bigstones wrote:

SoftwareEngineer wrote:The real problem is this. There is a lot of activities that are near the edge of legality. For example taking or buying drugs, paying for sex, owning and shooting guns, looking at pictures of naked people, and in particular using high-capacity magazines for handguns. The reason they are on the edge is that they are common and have long traditions, but are considered unseemly and are despised by many. In particular by anti-fun anti-libertarian nosy people who like to control other people's behavior. Note that these are all "victimless crimes" (perhaps with the exception of prostitution, although someone who of their own volition enters into a "rent my body for an hour for money" contract is perhaps a victim, but definitely a willing participant in a civil contract).

We can't outright prohibit these. It has been tried over and over (the 18th amendment is the ultimate example of a train wreck caused by do-gooders). So instead we try to regulate and curtail them. And in doing so, we tend to lose our common sense of what is appropriate and sensible. This leads to a silly war on drugs (which creates real crime, lots of murdered people, oodles of needlessly incarcerated people), shaming of both sex workers and Johns, incredibly complicated and mostly ineffective gun control laws, and a porn industry that is highly profitable. The most ridiculous example is the insane situation of high-cap magazines in California: You can own them, but you can't buy new ones, you can repair certain damage to it but not other, they can be confiscated without just compensation if they're considered a nuisance (even though owning and using them is not a crime), and you can't drive through LA with them, but it's OK to drive around LA.

The extant case is one more example where the "righteous indignation" caused people to do something that's just dumb. Publicly shaming John's is expensive, divisive, borderline unethical (I'll explain why below), and probably completely ineffective. It makes politicians look good to a certain segment of the population (those people who are rightfully upset about the collateral damage from prostitution, and religious fundamentalists who are against all forms of sex), without accomplishing anything.

If our society could only become more clear in its thinking about these problem areas, and make them either completely illegal and enforce, or make them completely legal, the whole problem would just go away. But no, we can't do that, because there is a conflict between a vocal minority of prohibitionist crusaders, and a silent majority of people who have all these distasteful habits. And a democracy doesn't work well if the majority feels that it needs to be silent, because it is ashamed.

Now, why is using plate scanners "unethical"? Because, as pointed out above, our society as a whole (not just government!) needs to learn to respect privacy more and more. And government should lead there, instead of being dragged by activists into following. The correct reaction of the LA city government should have been: Yes, we have license plate scanner data (and surveillance cameras, and cell phone location records). Yes, we need to collect it, for law enforcement, city planning, and such purposes. We are not willing to help anyone in their pseudo-moral crusade against activities (such as driving a car in an area known for prostitution) that are inherently not illegal. And because we are unwilling to help with such crusades, we have arranged our data retention policies such that neither the city government as a whole nor its individual staff are even capable of doing so. That's why we chose to store plate scanner data only in abstracted, summarized and anonymized form for the long term. Whatever data we have, you can have, but you're not going to be able to figure out from it where John Doe was on the night of January 16th.

Instead, this thread turned into a rant against government (evil), big data (more evil), and citizen's united (most evil), all of which is wrong.

The answer to your question is that when the government does it, it is a violation of your freedom of association guaranteed by the First Amendment. The First Amendment establishes three important rights freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association.

lurker wrote:go ahead, track me. i guarantee you'll be bored.

bigstones wrote: The answer to your question is that when the government does it, it is a violation of your freedom of association guaranteed by the First Amendment. The First Amendment establishes three important rights freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association.

shinzen wrote:

lurker wrote:go ahead, track me. i guarantee you'll be bored.

Says someone who consorts with revolutionaries

shinzen wrote: and is known to have amassed weapons of war and a stockpile of ammuntion......

pdoggeth wrote:I am not sure why SE wants to argue in the abstract about the usefulness of data collection when this proposal in particular is not abstract, but very specifically designed as a means to harass.

lurker wrote:go ahead, track me. i guarantee you'll be bored.

lurker wrote:
and my black powder pieces, being over .50 cal, ARE classed as WMDs in some places.

SoftwareEngineer wrote:

bigstones wrote: The answer to your question is that when the government does it, it is a violation of your freedom of association guaranteed by the First Amendment. The First Amendment establishes three important rights freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association.

In what fashion is the freedom to associated being infringed? I have every opportunity to associate, with my friends, neighbors, and with you. I can discuss politics with you, and all our other friends. Even the above-mentioned "John Doe" from LA has every freedom to associate, including with the ladies who happen to stand at the corner of Main and River streets in the example given above, including picking them up in his Corvette Convertible and going with them to ... wherever ones goes for such occasions.

Or are you going to claim that the fact that the LA city government takes pictures of his cars, then identifies his license plate, and then publishes the license plate number on a web site and sends him a letter has prevented them from doing all the things described above?

Let me give a similar example. One could claim that my freedom of speech is infringed, because I'm afraid of saying something dastardly and stupid on Facebook, because my husband might read it, and get upset at me. But that claim would be ridiculous: I have every freedom of logging into Facebook and posting something obnoxious and stupid there, for example claiming that the moon is made of green cheese. Nothing will stop me from doing that. The fact that I happen to be afraid of my husband (who, being from Wisconsin, gets very upset when one makes inappropriate remarks about cheese) doesn't mean that Facebook or the government is infringing on my freedom of speech; it means that I have be judicious in what I say in public, or face the consequences for what I have said.

