Privacy, surveilance and economics in this age of AI

[RustVendor]

it should also be noted that there is a difference between government and the public, so the 4th amendment keeps (or should) the government from searching you unreasonably. How about if Flock is selling access to that data to the public? That's not a 4th amendment issue because it's not the government. That's the even bigger hole that needs regulation.

 

[treelogger]

counties don't just publish parcel ownership data

In my county, parcel ownership requires using a computer terminal in the lobby of the county building. Same with looking up DV cases, family law and restraining orders at the court house. The recorder's office doesn't publish actual recorded documents on the public web, only an index containing date, grantor/grantee, and title. Seeing the document requires walking up the stairs and seeing it at the terminal; taking cell phone snapshots of the documents is explicitly allowed. So all this information is "publicly available", it just requires a half-hour car drive to the county building, where parking is free. This is really insane: information is "public", it just requires little patience to get to. This is deeply unfair, since it means that retired people (who can go to the county building during working hours) are at a great advantage in using information. And attorneys and PIs use (expensive) commercial databases that have the same information. Care to defend that?

But here is a perfect example, US vs Jones: Police need a warrant to put a GPS tracker on your car per the 4th amendment https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/565/400/

Agree, and this is one of the many cases where the courts are trying to figure out where the line between "too powerful" and "not public enough" runs. A large police department could instead put 100s of officers on the case, and simply follow the car around town. Again, all this is doing is putting large and well-organized police departments at a great advantage in using that information: Podunk county sheriff (with its four officers) can't do what LA PD can. Care to defend that? There is a joke in there: When I was young, the brother of a friend was "the" sergeant of the Maui PD; at the time, Maui was so small, it had only one sergeant.

I'm not saying that I disagree ... but the current model of "make data harder to get, in the hope that it doesn't leak out quite so much" is insane, and unfair.

 

[irongunner]

The same people who want all this "public" and "useless" personal information without a warrant are the same people who have a dishonest track record and can't explain their accounting imbalances.

 

[treelogger]

How about if Flock is selling access to that data to the public? That's not a 4th amendment issue because it's not the government. That's the even bigger hole that needs regulation.

Joke coming: I WOULD LOVE THAT! Then I don't need to spend countless hours on the web, figuring out what my arch-enemies Timothy and Uriel do, and spend an hour on the phone blabbing with my old buddy Buddy to figure out their dog/house/car situation. I'd just give Flock $9.99 and be done. OK, that was sarcasm.

I completely agree: Making Flock's data available TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC for a fee is insane and dangerous. Now, how do we justify that? Why do you want to force me into wasting hours of my time of doing by hand what I could do with the machine called "Flock" easily and efficiently?

 

[john_marsten_1873]

AI is not the problem. The fact that technology has advanced has created problems, caused by evil and/or stupid humans.

This is point I'm trying to make. I'm trying to make this more digestible for folks rather going into the details of how AI works. The vast majority of folks know "AI" and don't care about much else.

And Palantir is not only using publicly available data. They're using it in combination with our private data in government systems. I could easily diatribe about what defense companies and others have done for decades but the point would just get lost.

Flock was/is an eye opener for most so I'm simply trying to piggyback off of that. For example, Oshkosh, WA city council cancelled their Flock contract - just 24 hours after approving it - when the chief of police realized Flock basically lied to them. They said they weren't using the cameras to generate heat maps and track citizens and their routines vs. only tracking criminals. If those cameras are running that information is being captured.

I'm fairly certain they're at least running clustering, anomaly detection, dimensionality reduction, maybe even classification and recommendation trying to find data and building models to use or sell in other ways. That's likely the bigger money maker than crime prevention.

 

[treelogger]

Also: I would love to invite @RickD427 to give his opinion.

