not all, but much). Part of criminal theory revolves around making crime more expensive (to greater or lesser success, depending). There's an economic study of criminal activity as well.

Businesses tend not to undertake activities for which there isn't a net economic benefit. Shareholder obligations and all that. So yes, with an appropriate legal framework in place, it's quite likely that incentives for engaging in certain behaviors will be limited.

[0x12]

Hm. This comment reads like something straight out of an SF novel and yet I can't shake the feeling that it is just around the corner. Interesting times indeed. Thank you for opening my eyes a bit further. Gargoyles seemed like a fun thing when Neal Stephenson wrote about it and Steve Mann (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann) was experimenting in that direction.

I never expected it to possibly hit the mainstream this quickly though, and especially not with some of the possibilities that you are hinting at.

[afterburner]

Sure, lots of easy things are illegal. But people and corporations have incentives to keep legal even when it would be very easy to commit the crime anyways. Enforcement has the job of catching people that are committing easy crimes, and discouraging them from doing so in the first place.

[mnutt]

In NYC, the MTA has opened up an API to their turnstile data:

http://www.mta.info/developers/turnstile.html

They even put ads for their data API in the subway.

[sixtofour]

If it's lame, then someone who wants to count must instead throw up his hands in exasperation as they obey the law and don't count.

Until a few years ago it was illegal to sell liquor on Sunday in Colorado. That was lame, but I never saw a liquor store open on Sunday. If any did, they'd probably get fairly good public support and letters to the editor in favor, but they would still lose their liquor license.

[pyre]

I was criticizing the law (or at least an example of how a law is being applied) that you used as an example, because it seems to be that it goes far beyond just protecting personal privacy.

You seem to be stating in response that the law must be followed while it is in place. I'm unsure what your driving point is as I wasn't even advocating civil disobedience of said law.

[sixtofour]

I'm referring back to Facebook, who would probably like to not follow the privacy laws if they aren't convenient.