Federal Judge Dismisses Suit Against 'Drone Slayer'

[TemporaryKubotaOwnerMark]

It all boils down to the expectation of privacy. If you are walking down a street, you have a reasonable expectation that someone will not violate you personally, but it's not reasonable to expect that someone will not take a picture in a public place...as long as they don't use it to make money at your expense.

But they do, and they can, and it's perfectly legal. They are called, "paparazzi".

The motive for taking the picture is not relevant, nor is the use made of it. It's a public place, therefore, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.

My house is not a public place, and there IS a reasonable expectation of privacy.

 

[ovrszd]

Got a link?

This is all I found. Doesn't seem like a snoopy video thing.

Google Realtime API Overview | Realtime API
| Google Developers

Bruce

No I don't. I don't see it as a snooping thing. I think they are just wanting to broaden service. The gmap airials are a lot more current than they were years ago. I think ten years from now they'll be very close to real time.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

My photo is on Google street view. I waved as they drove by.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

But they do, and they can, and it's perfectly legal. They are called, "paparazzi".

The motive for taking the picture is not relevant, nor is the use made of it. It's a public place, therefore, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.

My house is not a public place, and there IS a reasonable expectation of privacy.

You cannot take the picture and say, use it as a trade mark for TKOMark orange pizza, or testify that Mark wears Haines underware or Nike running shoes. public place, public participation, fine.

 

[N80]

Not saying it's ok at all. I'm all for protecting your rights and your property.

I'm saying that if someone truly wanted to be a peeping Tom, flying something that can has a strong contrast in the sky (easy to see), sounds like a small lawn mower (easy to hear) and ignoring that it's probably a crappy camera, doesn't sound like a successful way to accomplish the goal of being a peeping Tom.

Still not relevant. A neighbor can climb his tree and look in my open window. He would be completely obvious and it is completely legal. But it is still creepy and I still wouldn't like it.

Again, I fully agree that it is not ok to fly over property that isn't yours. But I feel that these conversations are taken to the extreme and common sense is lost.

No. We are examining the extremes because 1) that's where the problems are and 2) EVERYTHING is taken to the extreme. No one is out to lynch drone pilots. I'd love to have one. They, just like all new technology pose questions that have to be addressed.

Please also consider the information that is collected that isn't so obvious. If you carry a cell phone, where you go and how long you are there is captured and recorded. Did you choose to let that information about you be captured and used?

Again, not relevant. Using a cell phone or the internet are something I do. A drone flying over my property has nothing to do with any decision I have made. Cell phone and internet privacy are important topics but are completely irrelevant to this conversation. I can choose not to use a cell phone or the internet. I do not have any choice in how someone else uses a drone.

This analogy is very valid. It isn't about what you choose to release online vs drones taking pictures of your property that you don't want taken. In BOTH situations, it is about an expectation of privacy.

Wrong. You can expect privacy when you lock your gate and your front door. If you expect privacy while you are on the internet or a cell phone then you are simply naive. I don't like it, but it is true. The courts will determine if the same is true with drones.

You expect to not be photographed at home. Totally understandable and worth fighting for. But let's not jump to conclusions and say that every drone that you see in the sky is for nefarious uses.

No one is saying that. There are drone pilots in this discussion. I'm a photographer. I'd love to have a drone. The point is that drones present a unique opportunity for the invasion of privacy at worst and for creepy but legal behavior at slightly less worse. No one is denying the fun and utility of drones.

You SHOULD expect not to be tracked and followed online but you are. You SHOULD expect not to have data collected about you like where you go, what you purchased, how long you were there, what you search for, recording conversations, etc.

Agreed. But again, not relevant to this discussion. The type of tracking that goes on with cell phones has been decided by the courts to be legal. For now. Tracking on the internet has always been the case. Always. Nothing new. We may not like it but it is de facto reality. Hope we can do something about it but again, anyone who things the internet or cell phone is private are simply ignorant.

Your expectation of privacy when using electronic devices is low. Should it be?

No. I agree with you here. It just has NOTHING to do with drone issues.

Net neutrality and freedom should be fought for as hard if not harder than a potential threat because this IS happening to you and me and everyone right now. But no one is waving guns in the air demanding change.

No argument here.

We are more concerned with potential threats to our privacy, in drones, when we should be more concerned about actual ongoing threats to our privacy online and electronic devices.

Disagree. I can be concerned about both. In the case of cell phones and internet I'm pretty much powerless. When you use someone else's infrastructure, services and servers that issue is going to be tough. But I can be a privacy advocate for those and still be concerned about what the proliferation of drones might mean. The difference is that I can easily, and possibly legally, do something immediate and dramatic about a trespassing drone.

 

[TemporaryKubotaOwnerMark]

If you carry a cell phone, where you go and how long you are there is captured and recorded.

*sigh*

NO, it is not.

