DNA also just ends up all over the place for innocent reasons. If someone gets murdered in a rental car that I rented last month, chances are my dna will be there. DNA evidence often struggles when it comes to temporality, as it can tell you who and where, but it can’t tell you when the evidence was placed there.
Historically there have been some pretty bad abuses in court over the accuracy and reliability of dna evidence, with some convictions that had to later get overturned.
As noted in the original comment, currently DoDSR can only be used for nominative sampling aka you have a name and want a known generic sample (and you have a federal or military judge allowing it). The limitations of the medium / storage means it can't practically be used beyond that.
Your location isn’t private if you’re observed in a location where you have no expectation of privacy, i.e. outside. But if I’m at a friends house, I absolutely have an expectation that my presence in their home is private to the world at large.
The problem is that dragnet surveillance does not:
1. Handle the subtleties of how we expect privacy to work.
2. Require direct observation of someone in a context where there is no expectation of privacy.
It just works all the time, and contains the ability to unmask private events in the past.
your expectation of privacy is sort of inconsistent here. if you don't have an expectation of privacy when your out in the world, and it's fair game for people to observe you traveling to your friend's house, how can you expect that your presence is private?
> it's fair game for people to observe you traveling to your friend's house
This is true, but if you follow someone consistently enough then it is considered a crime--stalking.
Exemptions for special cases (PIs, bail bondsmen) were put in place with the expectation that those groups would not abuse the system, being "professionals." And of course the police have been allowed to track people under investigation. But private individuals and businesses do not have the right to stalk people.
It's time to put to rest this notion that occasional incidental observation of other people has anything in common with the persistent surveillance enabled by modern tech. One is expected and is fairly low risk, the other is ripe for abuse.
My problem is the scale of the issue, at least when it comes to phones. If I am at my friens the people involved are apt to forget almost everything in a few days. The cellphone tracking system, in theory, will studiously remember exactly where you are till the end of time by a company wit history of give or selling said data to the government in secret.
Well, they have to give your location information to the government. I think it's a bit naive to expect a company to keep your data secret from the Feds. They're just as subject to the law as we are.
If we use electronic devices at all, we're just best advised to operate as if the government has access to anything we say, write, or record on them. That includes our locations. If you're going to see your weed man, or your mistress, you probably want to leave it at home. And no, don't bother buying a "burner" because they can track that too.
All that said, companies should try to keep your location information secret from anyone other than the government. One of the issues right now is that they don't. They make good money using location to target ads for instance.
This is why I included the bit about direct observation. Before dragnet surveillance, you would need to travel near someone who had an active interest in you specifically in order for your location to be marked down. With a dragnet surveillance system every movement you make can be used to unmask your whereabouts after the fact, regardless of whether anyone observed it at the time.
I think we agree then. the classic distinction between public and private space is almost a red herring in this argument. the focus should be on how long are you allowed to store information, or maybe even how widely and indiscriminately are you allowed to collect it in the first place.
My presence in private is a protected right in the United States. Being able to track which office I go into in a complex, tracking which room in a house I am in, etc. These types of things require a warrant based on reasonable suspicion and this has been ruled on numerous times. If you're moving from place to place in public view, sure, that's allowed. The police can also follow you and watch you enter a building, but what is the functional difference between preventing access to my house to watch me move from room to room and using cell phone data to track me. My carrier is someone I contract with. I pay them. They should be working in my favor to the fullest extent of the law. While I sympathize with overburdened police forces and tough crimes there's a reason we have these protections in place, to prevent a police state where the police are more beholden to the state than the public it is expected to be serving.
I can't speak to whether that is inconsistent or not, but in support of HN User'village-idiot', I think it'd be a pretty big bummer for people to find out that any tryst they have with a lover is not private, but public in nature.
Taking your phone or your DNA to any such tryst makes it so apparently.
What's worse, there will likely be a lot of scope creep. It's showing up in criminal court. It's showing up in civil court cases. It's definitely going to be showing up in family court. Etc etc etc.
