Well, in my precinct I'd estimate there are ~20 people at the polls to vote at any given time. Given the timestamp of a ballot, there are maybe 50 people it could have possibly been.

That's more than enough information to correlate voting behavior after a couple of election cycles with a high degree of confidence.

Oh, and ballots aren't just for one race generally. By looking at what races that ballot voted in and a list of people present, there's a very good chance you'd be able to narrow it down to an individual in a single visit.

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Manuel_D 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The ballots are timestamped to a degree fine-grained enough to narrow down the set of potential voters to just 50 people? Which state is this? I'm not finding any search results indicating that ballots are timestamped. In fact, some of the results I've encountered specifically say that ballots aren't timestamped to ensure privacy. But happy to learn more of you can explain how ballots in your state are timestamped.

In my state, we have to sign our name on the envelope containing our ballot. If the government was corrupt and they wanted to identify how people voted, they could just look at the signature. No Flock required.

Of all the things to complain about Flock, the notion that it can somehow de-anonymize ballots is probably one of the most unusual I've heard.

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Ancapistani 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My point wasn't that Flock allows this, but that it allows an entire class of surveillance that was previously not available.

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Manuel_D 2 hours ago | parent [-]

What wasn't previously available? Automated license plate readers have been around since the 70s, and started being widely deployed in the 1990s as technology got cheaper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni...

It's not new tech.

	▲	Ancapistani 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The closest thing to it was repo companies sharing data. This is very much a new thing.

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etchalon 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

At no point did I say it could de-anonymize ballots.

You claimed ballots provided the government with the information they needed to know who voted.

I pointed that is untrue. Ballots explicitly do not.

The fact you posted that tells you know have a Google level understanding of the law in the US, and the fact you posted an article about private citizens using public data as proof of the legality of government-operated mass surveillance data tells me you're a deeply unserious person who should probably read Robert's writing in the majority opinion in Carpenter.

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Manuel_D 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The 9th circuit upheld the use of automated license plate readers in US vs. Yang. The defense attempted to use Carpenter to argue against the legality of ALPR data, and failed: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca7/21...

I really appreciate the irony of you alleging a "Google level understanding" on my part, when your own argument was tried in a court of appeals and failed.

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etchalon 2 hours ago | parent [-]

If you're going to Google a rebuttal to sound smart, please read the opinion before you do.

The Ninth Circuit in US v Yang specifically did not rule on the applicability of Carpenter or whether ALPR's GPS database was sufficiently similar.

It ruled Yang lacked standing to sue on those grounds because you don't have any expectation of privacy in a rental car after you've turned it in.

It ... has absolutely nothing to do with anything.

I helpfully pointed out the actual case you should cite in a different comment.

Try Googling that one.

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Manuel_D an hour ago | parent [-]

But crucially, the police used the ALPR data without a warrant. Regardless of the rental car, the police did use ALPR data without a warrant and the court did allow that to be used in court.

It's still a court that came down in favor of warrantless use of ALPR data, even if the situation around the overdue rental car might limit it's application more broadly.

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etchalon 44 minutes ago | parent [-]

... the entire point of the decision was whether a person has an expectation of privacy in a rental car outside of the rental period.

The court didn't come down in favor of warrantless use of ALPR data. It said that the defendant did not have standing to challenge the use of ALPR data, warrant or not, because said person had no expectation of privacy in a vehicle they had no legal claim to during the period the data covered.

FFS, the court, in the opinion, which you linked to prove you're smart, quoted, verbatim:

"We do not address the potential Fourth Amendment privacy interests that may be implicated by the warrantless use of this ALPR technology because we conclude that Yang does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the historical location data of the Yukon under the facts of this case."

You are deeply dishonest and exhausting.

	▲	Manuel_D 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		As I wrote in my comment the court did add a caveat that could limit how broadly this precedence gets applied. But at the end of the day: 1) The police did use ALPR data without a warrant. 2) The court upheld the use of ALPR data without a warrant in this case. How widely this will get applied remains to be seen. The court did not say that a warrant would be required had Yang not been in a rental car, which is what people seem to be implying.