No, that's kind of just a fact? When you're in public, you're interacting with others, meaning your actions (or lack thereof) no longer only impacts yourself.
So, it stops being solely your business, and starts to become slightly others', as well.
Because your statement makes no point unless it is a defense of current technology.
Most people don't expect others to look away while you pick your nose at the grocery store. The statement about defending privacy in public is almost always about tracking and the ease of it.
That wasn't the statement I was replying to, though?
Please re-read the thread, without injecting your own pre-conceived notions into it? The statement was simply this:
"Because my business is my business and nobody else's. Full stop."
When it comes to being in public or at a grocery store, this is simply untrue. Being in public involves interacting with other people, at which point it inherently ceases to be just your business, and starts to be others', too.
That entitles them to some amount of say in it, however small it might be, depending on the context.
No where did I say anything about the degree of surveillance?
I did inject my preconceived notion into it. You are correct.
Because usually, when someone says "my business is my business", they don't mean "no one has the right to look at me when I'm out in public". That kind of statement about my business being mine in public, is usually tied to tracking and/or persistent, shareable surveillance video.
>That kind of statement about my business being mine in public, is usually tied to tracking and/or persistent, shareable surveillance video.
Sorry for the late reply.
Exactly.
From a fairly broad perspective, I do mean "my business is my business," but as another commenter noted, it's not only my business. And I agree. It's also the concern of those with whom I interact, both directly (e.g., talking to a cashier as I make a purchase at a grocery store) or indirectly (e.g., whether or not I litter).
In those cases, it's also the cashier and whoever maintains the street's business as well. Which is so blindingly obvious I didn't think it needed explication. My apologies for any confusion.
In any case, I find the idea that I, Nobody9999, should be tracked, surveilled and/or otherwise profiled, in the course of my everyday activities to be quite offensive.
Unfortunately, unless I want to live "off the grid" (i.e., cower in a leanto out in the woods somewhere), I have to submit to some of that. And more's the pity.
But that doesn't mean I have to like it. Nor does it mean I have to pretend it's not a direct affront to my (and everyone else's) privacy.
But the original statement is still a false statement, is it not?
If others are free to observe you while you are in public with them, are they not also free to do whatever they wish with that information? Same as you are free to attempt to share as little as possible with them. Public spaces are commons, and private spaces are subject to the rules of their owners, as you are also bound by them, in some form.
Once you leave your own property, what you do ceases to be your business alone, and begins to also be someone else's. There are clearly matters of degree, but it's also impossible to be in public without broadcasting copious amounts of personal information. If others in public are equipped to collect that information in whatever form it takes, why is that suddenly wrong?
Disagreeing with that tells me that by saying "my business is only my business, and nobody else's" you really mean "no one has the right to observe me/interact with me in public". Otherwise, you'd have to agree with my earlier statements, right?
>If others in public are equipped to collect that information in whatever form it takes, why is that suddenly wrong?
Legally, it may not be. But it's creepy and invasive. Doxxing is a net negative to society. And more than individuals catching me in photos or videos incidentally, is the problem of surveillance and tracking, something I have mentioned repeatedly and you have failed to acknowledge. First came CCTV, then comes ubiquitous cheap video storage, now comes AI that can analyze that video in real time for identification and behavioral analysis.
I'll flip your question on its head: why is it the default that people should consent to ubiquitous machine-based activity monitoring by all their peers and their government, just because the technology exists? What's the benefit?
If society has lived without ubiquitous surveillance and automated behavioral analytics and tracking for all history, why is it suddenly right?
> Legally, it may not be. But it's creepy and invasive.
Creepy to you, maybe. It's creepy to me that some people want to live their lives as faceless, nameless ghosts in a modern society!
> Doxxing is a net negative to society.
Is it? You're making a very bold claim here and stating it as fact, as if it's somehow self-evident. It isn't, though.
> And more than individuals catching me in photos or videos incidentally, is the problem of surveillance and tracking, something I have mentioned repeatedly and you have failed to acknowledge. First came CCTV, then comes ubiquitous cheap video storage, now comes AI that can analyze that video in real time for identification and behavioral analysis.
I haven't failed to acknowledge them at all! One of my first replies in this thread explicitly acknowledged such things.
I just fail to differentiate ubiquitous surveillance from incidental surveillance. To me, the latter is simply an extension of the former. Yes, scale can make things markedly different, but it's not inherently negative. The scale of our ability to communicate has increased drastically over the past few decades, and while it has come with some bad effects, increasing the scale of our ability to communicate is not inherently bad. In fact, I think a lot of the negatives that have come with mass communication come from the relative anonymity of the mediums.
You know, the good ol' "people feel perfectly fine saying things they wouldn't say to someone's face, when they're hiding behind a keyboard, screen, and pseudonym" problem. It's not always a problem, yes, but I see far more assholes taking advantage of it to escape societal consequences than I see afflicted minorities escaping unfair judgement.
