Thread: GPS is unconstitutional but,

Originally Posted by deathgodusmc

In our current state of affairs we really dont have privacy no matter where we are.

This is very true.

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Originally Posted by iravedic

Not technically on point but still relevant - and amusing to me personally.

Colorado town to consider drone hunting license, bounty

Let's all get our guns out and go drone hunting!! We should take their lead, why stop at drones - traffic cameras should be fair game as well - I'd pay $25 for a license to take out a traffic camera. Of course we would likely be subjecting ourselves to up to 10 years in the Federal penitentiary and $250,000 in fines, something both the article and the town seem to ignore.

I found this Hilarious. I feel like building some drones, and getting them shot down for some hard earned settlements LOL. You think anyone's gonna take the time to Identify a USG drone or just shoot first?

Originally Posted by Gumby

I have no problem with this. You are operating a motor vehicle on public roads. Why should you expect privacy?

GPS tracker attached to the car should require a warrant, this should not.

For more than a decade now I've had in my head a sort of proto-essay for which I've made extensive notes but that I've never got around to finishing.

In my head, the essay starts out with a simple conceit and follows with the basic idea. I just hacked together a sketch of what I might write. It's twice as long as it should be, but you'll have to struggle on with the unedited version. Actual writing is weird in that making something shorter takes much more time. So you get the rough draft:

Towards the middle of the last century, less than 20 years after a great world war, humanity was faced again with a growing tide of aggression and conflict. Even though the unimaginable destruction of the previous war was still fresh in the memories of those who had fought it, another great war seemed to be inevitable.

The first war had been a war between emperors and kings (and republics that still pursued the colonial dreams that lived in the memory of their empires). Though the imperial heads of the various states had been variously aggressive or conciliatory, it is hard to look back and not think that all the leaders shared at least a little bit of the blame since the various Kings, Kaisers, Grand Dukes, and Emperors were all close enough cousins to spend Christmas together.

The coming war felt different. This was not a struggle among cousins. This was not solely about nationalism. Some states were clearly the aggressors, and others clearly wished to find a way to avoid the horrors of war while preserving national honor.

The distinction between The Good Guys and The Bad Guys wasn't perfectly clear and stark at the time. Even now, looking back, the picture is muddy. You don't always get the ally you want, and no one leads a nation without having to make some difficult choices.

But to a few at the time, and to most of us now, the coming war seemed like a struggle between good and evil.

Part of that struggle was a race to develop new and more powerful weapons.

Scientific discoveries are amoral. They are simply a truth about the nature of the world. The tools and technology we develop from our discoveries are only good or evil to the extent that humanity brings these things to all their works. The moral ambiguity of technology is not a new discovery, and the scientists, engineers, and political leaders of that time struggled with these matters.

It's hard enough in the best of times to be thoughtful about what good - or evil - purpose your invention might be used for. In the midst of a struggle for the lives of millions and the existence of nations, it's almost impossible. The race to develop the great discoveries of physics would have played out differently in a more peaceful world, but the world was not more peaceful.

So the contest to build these new tools was not a contest to see who would get the patent rights, and the tools were not designed with peaceful purpose in mind. The scientists involved knew the terrible power of the weapon they were developing. They knew that it was not just a bigger version of something that was already in use. They understood that moderate increases in power were a matter of increased quantity, but that increasing power by many orders of magnitude would not be just a quantitative increase; that it was qualitative, that it would completely change the nature of the tool, and the nature of the world.

But it was not peace time. The few who understood the awesome potential about to be realized could not go slow. Neither could they caution their nation that something entirely new and dangerous was being created. They had to hope that Good would win the race, and that Evil would not win the war, and that thoughtfulness could come after.

This is the environment in which was developed the technology that would completely remake the world. Since the end of that war, this technology has completely dominated national issues and international relations. It has fundamentally remade the power balance between nations, and between people and their governments. Powerful commercial interests have become part of the struggle, and commercial interests are also amoral.

All of our nations have, in some sense, been struggling to be thoughtful after the fact. This new technology was released into the world out of necessity, and ever since we have been trying to prevent it from completely ruining our humanity and our human existence. After the war, the power of these tools continued to increase by orders of magnitude, and we have at least realized that we can't simply allow this power to go wherever it will and be used indiscriminately or for whatever petty purpose some misguided leader might find convenient at the moment. But even now, so many decades further on, we're still coming to terms with the awesome power of electronic data processing and storage.

Again, please forgive the rough writing. It needs to be about half as long.