In particular into how easy or difficult it is to get warrants. I've always heard that in a criminal investigation with some halfway decent leads / suspicion, getting a warrant is trivial, and they just don't get rejected if the requesting department dots the T and crosses the I. It just takes quite a bit of work. In the same vein, I happen to know that getting subpoenas / writs / examination orders for debt collection is also trivial, but very tedious and slow, which is why good law firms charge tens of thousands for debt collection.

By demanding that everything need a warrant to access, all we accomplish might be this: The state hires another thousand superior court judges (with clerks and a few staff attorneys), each of which does 20 warrant requests per day. Local PDs spend hundreds of thousands of hours shuffling paperwork around, uselessly. Occasionally making mistakes, for which they then may get crucified. Instead of justice, we might create a bureaucratic monster.

 

[treelogger]

They said they weren't using the cameras to generate heat maps and track citizens and their routines vs. only tracking criminals. If those cameras are running that information is being captured.

I'm fairly certain they're at least running clustering, anomaly detection, dimensionality reduction, maybe even classification and recommendation trying to find data and building models to use or sell in other ways. That's likely the bigger money maker than crime prevention.

So I spend quite a bit of effort racking Timothy and Uriel (by the way, the example is pretty close to the real world, except that names and facts have been changed). I'm very good with data science (actually have a degree and job title to match). I can make heat maps, classify, reduce dimensionality, and anomalies have always been my speciality.

By the way, I know which psychiatrist Uriel attends, how often she goes there, and I have a good guess what drugs she gets treated with, and for what syndrome. Simply because for a while I was able to observe their daily coming and going, and the court records contain some hints. All without violating HIPPA (did I spell that right?). All it took was being really systematic in logging my observations, such as "they are driving out at 11:00", "they are coming home, he's driving, she's asleep in the passenger seat at 1pm", "she's super agitated and yelling at trees at 9am while driving like a bat out of hell", and so on. While I didn't use Python, I used a database.

How do you want to justify Palantir being prohibited from doing that, which I can do in 100 lines of Python at home?

 

[RustVendor]

In my county, parcel ownership requires using a computer terminal in the lobby of the county building. Same with looking up DV cases, family law and restraining orders at the court house. The recorder's office doesn't publish actual recorded documents on the public web, only an index containing date, grantor/grantee, and title. Seeing the document requires walking up the stairs and seeing it at the terminal; taking cell phone snapshots of the documents is explicitly allowed. So all this information is "publicly available", it just requires a half-hour car drive to the county building, where parking is free. This is really insane: information is "public", it just requires little patience to get to. This is deeply unfair, since it means that retired people (who can go to the county building during working hours) are at a great advantage in using information. And attorneys and PIs use (expensive) commercial databases that have the same information. Care to defend that?


Agree, and this is one of the many cases where the courts are trying to figure out where the line between "too powerful" and "not public enough" runs. A large police department could instead put 100s of officers on the case, and simply follow the car around town. Again, all this is doing is putting large and well-organized police departments at a great advantage in using that information: Podunk county sheriff (with its four officers) can't do what LA PD can. Care to defend that? There is a joke in there: When I was young, the brother of a friend was "the" sergeant of the Maui PD; at the time, Maui was so small, it had only one sergeant.

I'm not saying that I disagree ... but the current model of "make data harder to get, in the hope that it doesn't leak out quite so much" is insane, and unfair.

Again, the database of your every move in public isn't "publicly available information" it's a proprietary product created by a company. Finding the balance for the guard rails is hard, I've had to deal with counties like yours for land records and we did have to drive there and look through paper documents. Do you live in Lake county btw LOL. But think about an individual that follows someone, but only in public. The legal definition of Stalking in California would include following to the point that someone feels unsafe. Harassment is similar, they have to "feel" harassed. I certainly don't feel safe being followed by robots and police, I don't think anyone does, the same standard applied to a person who would follow you around should apply to these larger operations that catalog your activities and I would include your online activities in that as well. The way that our activity is tracked and sold is problematic.

 

[john_marsten_1873]

How do you want to justify Palantir being prohibited from doing that, which I can do in 100 lines of Python at home?