> I'll flip your question on its head: why is it the default that people should consent to ubiquitous machine-based activity monitoring by all their peers and their government, just because the technology exists? What's the benefit?
I can think of all sorts of benefits!
Better security, more accountability for anti-social behaviors, better health management, discoveries of all sorts of social phenomena that can be empirically documented, etc etc. There are vast, untapped reserves of information that can and should be used to better society as a whole, rather than discarding it all as some kind of detritus.
The vast majority of any individual's "information footprint" is utterly wasted, and you're arguing for even more wastage. I'd love for there to be preventative diagnostics for health conditions, that can do things like tell me I have early stage cancer, because it can detect information I'm emitting in some form that would otherwise go undetected. Compared to the alternative, where I only go see the doctor when I notice some ill effects, which could potentially be too late for treatment? Yeah, that seems like a net positive to me, and a far better utilization of my information footprint than simply discarding all of it.
I'd also love for it to be harder to behave anti-socially in all contexts, and to feel confident that the person I'm transacting with isn't scamming me, etc.
> If society has lived without ubiquitous surveillance and automated behavioral analytics and tracking for all history, why is it suddenly right?
Let me flip this question on it's head: if we've been living in ignorance of something for all history, when we discover that ignorance, why should we endeavor to continue in it, when there are better alternatives?
I'm not arguing that such things like "anti-social behavior" are cut and dry things, nor that my definitions of such things should be accepted by all. These are things we can and should debate, and come to agreement on in democratic ways.
But to simply be against it because "it's too hard", "I don't like it", and "we've always done it that way" strike me as a terribly ignorant approach.
> If it's not a negative, you should have no problem doing so, right?
Faulty logic - it can be bad for specific individuals while being a net good for society at large.
NOTE: I am not the OG claimant, I'm not supporting their argument - I'm merely pointing out your rebuttal is weak (to the point of not working at all).
>Faulty logic - it can be bad for specific individuals while being a net good for society at large.
How is every person living in fear that they can be identified, stalked, subjected to abuse or even killed just because some rando doesn't like what they said on some internet forum a "net good for society at large"?
Please do explain.
As for my "rebuttal" being weak, I merely called for GP to have the courage of their convictions. And since (based on their participation in this discussions) they apparently have neither, I thought I'd point that up.
Don't like my writing style? Note my username and feel free to ignore me.
> How is every person living in fear that they can be identified, stalked, subjected to abuse or even killed just because some rando doesn't like what they said on some internet forum a "net good for society at large"?
That has nothing to do with your argument above re: one specific person being weak to the point of nonexistent - you've gone off on a tangent.
> Please do explain.
It's self evident to those with a background in formal debate, mathematical logic, general reasoning, etc. If you honestly can't see that and are interested in improving your comment skills in a technical forum such as HN then you may want to look into that.
> I merely called for GP to have the courage of their convictions.
Their claim that Doxxing might be a net good has little to do with it being bad for individuals doxxed, nor even being bad for every individual actually doxxed.
"Net good" and metrics for good|bad are the concepts you'd need to firm up and address here.
> Don't like my writing style?
It's the unsubstantive rhetoric in the guise of reason I addressed - that done I suspect we're done.
Perhaps with practice you'll do better in future than lurking about sniping at week old comments secure in the knowledge they likely won't even see your fluff.
Depends on the state and city, there's no federal law. Madison Square Garden (notoriously) use facial recognition to ban all lawyers from their venue who work at firms engaged in active litigation against them. This was upheld in May [1][2] since in NYC you can collect biometric data for commercial use without consent as long as it's signposted and you're not selling the data [3].
Gee, I wonder if some self righteous asshole is "lurking about...week old comments" So they can make themselves feel better by blathering on for no apparent reason.
I don't know about case law, but when you walk into a grocery store, it certainly becomes their business!
Where's the case law and precedent that says your business is only your own, even when on a public sidewalk or in a grocery store? If you're going to make such unreasonable demands, can we start with your own claims, since you made them first?
If you want to get your mind blown, bring up traffic light cameras in Texas where people use "I have the right to privacy" to literally mean they should be able to run a red light [and potentially T-bone someone].
Public roads should be a clear case where your business is everyone else's business since you're hurtling down the road in an increasingly heavier vehicle, but we're far from being able to acknowledge that.
This only doesn't blow my mind because I've noticed a distinct trend among the most vocal "right to privacy" folks: they want to get away with anti-social behavior.
I'm admittedly biased from spending a few years steeped in the cryptocurrency community, where literally everything has a hidden (or not!) self-serving agenda, however. But even beyond that realm, I see far too many privacy advocates whose examples of "reasons why you should want privacy" end up being examples of hiding bad behavior (infidelity, etc). If you couple this with anti-social people being privacy advocates out of necessity, it ends up reflecting very poorly on the privacy community as a whole.