That was fun to bash out, but now we come to the part where I actually have something to contribute to this thread:

Gumby, I think you're wrong. Data collection, storage, and analysis has completely changed the game. Attaching a GPS to a car should require a warrant, but it "should" because of what can be collected. If we put cameras everywhere and match the stream up with license-plate and facial recognition technology, doesn't that result in the same thing as putting GPS trackers on everyone's car?

If we require telecom companies to give up cell phone data whenever asked then what's the result? We've made it a social necessity to have a cell phone on us, and a legal necessity to give the government the log of our GPS data whenever they want (which has turned into them taking all of it and then deciding when it's ok for them to browse through their own copy of the data).

I agree that privacy is an issue, but the world we live in now is filled with technology that fundamentally changes what privacy is and how it works. With persistent data capture and storage, there is no longer any medium-grade privacy. There is no short-term memory. Almost everything is either perfectly anonymous, or perfectly available to the analysis tools of whichever authority has jurisdiction.

Originally Posted by Gumby

Also speed cameras are way better than cops writing tickets. You just have to be smart about it.

I believe in smart people. I hope we can have smart institutions too, but I don't want to rely too heavily on smart government.

Cheers,


AetheLove

The difference in my mind is that you can take your car to plenty of places that a camera won't see while a GPS will always report its information. Also, a camera gives no more information than anyone could get just walking along the road. A GPS attached to your car is also specifically targeting you.

For the record I don't support a full system of cameras because it would be a colossal waste of money. There aren't enough crimes to justify it and it is a very police state thing to do. I am just saying that the data collected by a camera in a public place has no need for a warrant.

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Originally Posted by Gumby

The difference in my mind is that you can take your car to plenty of places that a camera won't see while a GPS will always report its information. Also, a camera gives no more information than anyone could get just walking along the road. A GPS attached to your car is also specifically targeting you.

Tell that to someone who lives and works in central London.

A camera by itself is very different from a GPS. It can mark one data point for time/location. It can see way more than a person walking along the road. It records what it sees, and someone can then go back and look slowly and deliberately. This is much more thorough than a glance from walking down the road, or even a trained eye scanning to see whatever is in "plain sight."

But that's just one camera. Lots and lots of cameras storing everything to a central repository are more than just a bunch of cameras.

Originally Posted by Gumby

For the record I don't support a full system of cameras because it would be a colossal waste of money. There aren't enough crimes to justify it and it is a very police state thing to do. I am just saying that the data collected by a camera in a public place has no need for a warrant.

I'm don't think we should depend on the government not doing something because it would be a colossal waste of money, and clearly at least a few government agencies aren't worried (at all) about doing things which look like "a very police state thing to do".

The idea for me is that data collection, processing, analysis, and storage fundamentally change the way things will work. Fission bombs, and thermo-nuclear bombs, aren't just bigger bombs. They have completely changed the potential consequences of war, and have greatly complicated the relationships between nations.

I think that sensing, networking, and computing are just as big a deal. I don't want to come off as hysterical, or a Luddite. I love this technology and think it can make life better. But that will depend heavily on how we use it. It has just as much potential to make all our lives a Kafkaesque nightmare.

Cheers,


AetheLove

What you are describing is more of an Orwellian nightmare - however, specifically with respect to cameras we have all given our consent (or at least anyone who applies for a license) to the traffic monitoring. I agree that the technology and consent can be exploited - but weighing the good exploitation against the bad I still see the trade as a good one for society.

Look at 2 recent cases where the gov't cameras - in addition to numerous private cameras - helped authorities identify potential bad actors. The 2 most recent are the Aaron Hernadez case, and the Boston Marathon. In both, the Mass authorities accessed the information on all of the gov't cameras and multiple private cameras to put the cases together. Now in one, the Boston Marathon case the accused 'appears' guilty and the camera evidence will be very important to his case. In the other, the Aaron Hernandez case, from the outside it looks like the gov't has built a solid case, yet many unanswered questions remain. Unlike the marathon, there is no camera image of Hernandez pulling the trigger (in the marathon case they have the shot of 'someone' placing the device).

This use of the cameras show their value to society in the extreme case. In the normal course these camera are used to identify street crimes, traffic violations etc. All valid governmental uses.

The Orwellian overtones do exist though - and like much of technology this one is subject to abuse. At this point I have not seen abuse.

So there's this thing called Tax Law. And the people with power, money and Time have put all those into research about how to beat it, or at least find the Loop holes in it. The End result is Paying Taxes or the Lack of.

I equate that with how the Gov't and/or Law enforcement has put Power, Time an Money into doing the same to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. The Core of it being Tracking your Movements. Whether Gps or a bunch of cameras the result is the same, and should require a warrant.

Originally Posted by iravedic

What you are describing is more of an Orwellian nightmare - however, specifically with respect to cameras we have all given our consent (or at least anyone who applies for a license) to the traffic monitoring. I agree that the technology and consent can be exploited - but weighing the good exploitation against the bad I still see the trade as a good one for society.

Maybe, but I chose Kafka on purpose.

I'm concerned about Orwell's warning. I think the potential is real, and it certainly makes for the most compelling and easily understood dystopia.

I also keep Huxley's warning in mind. It's just as likely that we do it to ourselves.

For me this is more of a Panopticon worry. The idea is Bentham's, but the warning comes from Foucault.

... and one possible result is the world described by Kafka. I don't want "The Trial" to be prophetic. At least in Orwell's world I know who's wearing the boot that is stomping on my face forever.

Originally Posted by iravedic

Look at 2 recent cases where the gov't cameras - in addition to numerous private cameras - helped authorities identify potential bad actors. The 2 most recent are the Aaron Hernadez case, and the Boston Marathon. In both, the Mass authorities accessed the information on all of the gov't cameras and multiple private cameras to put the cases together. Now in one, the Boston Marathon case the accused 'appears' guilty and the camera evidence will be very important to his case. In the other, the Aaron Hernandez case, from the outside it looks like the gov't has built a solid case, yet many unanswered questions remain. Unlike the marathon, there is no camera image of Hernandez pulling the trigger (in the marathon case they have the shot of 'someone' placing the device).

This use of the cameras show their value to society in the extreme case. In the normal course these camera are used to identify street crimes, traffic violations etc. All valid governmental uses.

The Orwellian overtones do exist though - and like much of technology this one is subject to abuse. At this point I have not seen abuse.

When I worked in IT, you know what never happened to me? No one ever came into my office and said:

"So I've been working all day I noticed that all the software, and all the devices, and all the hardware you and your staff have set up on or near my desk, and all the networking infrastructure, just kept working pretty much as it's supposed to. And I got all my work done, and all my communications went where they were supposed to, and everyone who needed to tell me something or send me a file was able to do that with no problem at all. And it's pretty much like that almost every day too. So thank you!"

I only ever heard about one side of the coin: when shit didn't work the way someone wanted it to work. If I wanted to know about the other side of the coin I had to go ask. I often DID go and ask, and asking into the other side of that coin was amazingly useful. In addition to getting actual compliments and "nope, everything's working great!" feedback, I also got to see where we could do even better. I could make better choices about where to put resources.

Police departments that run roadblocks always tell you how many people failed a sobriety check or how many people had expired inspection stickers. They never tell you how many people were delayed and inconvenienced, or how much gas got burned going nowhere, or how many people were late getting to an appointment or to pick up the kids. They never tell you how much it cost to run that checkpoint, and they never tell you what other things that money could have bought. They never mention other crimes that happened elsewhere at the same time.

The TSA has spent an insane amount of money. They have only ever vaguely hinted that some bad things have been prevented as a result of the security theatre they run. But they have never mentioned how many tens of millions of people have had their precious time taken from them. They don't publicly state how many people have been harassed for no purpose, or how many children have cried, or how many porn-scans of attractive women have been "inspected" multiple times (just to be sure) and saved for demonstration purposes.. They don't tell us how much luggage they've broken, or how many thefts have been committed by TSA employees.

There are dozens more examples, but I'm not trying to rant.

So while I'm happy that video evidence has helped solve a few crimes, the occasional success story does little to convince me that these technologies are worth either the expense or the social costs.

Worse than that, they do nothing to give me confidence that these tools aren't being abused.

Where is my confidence? Sure, some bad guys got caught. I agree that's a good thing. But where is the other side of the coin? Everything on the other side of the coin is a fucking secret.

Here's what I'm supposed to be confident about: That the Secret Police won't send me to the Secret Prison because the Secret Courts won't let them.

Help me, Franz.


Æ

Gumby-

The gov't will never put GPS units on our cars. They don't need to. We willingly put them in our pockets, and take them everywhere we go. You can hide your car, but you can't hide your ass with a cell phone in your pocket. The NSA is collecting those records......they know where you likely are, and where you've been. The only ones who know more about us are the fine people over at Visa.