I don't know if there's is any justification to prohibit them Constitutionally or otherwise. But I'd certainly like to know in what capacity Palantir (and the likes of) is deriving and using that data - perhaps in conjunction with my SSN, credit history, my kids info... I want to know what use they have for it or if they're selling it or targeting me and for what reasons.

That way we can determine if prohibiting or limiting them is justified. And this should be disclosed in a manner that "average Americans" can understand.

 

[Gawernator]

View attachment 245618

Not really my style. We had Palantir at ONI

 

[Gawernator]

Palantir has been relatively well known in Silicon Valley software engineering (in particular database and cloud circles) since the mid 00's. They have been hiring like crazy, and are famous for having the most insane job interviews. Matter-of-fact, the "green book" (how to prepare for a software engineer interview, I forget the exact title) talked a lot about the Palantir culture and interviews, already 10-15 years ago.

It's only been in the last 5 years that they have become a household name.

Similarly, Lotus Development (known today mostly for the 1-2-3 spreadsheet and the Notes e-mail application) did a lot of the same stuff decades earlier, and most people never noticed or knew.

I never heard of it until probably 2014 or so. I can only imagine how much the DoD paid for that software haha

 

[Gawernator]

To say that Flock is either bad or good is highly oversimplified. It's much more complicated.

To begin with, anyone who thinks that they have privacy of the location of their face, body or car when out in public is "in a state of sin". The words "public" and "private" along should give that away. If I'm out in public, and looking around, then simply observing other things visible in public can not possible rise to a search, much less to a 4A unreasonable search. Nobody can claim that it is illegal to walk down a street, and seeing that Alice is walking around holding hands with Bob, or that Christine is driving David's car, or that Eve has gained 20 pounds and might be expecting a baby. And it doesn't matter whether the person doing the seeing is an individual, a government employee, a company or a government agency, or a camera operated by those people.

We can discuss the details of what "public" means, but they don't matter much for this topic; a normal street is definitely public. Whether parking lots and shooting range driveways are public or not is complicated, and a different discussion.

But what is certainly true is that technology is changing the economics of doing this. In the old days, only rich people, big corporations, and big government agencies could perform this "seeing" function on a large scale. If I am rich, and I have an adversary, I can hire a PI (private investigator) who will wander around in public and look for my enemies Zachary and Yvonne, and send 4 or 6 people per shift to just hang around near Z and Y's house, notice what car they're driving, watch where the car parks at the shopping center, wander around "not quite aimlessly", see what stores they go to, see what bank they are depositing checks at, see what color their credit card is when they pay for groceries, and so on. This is actually commonly done for legal disputes, for example if I am Zachary's soon-to-be-ex-wife looking for what he's doing with Yvonne, or perhaps I'm a creditor of Z and Y and need to know where they keep their money, and how to serve them a "write of execution". Anyone who claims that privacy exists because people can't be traced does not know about the real world of legal processes.

All Flock does is scale this up, democratize it (it becomes much easier for anyone to do), and give people tools to access this data. Now, the data collected such can be used for good and for evil. For example, the data could be collected, organized, and sold to law enforcement agencies under the restriction that it is only to be used for targeted searches, and only with court-approved warrants. Warrants that are issued by judges who are knowledgeable about the technology. For example: Michael has just murdered Nancy and got caught in flagranti, and the cops need to know where Michael was the day before, what car he was driving, and whether he met with any of Nancy's other friends and enemies. For that kind of thing Flock is great. Or Michael was just seen murdering Nancy, and we suspect that he's going to kill Oscar and Paula next, but he took off in a white Corolla with license plate 1ABC234, and we need to URGENTLY know where he's going so we can protect Oscar and Paula and catch Michael.

This is the reason why police agencies LOVE Flock (and other similar technologies and competitors): It allows them do to a better job, catch more criminals, do so with less budgets, fewer mistakes, and less intrusive work. What's not to love here?

