the legal standard is based off of the idea that a police officer could easily sit in a fixed location and take down license plate numbers that pass by
that and you don't have any legitimate expectation of privacy while in public because you are in public
the really strange part is the folks that are angry about flock cameras are often the same people who are angry that folks like elon musk want the movements of the private jets to be non-public information
i can get around my community without worrying one bit about flock cameras surveilling me. the bike trails i use generally don't have cameras and even if they did i'm riding a fairly generic bike and wearing neutral and unmemorable clothing.
even with actual dragnet surveillance in NYC they couldn't track a dude on a bike effectively.
Nor the dents and identifying marks, effectively. Nor within a realistic budget (24/7 * average officer hourly rate * # of Flocks nationwide + time spent sharing with desired other jurisdictions + cost to analyze).
Point driven in by fellow commenters this year: scale matters!
The real privacy problem is the requirement to display plates... a problem that exists only because of the government's mandate to do so.
I think it breaks the 'its in public so its public' argument. The state requires you to display plates-- its its responsibility to complete the law: e.g. make possession of a third parties plate number a serious felony outside of limited circumstances.
just sticking with the zeitgeist around LLMs where selling a finished product is unimportant. it's actually a bad idea. you want to be nothing but a promise in the future of a finished product so that folks can fill in the details of what that finished product will be with their wildest fantasies.
how much of your economic output are you comfortable with companies like Anthropic stealing to put you out of work?
at least in Player Piano they paid the workers who made the cassette tapes that made the robots work.
our current LLM overlords demand that they be able to basically steal the sum total of all human knowledge so that they can sell it back to us at a rate they set.
they should have been shunned by society and made penniless when they first announced their goals but we have a bunch of deeply misanthropic people who have money and want to make a world where computer slaves do their bidding.
If you believe information deserves to be free, and if most of your earnings were from information that wasn't given away for free -- well, if you want people to give up their ill gotten gains, maybe you can start by setting an example.
So, mind sending me your bank account information? I'll promise to make good use of it.
No. I think AI companies consume the result of intellectual work that should typically be paid for. If someone doesn't believe intellectual work should be paid for so that others can benefit, I invite them to lead the way.
is there any evidence that Alec Scollon, the first time blog author responsible for this post, even exists? look up the name. boo this post and the premise behind it.
Define "exists". Are you questioning whether a human typed those characters with human fingers on a keyboard? Or are you questioning whether Alec Scollon is the name on that human's government-issued ID? It's not exactly new or unusual for people to use pseudonyms.
that and you don't have any legitimate expectation of privacy while in public because you are in public
the really strange part is the folks that are angry about flock cameras are often the same people who are angry that folks like elon musk want the movements of the private jets to be non-public information
i can get around my community without worrying one bit about flock cameras surveilling me. the bike trails i use generally don't have cameras and even if they did i'm riding a fairly generic bike and wearing neutral and unmemorable clothing.
even with actual dragnet surveillance in NYC they couldn't track a dude on a bike effectively.