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Domestic Surveillance Drones Could Spur Tougher Privacy Laws
An anonymous reader writes "Have you ever been spied on by a surveillance drone? No? Are you sure? Maybe it looked like a hummingbird. Or an insect. Or maybe it was just really high up. Maybe there's one looking in your window right now, and if so, there's no law that says it shouldn't. In a recent article in the Stanford Law Review, Ryan Calo discusses how domestic surveillance drones would fit into the current legal definitions of privacy (and violations thereof), and how these issues could inform the future of privacy policy. The nutshell? Surveillance robots have the potential to fundamentally degrade privacy to such an extent that they could serve as a catalyst for reform."
Only laws I would expect to be passed regarding such things is that it would be legal for them to be used on us, but illegal for us to use them. But perhaps I'm just a cynical bastard.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
More likely the frog-in-boiling-water metaphor will apply, as the gradual decline in privacy (up to the present and going forward) prevents most people from noticing just how hot things are getting.
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I believe the approach authoritarians use to justify new surveillance powers is to split hairs about the applicability of existing law. They make sophist arguments such as: wiretapping laws were written for switched-telephone lines and don't apply to packet-switched VoIP; the Fourth Amendment protects citizens' "papers" but electronic data such as e-mail are not "papers." So I think there is reason to be concerned that a court may rule surveillance drones are not constrained by existing statues.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
You still need a warrant if the surveillance is directed at an individual. And if it's just patrolling, how is that any different than a cop walking his beat?
Surveillance technologies bring two main changes to the table, even when otherwise analogous to some prior method:
1. Economics: There is no legal problem with having cops walking 100% of the legally public beats 100% of the time. Economically, though, there just aren't enough cops to do that. In practice, one of the major protections from the state historically enjoyed by most people is not law; but simple lack of resources. It may be legal to have a cop follow you on a public road, and determine your route; but that cop isn't cheap, so you'll have to attract some suspicion first. Slapping a $100, reusable, magnetic GPS bug on your car, on the other hand, is overwhelmingly cheaper than having a $50,000/yr cop following you. Even if the two are analogous, the level of protection enjoyed in one case is far lower than in the other.
2. Retention: Humans, by necessity, have lousy memories. Our eyes just slide right over mundane happenings and they fall away almost immediately. Storage of electronic surveillance data, on the other hand, is cheap and getting cheaper(and easier to automatically search). Trying to track the routes of all motorists in a city based on data from the beat cops would be essentially impossible. Doing the same from an equivalent number of license-plate cameras? Hard; but tractable.
The crux of the matter is that, as cost decreases and retention increases, 'just patrolling' and 'surveillance directed at an individual' stop being distinct categories: the agents that are 'just patrolling' gather and retain enough data that (proactively or retroactively) turning that patrol into surveillance is essentially just a matter of doing the DB lookup. We haven't reached that point yet; but basically any advance in the cost or capability of automated surveillance technology moves us closer. Patrolling and targeted surveillance aren't fundamentally different, they are different because human agents are really bad at patrolling, and have to be given quite different orders if you want them to get useful data on a specific target. If an agent is good at patrolling, all people that pass within its view are effectively surveilled...
Here is my answer to the inevitable "it's public, and you have no expectation of privacy."
Suppose that the mayor or governor where you live doesn't like you, and arranged so that whenever you left your house, there was a squad car (or foot patrol) waiting on the street, and they followed you where-ever you went. If you go in a store, they're just down the aisle. If you go to church, they sit in the next pew. If you go to a bar, they are there a few feet away. At no time do they invade your house, or touch you, but they are always there, watching and listening.
You have just described the life of a dissident in Eastern Europe, circa 1975-1985. If you think this is OK, or normal, or part of a civilized society, you are crazy.
If you think that it is OK to do all of this with machinery instead of people, you are also crazy. It's no different if it is a goon or a robotic gnat.