Great. Now the counter-example: Bad cop Harry is suspecting that his girlfriend Irene is cheating on him. So he logs into Flock, types in a fake or different warrant number, looks for all movement of Irene's car, and find that she often goes to Jerry's apartment at lunch time, and comes back out looking flushed with her clothes in disarray. Clearly, Harry does not have a real warrant, and the misuse of the Flock data is both illegal and immoral. I think everyone agrees that this is bad. We can argue whether Irene and Jerry are doing the right thing or not, and whether Harry should know about their antics, but it's obvious that misusing his department's Flock access that is supposed to require a warrant is bad.

Now, many people are willing to to throw the baby out with the bathwater: Flock must be made illegal because of Harry. That's like saying that all guns must be made illegal because someone just committed a murder with a gun. Sorry, wrong reaction. Harry needs a spanking, because that's where part of the problem lies. Perhaps Harry's department needs to be kicked in the nuts to implement some more sensible access control to Flock data, or some auditing of what it is used for, and perhaps write a policy manual.

Then there is another set of people who think all government is evil: anything that gives government more power must be bad. They are sort of anti-government "anarchist" luddites. There is a significant overlap with another group, namely criminals, who enjoy not being seen. Today, both groups think that they have a measure of anonymity when out in public, and they don't like Flock, nor do they like cops and law enforcement agencies in general. To those people I say: First, you are deluded, and are much more visible than you think, simply because a well-organized investigator (whether private or public) can find out a lot of your habits, whereabouts and actions by just asking the right questions and doing legal things. Second, society changes as a reaction to technology; just because something worked a certain way in the past doesn't mean that it needs to work the same way in the future.

The argument "Harry did something bad, therefore we need to punish Flock" can be re-phrased by saying "some LE agencies have been bad, therefore all LE agencies are evil and we must never do anything that makes their work easier or better". It is certainly true that some LE agencies and some of their members have been bad. Gun people very often get really worked up over that, and I just need to give the example of Iggy to start some people (righteously) foaming at their mouth. But the fix for some LE agencies being bad is not to throw all LE and their tools out. Even though anarchist radicals and career criminals would like that.

More opinions on Palantir and other such things later, when I have more time.

Hey that’s what I do lmao
Yeah Bay Area surveillance is pricey, $150 an hour is pretty common.

Insurance companies are a lot more likely to pay for what you said though than a civil / family law case unless they have deep pockets…

 

[RustVendor]

Also: I would love to invite @RickD427 to give his opinion.

In particular into how easy or difficult it is to get warrants. I've always heard that in a criminal investigation with some halfway decent leads / suspicion, getting a warrant is trivial, and they just don't get rejected if the requesting department dots the T and crosses the I. It just takes quite a bit of work. In the same vein, I happen to know that getting subpoenas / writs / examination orders for debt collection is also trivial, but very tedious and slow, which is why good law firms charge tens of thousands for debt collection.

By demanding that everything need a warrant to access, all we accomplish might be this: The state hires another thousand superior court judges (with clerks and a few staff attorneys), each of which does 20 warrant requests per day. Local PDs spend hundreds of thousands of hours shuffling paperwork around, uselessly. Occasionally making mistakes, for which they then may get crucified. Instead of justice, we might create a bureaucratic monster.

no one is talking about getting a warrant for regular activities, it's for accessing a database that knows everything you did that day and where you went and who you were with and everything about them and what they did.

 

[Gawernator]

The issue with the NSA, Palentir, Flock, etc. is that all of this is happening without a warrant. That's the biggest reason it's rife with abuse is that there isn't oversight.

Mmmmmmm when I worked at the agencies they did need a warrant to access that type of data if it’s on a US citizen, but they could collect anything.

They were doing the warrantless wiretapping a long time ago though

 

[RustVendor]

Mmmmmmm when I worked at the agencies they did need a warrant to access that type of data if it’s on a US citizen, but they could collect anything.

