At some point in time we Americans are going to have to come to grips with the computational abilities of the state. There are way too few safeguards in the system and the Bill of Rights does not seem to be adequate in dealing with the new reality that private companies can acquire a vast amount of information on us and thereby sell it to law enforcement. Law enforcement can use privately obtained information without a search warrant [1].
What happens with false positives? What's the recourse? This very real, pernicious circumstance is rarely well thought out in advance. The no-fly list is a great example of what happens when there are not sufficient safeguards in the system.
The reality of the computational state is not going to go away. As technology progresses the informational capacity of the state increases. Are we prepared for this? At present I think not. See the reaction to the NSA warrantless surveillance of phone calls. Our leaders for the most part decried the leaking of the surveillance rather than the act of the surveillance.
It's the leaking they fear most. The implementation of surveillance technologies is unavoidable. Ban them all you like, they will be used regardless. Privacy is dead, and nobody can save it.
What we DO have a shot at controlling is what is done with the data. Probably the best hope for safeguarding things like freedom and democracy lies in making surveillance data transparent and public.
Your philosophy is admirable. Unfortunately it's also the one that led us here. Shall we wait until the surveillance state has us intractably under its boot before we stop arguing over whether its power should exist and start focusing on who we would like wielding it?
> There are way too few safeguards in the system and the Bill of Rights does not seem to be adequate in dealing with the new reality that private companies can acquire a vast amount of information on us and thereby sell it to law enforcement. Law enforcement can use privately obtained information without a search warrant [1].
Ultimately what the Bill of Rights means is determined by the Supreme Court. It could limit the Third Party Doctrine, which is really what gives the government warrantless access to that information, in light of new technology and social circumstances.
We could rely on the Supreme Court but I'm skeptical that they will put the public interest above the government's interests. I think a new Bill of Rights will be needed if there is sufficient outcry over abuses.
I'm not so sure: the Wikipedia article quotes Justice Sotomayor:
> "More fundamentally, it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties. This approach is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks."
> [Gorsuch] appeared eager to apply originalist principles to contemporary technology in a way that shields cellphone users from law enforcement overreach. Indeed, Gorsuch seems poised to build upon the jurisprudence of his predecessor, Justice Antonin Scalia, to establish real constitutional limits on the government’s ability to track our movements through our mobile devices.
> What happens with false positives? What's the recourse?
The same recourse when you're false-positived by a witness, I'd assume: get a lawyer. Personally, I'd probably place my trust in facial recognition (possibly not this system specifically, though) over human eye-witness testimony, based on my understanding of human psychology and its vulnerability to incentives.
It's not as dire as it's sometimes painted. MD attempted to apply mass-ticketing with intersection cameras, and it was found to violate the state Constitution because the use of a car in committing a crime didn't imply the owner was behind the wheel at the time.
If the technology is unreliable, we call it out as unreliable. What society is going to need is people well-versed in the ways the tech can fail to be good, not a doom-sayer's disregard of the ways the technology can help.
It's not the same thing as a false positive by an eye witness. Eye witness testimony is well known to be prone to false memories. Hence there needs to be corroborating evidence. I think people are too readily willing to accept a technological identification. I can see a claim being made that the computer is wrong only once in a billion cases without proper justification. There are people today who still think lie detectors are reliable.
I can see a time where the presumption of guilt is assumed simply because the technology says so. Clearly we are not there yet and possibly never will be. I hope that issues will be sorted out before the technology gains widespread use.
Sadly they never seem to learn about it despite the risks being known of treating them as magic wand auto-wins instead of pieces of evidence. From the absolute criminal garbage of bite mark identification junk science, DNA science using tests skimpy enough to false positives as their databases grow and they misuse what it statically enough for 'eliminating any non-matches in the pool of suspects' to pools of millions including vast numbers of non-suspect and non-victim samples which basically guarantee a conviction of an innocent statistically via lack of precision.
I agree about the risk. It is incumbent upon we who know better to sound a loud and long cadence about the unreliability of technology and the risk of false-positive.
Yes, we need some substantial acts of congress including and up to a Constitutional amendment to properly handle technology.
I still shake my head that "wiretap" laws are what are being used (last I knew a few years ago) - why not have a clean law to address modern communication capabilities and proper privacy & court interests? :-/
What happens with false positives? What's the recourse? This very real, pernicious circumstance is rarely well thought out in advance. The no-fly list is a great example of what happens when there are not sufficient safeguards in the system.
The reality of the computational state is not going to go away. As technology progresses the informational capacity of the state increases. Are we prepared for this? At present I think not. See the reaction to the NSA warrantless surveillance of phone calls. Our leaders for the most part decried the leaking of the surveillance rather than the act of the surveillance.
[1] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/searches-private-cit...