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Jon_Lowtek a day ago

The citizens of the USA need to modernize their concept of privacy. Defining it over private/public spaces comes from a time when mass surveillance was technologically unfeasible. Technology has changed, and so must the definition of privacy.

thought experiment: >> if they do not want their conversations in their living room recorded, parsed by automated language models running in our datacenters, and added to their permanent record, they shouldn't have a window to a public space that vibrates. All we are doing is being in a public space, spending billions of VC money to point laser microphones at all homes 24/7 collecting data that anyone in this public space could have collected. You can not outlaw that without outlawing 5 year old Timmy riding his tricycle down the sidewalk, because we are using his right to see the light from his lamp being reflected by the houses, to justify why our creepy business model isn't a violation of millions of peoples privacy. You can't have a reasonable expectation of privacy that allows little Timmy to see, but forbids our corporation to spy on everyone, not in america. We also send electromagnetic waves out on one side off your house and collect them on the other, so we can see you move inside your house. It is basically like ham radio, anyone could do it, little Timmy sends electromagnetic waves through your house when he talks to his friend on a walkie talkie. You think Timmy shouldn't be allowed to have a walkie-talkie? We just send them through all the homes, all the time, everywhere. No we are not on your property all our devices are in public spaces <<

The idea that, if a single piece of information could be collected by a human in a public space, then mass scale collection of that and similar information at all times and in all public spaces, for any purpose by a fully automated behemoth is fine, is insane.

The USA needs to amend its constitution to define the right to privacy in a way that declares mass surveillance and systematic profiling using non-consensual data gathering at scale illegal for being the nefarious violation of basic human rights that it is, before they completely loose what little privacy they have left when they hole up in their homes.

itsthecourier 15 hours ago | parent [-]

good examples