> I can't speak to whether that is inconsistent or not, but in support of HN User'village-idiot', I think it'd be a pretty big bummer for people to find out that any tryst they have with a lover is not private, but public in nature.
it's a bummer for sure, but it's been this way for a while. it's perfectly legal for your wife to hire a PI to follow you around. the police also don't need a warrant to observe your movements.
the part that's new is that all this surveillance can be done passively without any particular reason to suspect you.
imo, the distinction between public and private spaces is pretty reasonable for targeted investigations and observation by fellow citizens. in my view, the real problem is how long information should be stored, especially when collected passively.
First, we always overestimate new technology’s ability to solve problems, while underestimating the side effects. So any grandiose claims about self driving cars fixing congestion should’ve been met by more skepticism in the press.
Second, we already know that people are willing to spend a large amount of money on personal transit that goes above and beyond the bare necessities of transit, at least in rich western nations. I see no reason why that would suddenly stop once the vehicle’s owner is no longer behind the wheel.
Self driving cars in areas with poor public transport will likely make things worse. Self driving cars in areas with good public transport combined with apps that schedule combination routes, and fleet management that makes better decisions about driving patterns, could be a big benefit.
E.g. the minicab and Uber drivers around mine are often more clueless than I am about traffic patterns nearby, despite the fact I don't drive myself. Realtime coordination to pick less congested routes dynamically could improve things a lot.
And apps like Citymapper that don't just suggest a single mode of transport has a lot of potential. In London they're experimenting with bus routes of their own. The long term potential is being able to promise you short waits and low cost by e.g. telling you to wait for the bus when the bus is near, but sending a car - rideshare or not - if there's a wait, and dynamically scheduling minibuses for high traffic routes not covered by the standard routes, for example.
I'd prefer that over a car the whole way a lot of the time, because living somewhere highly urban, driving the whole way can almost never compete on speed, but figuring out the optimal route that keeps changes few and waits low is often tricky. E.g. Citymapper just recently introduced me to a route I had no idea was an option - a station I've never used before because it's too far too walk and awkward to get to by bus, and so I didn't even know what trains go from there. But suggesting an Uber there and train from there, and a second change got me where I wanted to go ~20 minutes faster with the same number of changes as if I'd gone the route I expected to take. Mixing and matching like that has the potential to make taking a car the whole way a lot less attractive for a lot of routes where people do opt for that today.
But it does require a lot of things to go right. For starters, multi-mode transport apps that are free to pick the optimal mix needs to win the battle for being consumers first choice in planning trips.
>Second, we already know that people are willing to spend a large amount of money on personal transit that goes above and beyond the bare necessities of transit, at least in rich western nations. I see no reason why that would suddenly stop once the vehicle’s owner is no longer behind the wheel.
The success of Uber suggests that some people are choosing not to purchase private vehicles. But we don't know if this is limited to Millennials.
> The success of Uber suggests that some people are choosing not to purchase private vehicles. But we don't know if this is limited to Millennials.
The success of Uber only tells you that a) some people use taxis, and b) a pirate taxi using VC money to offer rates at below market level will be popular with taxi users, for obvious reasons.
How many people do you know that have replaced a personal car with Uber? I’ve known two people like that, and everyone else I know uses them in place of traditional taxis.
I use Uber/Lyft as a replacement for cabs to/from the airport, but almost all of my other usage of them is in replacement for driving my own car into the city. (In other words, these are trips that I'd otherwise take, but not via taxi.)
The juice problem is easily preventable as long as you don't have a spouse who disagrees with a no-juice policy.
You'd also have to diaper kids for years after you'd normally consider them potty trained. Small ones don't plan ahead, don't tell you in advance, and aren't as determined to hold it as you might be.
You'd also need to have something to clean dirty hands.
In the end, you can probably get away with keeping your car clean by making it your thing. "No food, sit quietly in this car!" It's not a battle I'd choose to fight with my kids, but to each their own. It would be even harder with a couch, or other furniture that lives in your home.
I remain shocked at how many people eat in their cars, especially messy or aromatic Foods. I love in ‘n out, but I sure as heck don’t want the inside of my car to smell like it.
