[CONTRARlAN]

That it's easy to do is all the more reason to try to establish controls to prevent abuse.

It's trivially easy to sell customer data for profit at the expense of their privacy. It's easy to store personal information without securing it. It's easy to take credit cards without using SSL certs.

It's also easy to lock someone up and deny them due process, or to enter someone's home and seize their effects without a warrant, or to set absurdly high bail.

Etc. Again, it's because this is such an easy thing to do–and it's only going to become easier to collect, store, and analyze this data-that it makes sense to establish definitions of what constitutes fair use, and what constitutes abuse, and to do so sooner, rather than later.

[kefka]

So, what is the responsibility for capturing faces for recognition purposes when in a public setting? It's already established that members of the public can record events like arrests legally, thanks to 1st amendment defense.

But above is in public. What about "my" property? Or the supermarket? We already have cameras everywhere. Just look up. So what does it matter that they run software on the back end? The hardware is already there.

Walking in gives implicit permission that "you agree to be recorded or leave". Vandalization of cameras is criminal. Many places insist you not wear masks, or they call the cops.

[tjr]

The difference to me is that when your presence was merely recorded on video, it required the manual labor of humans to search for your face in the recording. This isn't something that is likely to happen unless authorities are looking for you in particular for some actual reason.

Now with it all automated, it just takes running some scripts on a computer system to locate your face from any number of sources, so people who are not particularly under suspicion for anything will have their whereabouts identified automatically just as if they were actual suspects.

Same story with automatic license plates readers. Manual searching for a license plate is so time-consuming that it's unlikely to get done without cause. With automatic systems, records can be kept of every car that passes through a monitored intersection, whether if the car or driver is of actual interest or not.

[Karunamon]

That particular arbitrary line in the sand seems mighty.. well.. arbitrary. The data is being collected either way, but it only becomes objectionable because a computer is involved? On what grounds?

[tjr]

I think it's a pretty big difference, going from labor-intensive manual inspection of data to fully automated inspection of data, opening up everyone within few of the camera to being automatically tracked.

It's not the same thing that's always been done, except now it's being done with a computer. It's the same thing that's always been done, except now it's being done for everyone, rather than for just a few select individuals of interest. It doesn't really matter that a computer is involved; it's the scope of the surveillance that is disconcerting. If huge numbers of humans were hired to track everyone manually, that would also be disconcerting.

Who cares? I'm not entirely sure. And I guess that's sort of the point. This level of surveillance has, in my opinion, surpassed what most of society is ready for. I don't think that most people have a good grasp on what's going on, or what impact it will / could have on their lives.

If arbitrary companies and government agencies can know my whereabouts at all times, should this have any impact to how I live my life? It's a question that society at large has never had to really answer before.

[the_ancient]

Every Law and regulation is arbitrary, why do you believe this should be any different?

At some point we as society say "this is the line, you can go no further"

Communities create standards for behavior that are arbitrary all the time...

[Karunamon]

Are you seriously implying that you see no difference between "thou shalt not kill" and "thou shalt not analyze images of public places with anything more complicated than an abacus" ??

[the_ancient]

Nice Strawman, but murder is not the only other law on the books

We have regulations for how tall your grass shall be, what color you can paint your home, how many dogs you are allowed to have etc etc etc etc.... 1000's of aribirary rules and regulations for society.

For businesses there are even more, things like handicapped parking, bathrooms, depending on the type of business the hours or days you are allowed to be open, etc etc etc 10's of thousands of rules arbitraly defined as to what a business can and can not do

This is more akin to regulations around either medical records, or finical records both have regulations around how the data can be stored, and how the business can use it.

[gnopgnip]

The public is better off with reasonable restrictions on the mass collection of data. It is a utilitarian solution. What grounds are there to require wearing a seatbelt when driving a car?

[CONTRARlAN]

I agree with you that they're a private company so they can do what they want with their business–I actually think private entities don't have enough rights on that front in many regards–but that doesn't mean that it isn't a conversation worth having, and or that they aren't unregulated entities–there are legal limits to what stores can do in their relationships with customers, how is this any different?

And walking in doesn't give implicit permission that I agree for them to store, analyze, sell, leak, publish or otherwise use that data however they please, in perpetuity. Are they allowed to disclose my presence to law enforcement without a warrant? Can they tell my health insurance provider that I spent an unusually long amount of time in the dessert aisle?

I'm sure a lawyer could argue (probably quite successfully) otherwise, but from a let's-address-the-problem-before-it's-fully-mature standpoint, these are the kinds of conversations we're supposed to be having right now.

[kefka]

> I agree with you that they're a private company so they can do what they want with their business–I actually think private entities don't have enough rights on that front in many regards–but that doesn't mean that it isn't a conversation worth having, and or that they aren't unregulated entities–there are legal limits to what stores can do in their relationships with customers, how is this any different?

Well, they are people. The only distinction is they have no voting rights in the elections.

> And walking in doesn't give implicit permission that I agree for them to store, analyze, sell, leak, publish or otherwise use that data however they please, in perpetuity.

The pharmacy counter is guarded by HIPAA and the payment done with credit card or debit card is protected by agreements from PCI DSS. The last catch-all is whatever the company's privacy policy is. No privacy policy = no FTC violation of privacy policy.

Further south of where I live, there's a sex toy shop with the following: http://www.covenanteyes.com/2009/08/26/truckers-pictures-tak...

The website's down, but they are still there, taking videos and photos of all who arrive. Completely legal.

But that's why I wrote uWHo. It's not hard. And I did so to push the envelope. People have chided me, and all I can say is look here: https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0 and https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0

> Are they allowed to disclose my presence to law enforcement without a warrant? Can they tell my health insurance provider that I spent an unusually long amount of time in the dessert aisle?

Can you do those things?

If so, why can't they?