<story><title>Secretive Surveillance Company Is Selling Cops Cameras Hidden in Gravestones</title><url>https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qjdp95/this-secretive-surveillance-company-is-selling-cops-cameras-hidden-in-gravestones</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>harimau777</author><text>I often see people say that we don&amp;#x27;t have an expectation of privacy in public.  However, it seems to me that ignores the nuance of actual social norms.&lt;p&gt;- Eavesdropping is generally considered anti-social.&lt;p&gt;- Taking up-skirt pictures in public is, I presume, illegal.&lt;p&gt;- If someone buys their prescriptions at a public grocery store, would it be alright for someone in the store to photograph their medical data?&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that the law needs to differentiate between the general sense in which one doesn&amp;#x27;t have privacy in public (e.g. the public probably has the right to know if a &amp;quot;family values&amp;quot; politician goes to a strip club) and actively spying on someone.&lt;p&gt;This is particularly the case when technology makes spying possible in a way that it wasn&amp;#x27;t previously.  For example, I imagine it&amp;#x27;s not uncommon for many people to carry confidential information openly (say carrying a prescription in your hand as you walk to the grocery store) because it&amp;#x27;s not realistically possible for someone to read it and connect it to you.  However, that changes with high speed photography, OCR, and facial recognition.</text></comment>
<story><title>Secretive Surveillance Company Is Selling Cops Cameras Hidden in Gravestones</title><url>https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qjdp95/this-secretive-surveillance-company-is-selling-cops-cameras-hidden-in-gravestones</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rahuldottech</author><text>Previous discussion: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=22022010&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=22022010&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Copying my comments from there:&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; In warning the site not to disclose the brochure, SSG’s attorney reportedly claimed the document is protected under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), though the notice did not point to any specific section of the law, which was enacted to regulate arms exports at the height of the Cold War.&lt;p&gt;We really need an overhaul of all these old laws that were enacted for a completely different era, which are now being misused. Another example is 200 year old laws being used to get companies to break encryption.&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know how I feel about hidden surveillance cameras in public. I know I shouldn&amp;#x27;t have any expectation of privacy in public and all that, but CCTV cameras in plain view are a different matter.&lt;p&gt;Are we going to live in a world where we&amp;#x27;re constantly being recorded and analysed by hidden cameras? This makes me very uneasy. Whatever happened to the idea that democratic governments should be for the people?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sure there&amp;#x27;s no way that this can ever possibly be misused &amp;#x2F;s.&lt;p&gt;If agencies are using these for surveillance on specific targets then that&amp;#x27;s maybe okay, but as far as I&amp;#x27;m aware, there is not much regulation regarding hidden cameras in public - at least, not in many parts of the world.</text></comment>