alt Hacker News> False, he is forcing Flock on EVERYONE
> No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled
As much as I dislike Flock, this is bad logic. There's no such thing as opting out of surveillance in public spaces. Public spaces are defined by being public, in that everyone (even governments/corporations!) is free to observe everyone else in that same setting.
So in reality, everyone has permitted themselves to be surveilled, purely through the act of being in public.
This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
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> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is bogus
Okay: Just how long would you permit someone to follow you around with a camera, recording everything you do?
The thing about a stranger watching you in public is that eventually you go somewhere else, and they can't watch you anymore. A surveillance organization like Flock, however, is waiting for you wherever you go. In this sense they're much more like a stalker following you around than a stranger who happens to see you.
This analogy bears out in practice: Cops have used Flock data to stalk their exes.¹
[1]: https://www.kwch.com/2022/10/31/kechi-police-lieutenant-arre...
There's a ton of difference between a random person noting my presence at a single point in space-time and a commercial entity tracking and storing my movements all the time.
Being okay with people watching me in public does not imply being okay with someone aggregating the information about my whereabouts 24/7 even though it's "the same" information.
Btw it's a fallacy similar to the one debunked in "what colour are your bits". The context matters, not just the abstract information.
>> False, he is forcing Flock on EVERYONE
>> No one has permitted themselves to be surveilled
> As much as I dislike Flock, this is bad logic. There's no such thing as opting out of surveillance in public spaces.
You're agreeing that he is forcing flock on people. Legality doesn't make it not-forced. Not needing consent is different from receiving consent.
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
If you followed me around all day taking photographs of my every move for no other reason than you felt like it, I would very likely have recourse via stalking and harassment laws.
There is no difference to me that some company does it via technology.
If I'm interesting enough to get a warrant for surveillance of my activities - fair game. Private investigators operate under a set of reasonable limits and must be licensed in most (all?) states for this reason as well.
It's quite obvious laws have simply not caught up with the state of modern technology that allows for the type of data collection and thus mass-surveillance that is now possible today. If you went back 50 years ago and asked anyone on the street if it was okay that every time they left the house their travel history would be recorded indefinitely they would talk to you about communist dystopias that could never happen here due to the 2nd amendment.
> There's no such thing as opting out of surveillance in public spaces.
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
Might I interest you in the concepts of stalking and restraining orders?
>This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
The idea that me an individual observing you, and a large, well funded company allied with the US government observing you has no difference, quite frankly, leads me to conclude* you are arguing in bad faith.
You can make an ideological argument that is the case, but not one based on fact and reality.
*edited for spelling
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
The idea that there's not a scale difference is, quite frankly, bogus.
this is still forcing flock on everyone.
they could instead be limiting flock to private places.
> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you in public and Flock watching you in public is, quite frankly, bogus.
if you followed me everywhere and took pictures of me everywhwre i went outside from my door in the morning to my door in the evening, id want to get a restraining order on you as a stalker. this is stalking
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I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America.
If this is what they thought was possible, why write the 4th Amendment?
Unreasonable search and overbearing government was one of the key issues of the American Revolution.