If you are using a regular phone, only the sites that you use when placing and ending a call are recorded. NOT your location, just the transmitter site that is used. From that, an cellular network engineer (like me) can infer a rough location that is as large as whatever area that site covers. That may be a few city blocks, or it may be many square miles. (Picture the difference between downtown Manhattan where sites are every few blocks, and rural Nebraska, where sites are ten miles apart.) These records are kept for typically 1-2 years. After that, even a subpoena can't get the info because it no longer exists. It's not even archived. There is too much of it to keep it around.

If you are using a smart phone, all of the above, plus every site you use while accessing data. Every URL, every download. That is kept for 90 days by my employer, and it's probably the same for other carriers. It's too massive to keep around longer, and past about 90 days really isn't useful for troubleshooting, which is the only reason we hang on to it at all.

All of the above is available to law enforcement by subpoena. If I access your records without your permission and get caught, I will be fired. Gone. Quickly. One exception - if your phone is causing problems on the network I can look at your data for troubleshooting purposes. If you call into customer service with a problem, they may look at those records to troubleshoot a problem. I can (and do) access the aggregate of everybody's info for engineering reasons, but I don't see individual phone numbers that way.

With a subpoena, law enforcement can get all of the above real time*, and a lot more, including pretty accurate location info, but that requires some special effort. It's NOT happening on every customer. The data would be massive. We don't have the bandwidth to deal with it. And no, the NSA isn't capturing it, either. We'd have to pipe the information to them. That can't be done secretly. Sorry, James Bond is not real.

If you dial 911, the PSAP has your location information. We don't. I could probably set up a special trap and capture it, if I had a reason (can't think of one), but it's actually calculated by an outside company (who doesn't keep it) and just passed through to the PSAP. It's not recorded by us.

Did you choose to let that information about you be captured and used?

Yes, you did. It's in your contract. So there is another reason it has nothing to do with the question of drones.

Your expectation of privacy when using electronic devices is low. Should it be? Net neutrality and freedom ...

"Net neutrality" has absolutely nothing to do with any customer's freedom. It's about managing traffic. That's it. Ignorant and confused people have made it out to be about some imagined "right" to have unlimited data speeds, and how the Evil Big Corporations are just itching to throttle your bandwidth, and Must Be Stopped! (from doing something that is against their own interests and which they have not done in the history of the Internet) but it has nothing to do with anything about privacy.

 

[N80]

*sigh*

NO, it is not.

It was said, in the media (for whatever that is worth) that cell phone GPS data (precise) could be collected by the NSA without a subpoena (in the conventional sense) and that that data was being gathered in bulk. In addition to that numbers called and the time they were called was accessible to the NSA.

So, while none of us are network engineers this is what the public was told.

 

[Jim Nelson]

Thirty years ago I moved to an area here in Southern California near where hot air balloons and ultra light aircraft take off and land.They flew over our place all the time, usually quite low,and I never thought a thing about it.There were some pretty good cameras and video equipment back then and I'm sure just as many perverts as now but it wasn't an issue.
Times sure change.

 

[TemporaryKubotaOwnerMark]

It was said, in the media (for whatever that is worth)

By now, we ought to know what that's worth. Claims are easy to make. If we aren't getting it (and we're not) where would the NSA get it? It's not being transmitted continuously, or even frequently. That would kill battery life and it could not be hidden. And to whom would it transmit it? Is there a secret app on every phone that notifies an NSA server every few seconds? The data volume would be unimaginable.

It's as ridiculous as the claims we used to hear that every landline phone has a secret microphone that is transmitting every conversation to the government.

People who say these kind of things simply have no idea what would be required to make something like that happen and keep it a secret.

 

[N80]

By now, we ought to know what that's worth. Claims are easy to make. If we aren't getting it (and we're not) where would the NSA get it?

It really does not matter. You made our argument sound with your own post. If the collected info includes your cell region, points in which you accessed wifi, the times you were there and the numbers you called and the times the call was made then a lot of information can be learned about you especially when this data is collected over time. And regardless of the technical minutiae it has been made clear that the NSA has had access to some combination of that data. How or when they get it is irrelevant to privacy concerns. And if they want to look at me or you then the volume issue isn't relevant either and there is no real due process, at this point, that protects me from such unwarranted (in the legal sense) observation.

The NSA has already been confronted with the volume of data confronting them in regard to cell data collection. That statement was made publicly. That is _their_ problem and does not make their illegal (in my opinion) surveillance okay (in my opinion). Fortunately, that volume becomes its own form of privacy protection for us but computers can be used to deal with volume.....that's pretty much what they do.

Regardless, all of this is a tangent in regard to drone privacy concerns. It is not relevant to that conversation. It is a different animal altogether. And will I do not like the opportunities for abuse afforded by the current legal controls placed on cell phones and the internet I 1) have no control over them and 2) know that the potential is there when I use them.

And as they say, if you want to disappear in this country: use cash, throw away your cell phone and stay off the internet.