They were doing the warrantless wiretapping a long time ago though

Under normal circumstances police need a warrant just to collect the data in the first place, we know that NSA just collects everything and has since the mid 2000s. Snowden exposed all this in 2013. Like imagine if the State of California used flock data to track people going to the Reno scheels or Bass pro to buy ammo or whatever and then used that to prosecute people. Nobody here wants that.

 

[treelogger]

Again, the database of your every move in public isn't "publicly available information" it's a proprietary product created by a company.

That seeming contradiction is a lot like copyright law. I can take quotes public domain music (like quotes from Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, all of whom no longer have a copyright), and make a new composition out of it, and have copyright in it. I can also perform a whole Brahms symphony in public without paying any license fees, or having to follow any copyright. But Breitkopf & Haertel can make a new edition of the Brahms symphony, much more clearly typeset, with the page turns in all the right places, and with footnotes pointing out likely printing errors "here, the composer probably meant B-sharp, not C-flat", and I can't make photocopies of that edition, and if I perform from it I have to pay for a license. But in copyright law, the rules are very clear: 85 years (or something like that) since the death of the author/composer/editor, and it becomes free. How do we propose to make a clear rule for when a collection of free information becomes something else?

AND IMPORTANTLY: That rule must be clear. If it is fuzzy (like most California laws!), it will be worse than useless.

Do you live in Lake county btw LOL.

Nope, but I think the medium-size counties are mostly the same in how they operate.

The legal definition of Stalking in California would include following to the point that someone feels unsafe. Harassment is similar, they have to "feel" harassed.

I know the definitions rather too well, since Timothy and Uriel (not their real name) have attempted Civil Harassment Restraining Orders. But it is clear that simply being somewhat near someone, at a respectful distance (for example where they can't really see you regularly, unless they know exactly what they're looking for) is neither stalking nor harassment. If I hire a PI company who uses 4-6 cars to follow someone around, taking turns, it is definitely not stalking. It is also definitely not cheap. Making something we don't like expensive but not illegal is insane, it just tilts the playing field towards the rich and well equipped.

I certainly don't feel safe being followed by robots and police, I don't think anyone does,

Actually, you're putting a finger on a larger problem. I actually feel MORE safe when I know police is nearby. That's because our county sheriff department is very competent, very law abiding, very ethical, and very fair. I have yet to have a single bad interaction with them (and I have, unfortunately, interacted with them regularly), and that's after living in this county for over 30 years. But I understand that this feeling is not universally shared. Sure, career criminals don't like the popo, but I don't want the rules to be built around protecting criminals, on the contrary: we have too many of those, and they need to get locked up. I also know that anti-government anarchists at both ends of the political spectrum hate the law and hate law enforcement, and again, I don't think their insanity should be the standard. Why would a regular (mostly) law-abiding and upstanding citizen "not feel safe being followed by police"?

(The "mostly" is about going 85 on Highway 85, and rounding number gratuitously on my tax return.)

 

[Gawernator]

Under normal circumstances police need a warrant just to collect the data in the first place, we know that NSA just collects everything and has since the mid 2000s. Snowden exposed all this in 2013. Like imagine if the State of California used flock data to track people going to the Reno scheels or Bass pro to buy ammo or whatever and then used that to prosecute people. Nobody here wants that.

Yep good ol traitor Snowden after he sold our secrets to the Russians then Chinese in order while using that whistleblowing as his cover story.

We invented phones and internet so yep USG knows anything they want to pretty much

 

[RustVendor]

That seeming contradiction is a lot like copyright law. I can take quotes public domain music (like quotes from Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, all of whom no longer have a copyright), and make a new composition out of it, and have copyright in it. I can also perform a whole Brahms symphony in public without paying any license fees, or having to follow any copyright. But Breitkopf & Haertel can make a new edition of the Brahms symphony, much more clearly typeset, with the page turns in all the right places, and with footnotes pointing out likely printing errors "here, the composer probably meant B-sharp, not C-flat", and I can't make photocopies of that edition, and if I perform from it I have to pay for a license. But in copyright law, the rules are very clear: 85 years (or something like that) since the death of the author/composer/editor, and it becomes free. How do we propose to make a clear rule for when a collection of free information becomes something else?

