[TheJoeMan]

If I run into someone at the grocery store, I can remember "oh I saw them yesterday" if the Police interview me. If I start writing down/logging every time I saw that person at the grocery store and plotting it out, I would consider that "crossing the line".

A Flock camera that receives BOLO's for known-criminals and immediately flags captures in real-time is different than tracking every person going everywhere with a history.

[thenewnewguy]

What if the grocery store has a security camera pointed at the door that records 24/7? Should they not be allowed to do that?

[simoncion]

> Should they not be allowed to do that?

If that camera system is closed-circuit and its data is restricted to the premises they should be permitted to do that.

If the data from that camera system [0] can be removed from the premises by anything less than a search warrant or court order, then no, they should not be permitted to do that.

I know this isn't how the relevant laws work now, but they haven't been adequately updated to account for radical changes in the ability for companies to perform mass surveillance.

[0] ...whether raw or "processed" by -say- a "customer analytics" software... [1]

[1] Want a count of the day's customers? Check register receipts. Want to know what displays are most popular? Ask your employees, or employ someone to take notes. etc, etc, etc.

[JoshTriplett]

I think they should be allowed to point it at places inside their store, with prominent disclosure to people entering.

I don't think they should be allowed to point it at the public sidewalk.

[CobrastanJorji]

If I see something weird going on outside my house, should I be allowed to take a picture of it?

If I decide to take a picture of what's going on outside my house for no reason at all, should that also be allowed?

if I decide to put a camera in my living room pointed out the window and record, should that be allowed?

If I decide to run a business out of my home, does that change anything?

[JoshTriplett]

Observation: it is legal to listen to a conversation happening in public, and it is not typically legal to record it.

Some things that are not much of a problem at a small scale ("take a picture of a specific strange thing you see happening", "record one license plate of a specific car in relation to an incident") can become a problem at scale ("set up a video camera to constantly surveil the sidewalk and do facial recognition on it", "record every license plate that goes by and correlate your recordings with a million other people to generate a tracking map").

The problem is with pervasive surveillance, not discrete observation, and that's the spirit that laws about surveillance should attempt to uphold.

[tqi]

> Observation: it is legal to listen to a conversation happening in public, and it is not typically legal to record it.

That doesn't seem accurate. Do you have an example of a law that prohibits filming on public property? Isn't the legality the whole premise of what those weirdo "first amendment auditors" on YouTube do?

[JoshTriplett]

Depends on your local law, but in many, many places you cannot legally record a conversation you aren't a party to, even in public. In the US, in many states, it's not permitted to record a conversation you are a party to if others have not consented. There are various reasonable exceptions that permit recordings (e.g. public events, press conferences, trials, governmental meetings, recording interactions with police). "Conversation between two people happening in public" is not typically a permitted exception for recording.

Note that in this comment I'm talking about audio recording, which typically has much stricter regulations than video recording. I think the same principles should apply to video, and in some jurisdictions they do. But in my comment, I was using the laws around audio recordings vs physical eavesdropping to make an analogy about the problem of pervasive surveillance.

[dylan604]

So what if they mount inside pointing outside?

[JoshTriplett]

Was "I don't think they should be allowed to" ambiguous?

[sixothree]

Try walking around a grocery store with your phone and take a picture of every person you pass. See how they react.

That's the expectation people have for privacy.

[ryandrake]

Reminds me of the "Surveillance Camera Man" project[1] from a while back, where a guy went around silently filming people in public. People didn't like it and some responded aggressively, even though those same people probably thought nothing of the numerous actual surveillance cameras pointing at them all the time.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46302860

[MintPaw]

There's a whole category of video content called "First Amendment Audits" where people film with big cameras in public and farm people random, and often quite hostile, reactions.