The article makes it very clear that the place was an attraction because of his antics. The only people involved I feel bad for were unsuspecting dates taken there for the entertainment that their reaction would give.
I think you’re making up why homeless advocates don’t want to literally ship the homeless out of the city. There are a lot of reasonable objections to that plan.
It all comes down to matching each homeless person with a city that matches their prospects. If you're disabled or won't ever be able to work, you should be offered the housing and support services in the cheapest place possible since you'll be using the services the longest. If you're lesser skilled but physically/mentally able, you are matched to housing and services in a city that has job prospects that match your capacity. Only those with the most skills and capacity to be successful should get housing and support in cities where the cost of living is very high.
If you've got no prospect of sustaining yourself in a specific city because it requires competence beyond your capacity, you've got no business in that city. We should aim to help put people in circumstances where they can thrive sustainably on their own.
None of this should be compulsory. I'm only suggesting that the support being offered for free should be focused on putting people in circumstances that match each individual and that cost the least amount to those providing the resources.
The places with denser housing in Seattle have higher incidence of open drug use, public urination, and other anti-social behaviour. While most NIMBY arguments are garbage, the fact is the city will not enforce acceptable public behaviour, and the only protection you can get is distance. I so wish I could choose to live in a dense, safe area like I could in Amsterdam, Munich, Seoul, Copenhagen, Tokyo, and so many other places.
Sure, and you send them there, and then that place sends them somewhere else, and so on and so forth.
Either they wind up back where they started because East Nowhere, North Dakota wants them gone too, or you wind up with concentrations of homeless people in an area with minimal tax base and horrific conditions as a result.
The homeless can be classified into two groups: temporary and chronic. In any given year, temporary is about 80% of the homeless. We have a okay track record at helping the temporarily homeless, and lower housing costs would make it both less prevalent and cheaper to address.
However, the chronically homeless, at ~20% of the population, take up over 50% of the budget. They aren't able to live independently, regardless of any reasonable cost of living. They're also the most visible group.
We should keep in mind that the solutions for the two are vastly different.
Consumption taxes on luxury goods usually aren’t very distorting at the local level, especially since its pretty easy to define luxury goods that aren’t locally made. The problem is that the max revenue that they can collect is much lower than income or common consumption taxes, which have a wider base with less ability to evade.
Of course with luxury taxes the issue is avoidance more than evasion.
Sales based taxes are either regressive because it cannot be done without and are more or less fixed or avoidable because it can be done without.
Of course if reduced consumption of the given luxury is the goal it is sorta mission accomplished (too high and black markets may arise) but undermines the revenue generation goal.
Evasion is illegal. i.e. not paying your income taxes
Avoidance is legal. i.e. if there was a local luxury goods tax, you could decide to either:
1. Not buy luxury goods, or
2. Buy luxury goods from some other area, without a tax
A local luxury goods tax would be highly likely to destroy the local luxury goods industry without actually lowering luxury good consumption, as such a tax can easily and legally be avoided.
Whereas, local property taxes can only be avoided by moving or selling. They can, however, illegally be evaded through fraud. This is why property taxes are more effective for cities: hard to avoid, hard to evade, and evasion can be punished with fines or jail.
I’m not sure about power lines, but that’s certainly not true for roads. A large portion of road maintenance is paid for by state and federal budgets out of the general tax funds, with the amounts varying based on where we’re talking about. Local drivers pay for some of their road coast in the form of gas taxes, but in no state does this cover even half of the cost road maintenance.
In Georgia, cities pay to maintain all of their local roads and onramps w/ property and sales taxes. The state gas taxes go to state and interstate highways; presumably the Federal gas taxes go towards interstate highways -- but they also just print money since the gas tax hasn't been raised in nearly 30 years.
That would be a good argument if many states weren’t also dependent on the federal government to maintain their own budgets. If you’re a tax payer in Connecticut, you’re absolutely funding the infrastructure of states like New Mexico and Alabama, albeit indirectly.
