alt Hacker News> I don't understand why a police cruiser can sit in a public space (or even a private one) and write down licence plates and descriptions of passers-by with pen and paper, or record everything around them with dashcams and bodycams for later use, but when it comes to cameras on a pole this would require a warrant.
Scale actually matters. Things that are generally OK at a small scale become problematic at larger scales. A single police cruiser writing down license plates isn't able to track you in the same way a huge surveillance network is, and the opportunities for abuse are much lower.
Replies
> Scale actually matters.
Exactly. Like it's ok for the police to murder 1 or 2 people per day, but if they start killing 1000s, it becomes a genocide.
It's not about scale, it's about oversight. A warrant puts a lock on the data until the request is approved. Leaving it wide open is the reason we have constant news stories about police being arrested for stalking people. Nobody wants to limit the police's ability to investigate crimes, but we do want them to use their power to investigate crimes, not to stalk their baby mama, crush, rival, etc. I fully understand and accept your point that there is no real difference between a cop watching and the cop setting (or hiring) a camera to watch, and I even believe that the more data available the more humanity benefits, and that a total absence of privacy as we know it is inevitable, I think we are not there yet culturally, so strictly requiring warrants for police to access these systems is desirable.
Scale is more about efficiency and cost, though. Plenty of people want more policemen patrolling the streets.
>Scale actually matters
Is this actually born out in Court Cases? Warrantless Surveillance by NSA seems to be blanket legal for example.
But then scale doesn't actually matter. If you have a problem with something that "everyone does" then you should have a problem with something only a few people do.
[dead]
> Scale actually matters. Things that are generally OK at a small scale become problematic at larger scales. A single police cruiser writing down license plates isn't able to track you in the same way a huge surveillance network is, and the opportunities for abuse are much lower.
Not only this, this a precedented court opinion.