Similarly, John Doe is perfectly free to drive anywhere he wants, with anyone he wants in the passenger seat, at whatever time, regardless of whether the area he's driving in is a known prostitution locale or not. But if he does so in public, he needs to understand that being about in public means that you can get observed, and he needs to be willing to face the consequences of being seen (for example his wife getting very upset at him, if he picks up young platinum blonde women of ill repute in that area). The only thing that has changed is that the LA city government has made "being seen in public" much easier. As I keep repeating, the LA city government is not doing anything unconstitutional or illegal here. If John Doe's wife wanted to check on him, she could have hired a few dozen private investigators (she's rich, being a scion of the Rockefeller family); all the city of LA did was make it cheaper and easier for her.

By the way, I understand your moral outrage, and I even agree that the behavior of LA city in this case is not only inefficacious, but even misguided, as it drives our privacy habits in the wrong direction. But just because you are morally outraged doesn't mean you can make claims of unconstitutional behavior.

The supreme court has had a very difficult time with the right to anonymous speech (which is at the core of many political campaign funding issues), and the legal landscape there is very complex. As far as I know, there has never been recognition of a right to participate in public life incognito.

bigstones wrote:Because the threat to make public the names has a chilling effect on association. One of the major cases discussing this is: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449 (1958). The issues you are raising are also raised in challenges to the NSA's bulk collection activities. There is a good discussion here: https://www.eff.org/cases/first-unitari ... ssociation

BKinzey wrote:I don't think SoftwareEngineer's premise is correct. Even though one chooses to be in public, there are still rights to privacy for non-public persons.

You could take pics of people on your street and post them on the internet (although somebody might come up with a reason why you couldn't, I can't think of one). You could also probably point out some as "overweight". But at some point if you comment something like "this is a fat slob who probably has to solicit prostitutes to get laid" Even if you can point to prostitutes being in the area and a pic of the subject actually conversing with one, you have either crossed a legal line or are dangerously close to crossing one.

Second point is the Government has more restrictions, and should have, on what it can do as opposed to a private individual.

dandad wrote:

lurker wrote:go ahead, track me. i guarantee you'll be bored.

what? not even the occasional porn ? lol

SoftwareEngineer wrote:

bigstones wrote:Because the threat to make public the names has a chilling effect on association. One of the major cases discussing this is: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449 (1958). The issues you are raising are also raised in challenges to the NSA's bulk collection activities. There is a good discussion here: https://www.eff.org/cases/first-unitari ... ssociation

NAACP v Alabama: Different circumstances. In that case, the identities of the people who were associating were not publicly known, because they had carefully arranged to not associate in public. As part of a lawsuit, the state wanted to force the NAACP to release the list of members (the people who were associating) into the record of the lawsuit (as part of a subpoena, if I remember right), and the records of lawsuits are nearly always public. The supreme court eventually said that making something that taking something that is by its nature private (in this case the membership list of an association) and making it public (in this case as part of the evidence in a civil case) can have a chilling effect on the freedom of association, and because of that the constitutional right to free association trumps the state court's right to obtain the evidence.

The extant case presents differently: here, the information is already public. The fact that John Doe was driving his Corvette Convertible with license plate N00KIE at 9:45pm at the corner of Main and River streets is not private; anyone who was standing there did see that, and could have recorded it (if they had had a watch and a clipboard), and could have been legally published: there would be no legal problem mentioning it in a Facebook post. As I stated above: to my knowledge, there is no right to being incognito in public, and NAACP v Alabama doesn't change that.

Second: First Unitarian v NSA, and Jewel v NSA (the two EFF cases): Jewel has been lost. First Unitarian is not done yet. The EFF (bless their heart, I fully support them) is making the argument that the NSA spying program takes information that is by its nature private (such as telephone and email conversations among people who are associating) and makes it public, in the sense of being accessible to government agencies, with the obvious danger of leaking into the public sphere from there, for example through enforcement actions and the courts. Not only does all my argument against NAACP v Alabama being irrelevant in this context apply here too, but neither Jewel nor First Unitarian have been won yet.

For clarity, let me repeat the argument: If Jake, Jim and Joe stand at a street corner of a public sidewalk, and spend an hour arguing among themselves, the fact that they are associating is not private knowledge. Anyone who went shopping that afternoon and recognized them would have observed that Jake, Jim and Joe are indeed communicating and associating. Now, the purpose of their association, and the content of their communication may or may not be private, and the government may be restricted in spying on them (for example, the city council might have installed high-resolution cameras that are capable of lip reading even whispered conversations). But the mere fact that they are standing there and talking can not be considered a secret. And this is the whole base for this action by the LA city council: John Doe (or rather his car, or rather his car's license plate) was seen at this location at this time.

eelj wrote:You can laugh and make all of the jokes about this but in reality it wouldn't be all that difficult in this day and age for some one to show pictures and make up transcripts about Lurker or anybody else and turn them into potential "domestic terrorists". Pictures of Lurker dressed up like Lee and some quotes taken out of context from some of the threads here about the confederate flag and he could be the face of the modern day KKK.

bigstones wrote:So you would have no problem with the local popo publishing the names in the local paper of people whose cars were parked in front of the local: