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But nobody wants their minds connected and all of them to immediately be able to see, comprehend, and act on anything any of them sees. This is what a surveillance dragnet backed by AI is.

The only people who want that are the ones that want to subjugate large portions of the population, or those that want those large portions subjugated even if they don't get to do it.

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If we simply mandated that everyone install an app on their phone so that the government can track them scales very well. The people without the app would probably be criminals,
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Define criminal ? In the USA Under laws like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and 1850, an enslaved human who escaped was considered a criminal.

Sheltering humans running away from slavery was also a crime .

It was illegal for black Americans to learn to read and write. Seeking education made them a criminal.

Buying or selling a beer made you a criminal during prohibition.

Do you see how easy it is to make someone a criminal?

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I don't follow that... posting a police officer in everyone's house is pretty much a Third and Fourth Amendment violation and not primarily constrained by finances.
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Youre the one that made the intellectually dishonest argument that scale is about cost and efficiency while the discussion was about scale of the surveillance.

from your point, nothing is cheaper and more efficient then mandating an app on all phones through which the governments can track everyone, and consequently whoever doesnt have it would be a criminal. it completely tracks from your argument. You may need to make the app stop tracking while theyre in the home, but thats a technicality. voila. no longer an issue according to your point

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No it doesn’t track. In his example, observing license plates is perfectly legal without a warrant. Looking in your phone is not. These are not at all alike.
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Then it should be legal for citizens to deploy their own network that allows anybody to track any license plate?
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Of course? We already have private entities doing this today. Private toll road operators such as United Bridge Partners already administers camera systems that collect license plates for toll payments. I would assume parking lot operators also do this, and private citizens could create a nonprofit network too if they wanted.

Are you suggesting that people couldn’t do that for some reason?

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The challenge here is to ensure that any controls that apply to law enforcement operating their own hardware for this purpose would also apply to them obtaining this information from a third party. We don't need the mayor setting up "Totally Not The Cops, LLC" that collects this data and "sells" it to his police department to bypass warrant requirements.
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Is there a law against that?
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Here's my rebuttal: I don't want police sitting down and writing every license plate down 24/7 on every street corner tracking my every movement. That's bad. And they don't do that now, so saying "it happens today" is false.

It isn't possible for them to do that without sensors and AI everywhere. That's why using this technology is a red line.

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Spying on the American public shouldn't be cheap or efficient. We shouldn't abandon our freedom to make the fearful feel better.
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People either have privacy in public or they do not, but I don't know anyone who seriously claims that there's an expectation of privacy on public roads. What freedom are you talking about?
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> People either have privacy in public or they do not

Thankfully, the law isn't as overly simplistic and black and white as that. It'd be very stupid if it were. We have the ability maintain a general principal like "there's no expectation to privacy in public" and still prohibit certain things that are deemed harmful, like taking upskirt photos of people while they are in public spaces.

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> nuance for me but not for thee

If you're going to argue platitudes from altitude, you don't get to retreat to the comfort of circumscribed exceptions.

Nobody is talking about cops or flock cameras taking upskirt photos.

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> Nobody is talking about cops or flock cameras taking upskirt photos.

Just as we have the ability to pass laws prohibiting that specific harmful use of cameras while in public spaces, we have the ability to do something about the harmful uses of police and flock cameras while in public. The conversation is about the harms of mass surveillance and the exceptions necessary to protect the American public.

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>I don't know anyone who seriously claims that there's an expectation of privacy on public roads

Hello, I'm here.

Practically, we do have privacy in public pre-AI. We weren't entitled to complete anonymity, but the ability to track every single person at all times was impossible.

Now that AI and sensors are making it possible, people are saying "No, I don't want that to be the norm".

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I don't, 95% of what US cops do is harrass and extort people despite most of these people causing nobody else any concern or even a second glance or thought.
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Yeah, bad things are easier to do when you can accomplish them more "efficiently". Thus, the moral hazard.
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Sure, I'd love to have more policemen around, but I don't want large automated blanket surveillance network tracking the positions of everyone everywhere. There is a huge difference.
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