This debate happens on HN again and again, but still: what privacy are you talking about in public space? Nobody has a problem with one person with a dashcam — why suddenly connecting these dashcams to a network that shares information is a problem?

Citing the U. S. Privacy Study Commission,

The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through the automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable.

The whole report is public, and it specifically addresses insurance in this context: https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/personal-privacy-information-soc...

"No one has a problem with strangers seing you on the street, but suddenly when some guy follows you around with a camera it's a problem?"

looking -> recording -> sharing

These are all different things and our behaviour will and should change at each step.

More than that really. If every stranger who sees you on the street can (or worse, automatically does) instantly share that they saw you to a giant database that can then be easily searched it changes the act of "seeing". Now you can be virtually followed at any time by anyone anywhere who can use the database.

No one can be drowned by a raindrop. A flood is another matter.

Doing things at scale is different. Qualitatively, not just quantitatively. This has been the consistent lesson of big data and the modern internet.

> This debate happens on HN again and again, but still: what privacy are you talking about in public space? Nobody has a problem with one person with a dashcam

If I'm not that one person I'd have a problem with that.

> why suddenly connecting these dashcams to a network that shares information is a problem?

Switching from dash cams to police helps a bit. I think most people would be okay with one (or a handful) of police officers randomly walking through their neighborhood. Most locales would say it's a good thing.

Now take that to the extreme and have an officer every 10 steps, looking around in every direction, and writing down everything that's happening. Still a good idea?

Now put license plate readers facing every direction on every police car and send that information to a database where it's stored forever. Now link it to every other license plate scanner across the country, and make searching through someone's trips as easy as using a TiVo, with complete history on their location. You don't have to imagine though, because they do this today: http://gothamist.com/2016/01/26/license_plate_readers_nypd.p...

Let just call it mass surveillance

Maybe it has to do with the fact that they're recording all license plates they see, regardless of what they're doing or if they did anything wrong. They will in fact know where you are and what your driving habits are. Apart from your driving behavior, this is surely also going to be something they're going to want to sell to various companies that would find this interesting.

> shares information

Probably that bit

OK, so if I record a particular driver being an asshole on the street and then put this recording on Youtube as an individual, I would be wrong?

In Germany at least you could get into serious trouble. Dashcams are a grey area in German law. The consensus seems to be currently that they're okay for personal use, but making the video public certainly puts you at risk of a lawsuit.

If you create a database of license plates (profiles) of all cars on the road along with their whereabouts and behavior at any given time, and then sell this information to the highest bidder.... you would be a bit wrong.

Absolutely, since it would amount to trial by media, where a person is found guilty / slandered as an asshole with no avenue to defend his position / state his case.

What if he was driving like an asshole because he was speeding to the hospital or similar reasons?

Exactly. The crux of prejudice is that it makes people form an opinion before they have facts a.k.a. context. A lot of things are not what they seem at first and because people respond to well to "Occam's Razor," they choose the laziest explanation and penalize people they don't know.

A real-life example: my friend was dating a woman whose brother got in an accident. After receiving painkillers, he became addicted to them (an old story at this point). As he weened himself off of them, taking responsibility, my friend would drive him to get methadone a few times a week. A system that uses information from this one would label my friend an addict because he was so often seen driving to or parked at the rehab clinic. When in fact, my friend was a charitable, stand-up guy helping out a soon-to-be family member recover and become a stronger, productive member of society.

Just like credit scores. Their models aren't perfect, but the threshold for useful (for their benefit) is much lower, and profitable lower still. Since you're the product being sold and they're OK with many defects, and given that there are no financial consequences for you getting rolled up in a bad / inaccurate / predatory model, they don't care and aren't incentivized to fix it (and in fact in many cases are incentivized financially to keep it broken, since "hits" like that can be a selling point).

Yes