AND IMPORTANTLY: That rule must be clear. If it is fuzzy (like most California laws!), it will be worse than useless.


Nope, but I think the medium-size counties are mostly the same in how they operate.


I know the definitions rather too well, since Timothy and Uriel (not their real name) have attempted Civil Harassment Restraining Orders. But it is clear that simply being somewhat near someone, at a respectful distance (for example where they can't really see you regularly, unless they know exactly what they're looking for) is neither stalking nor harassment. If I hire a PI company who uses 4-6 cars to follow someone around, taking turns, it is definitely not stalking. It is also definitely not cheap. Making something we don't like expensive but not illegal is insane, it just tilts the playing field towards the rich and well equipped.


Actually, you're putting a finger on a larger problem. I actually feel MORE safe when I know police is nearby. That's because our county sheriff department is very competent, very law abiding, very ethical, and very fair. I have yet to have a single bad interaction with them (and I have, unfortunately, interacted with them regularly), and that's after living in this county for over 30 years. But I understand that this feeling is not universally shared. Sure, career criminals don't like the popo, but I don't want the rules to be built around protecting criminals, on the contrary: we have too many of those, and they need to get locked up. I also know that anti-government anarchists at both ends of the political spectrum hate the law and hate law enforcement, and again, I don't think their insanity should be the standard. Why would a regular (mostly) law-abiding and upstanding citizen "not feel safe being followed by police"?

(The "mostly" is about going 85 on Highway 85, and rounding number gratuitously on my tax return.)

hiring a PI to follow someone around like that is definitely stalking and harassment even if they use several different agents. I'm not particularly afraid of police and I'm not anti LE, what I am describing is if you had LE following you specifically and cataloging every activity you engage in. On it's own this would feel like harassment but also that data is then useful to bad parties if they were to access it.

 

[treelogger]

we know that NSA just collects everything and has since the mid 2000s.

Your number is off by a bit. The NSA has always collected everything it is technologically and legally able to, within the constraints of its budget. Look up the "Harvest" supercomputer of the early 60s sometime. Whether the NSA (and other NxA/O agencies) collects things they are not legally allowed to is a question of some debate, and I don't have enough knowledge to pass judgement, even having been involved in that industry.

Like imagine if the State of California used flock data to track people going to the Reno scheels or Bass pro to buy ammo or whatever and then used that to prosecute people. Nobody here wants that.

Let me be contrarian: Buying ammo at Scheel's in Reno or large-capacity magazines at Cabelas in Medford is a crime. I'm in general all in favor of catching and prosecuting ALL criminals. I would actually love it if the State of California seriously attempted to arrest / try / incarcerate absolutely everyone who illegally smuggles these things. One of the main reasons I would love it: the backlash and public outrage against that ridiculous over-enforcement and over our ridiculous gun control laws would be a great public demonstration of one of the things that's wrong with this state. But also: We need to be a nation of people who have respect for the law, and respect for rights, and for democratic traditions. A small number of people sneakily going to Reno/Medford/Yuma to get around stupid laws is an overpressure relief valve that slowly destroys these respects. We either need to make obtaining these things seriously illegal, or make it legal. The current "hint hint blink blink" is dumb.

 

[Gawernator]

hiring a PI to follow someone around like that is definitely stalking and harassment even if they use several different agents. I'm not particularly afraid of police and I'm not anti LE, what I am describing is if you had LE following you specifically and cataloging every activity you engage in. On it's own this would feel like harassment but also that data is then useful to bad parties if they were to access it.

It’s legal to hire a PI to surveil someone. The only time it’s really an issue is if there’s a restraining order in place and the restrained party is trying to circumvent restrictions via the other party but I’ve never ran into that