If your houses are close together I don't think it's reasonable to have an expectation of privacy on the driveway or front porch. After all sound at normal speaking volume can easily travel 100 feet on a quiet day, if there's nothing in-between.
That’s probably legally true in the US, but is that the best we can do?
It’s valid to question the value of laws. Sometimes I wish I did have more privacy in public.
But more importantly, technology has completely changed what non-privacy looks like and is tragic to me that laws haven’t caught up.
There’s a huge practical difference between “someone within 100ft, probably a neighbour who I know, might hear me and probably instantly forget what I said, but 99% of the time no one is there” and “100% of your conversations are recorded, transcribed, and stored forever by a profit-maximising behemoth with various other unavoidable tentacles into my life, and also they might sell or give that data to other companies also the police”.
This is a similar problem with data brokers... yes my records are public, but for most of history that meant going down to city hall and putting forth effort... should the law around public records be different when data brokers vacuum up all that public data and resell it digitally? We've lost many practical barriers to privacy.
There's a huge difference between casually overhearing a conversation because you also are outside versus having actions/words recorded for eternity, and potentially analyzed by a third party (Amazon, Google, etc).
I'd say an apt comparison would be a neighbor occasionally hearing what you're saying (and possibly cozying up to their closed front door to listen), versus your neighbor coming out onto the porch every time you're talking, attempting to join the conversation, and even filming you with their cell phone to share with their friends. The latter is wildly socially unacceptable, and at the very least we'd shun someone who did this. Unfortunately most people seem to ignore electronic devices in their social analysis.
I'm not sure I agree - if you have the right to observe, listen and record using your meat implements (eyes, ears, brain), then you should have the right to do so using a digital augmentation of the same (cameras, microphones, storage).
Because there is no clear distinction between the two. You're certainly entitled to listen with your ears and write things down aren't you? Can you use a hearing aid to help you listen? What about binoculars to help you see?
Clearly it's impolite to peer into your neighbours windows with binoculars, and gossip about all the conversations you overhear with your hearing aids, but you've got the right to do so, don't you?
What about observing your neighbours through a peep hole in your door (or wall)? What about setting up a camera instead of a peep hole? And what if you want to see the camera feed from your phone? Reference it for later? Where is the line? All of these, including pens and paper, are technological augmentations to our innate capabilities. I'm not against banning them per se, I'd just like a clear idea of why we ban some and not others.
> I'd just like a clear idea of why we ban some and not others.
Can you think of any reasons why we would want to ban some and not others? It reminds a bit of something that Emma Goldman might say: people have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.
I can't think of any deontological reasons, no. It seems to me that people are just more apprehensive of the more recent innovations. I can point you to writings in the past advising what to avoid writing down. This taboo has clearly shifted.
Say in 1000 years from now everyone has cameras and storage media implanted in their persons, I suspect the public consciousness surrounding what is and isn't expected to be recorded would change. I don't however think that your fundamental liberty as a human being should depend on the public consciousness, but rather be derived from principles/axioms.
Pardon my ignorance, but I thought deontology evaluates actions by measuring them against a set of rules. I find it hard to believe that you can't imagine any rules that would prohibit filming someone else's home.
And infringing on this imagined-from-first-principles right would cause serious repercussions. No regulation could ever be as beneficial as losing this imagined-from-first-principles right. We must let corporations and the police state that serve them have and use this data.
It's not imagined-from-first-principles, it's in fact attempting to define the very axioms that ought to constrain law in the first place. What does it mean to be "free" do something?
If you avoid this question, you can justify just about any tyranny so long as it can be argued to be "beneficial" (spoiler alert: this is how the worst atrocities in history have been justified). In other words, the ends don't justify the means.
Incidentally overhearing a conversation and recording 24/7 then uploading anything interesting to a third party's servers for them to do who knows what with it feels very different.
I'm curious what others think of the ethics of a non-internet connected camera? Does that really resolve the issue or do you still consider it wrong to have residential security cameras that capture the sidewalk/street outside the house?
I think it’s not as bad as it removes many of the worst elements, but I also think there is a question of how limited/incidental the surveillance is of other people: e.g. I think there is a difference between picking up people on the sidewalk on the 20ft or so directly in front of your house, vs having the camera also pickup wide angle view of the whole street and all of your neighbor’s comings and goings.
Privacy doesn't have to be a binary, GP probably expected a modicum of it in that they assumed their conversations could be heard by their neighbours should they be listening in at the time, but is uncomfortable at the idea of a digital record of each audible outdoor conversation being kept in perpetuity, that the neighbours and any third parties with access the footage could use against them if their relationship went sour (which it now seems it has...). The "expectation of privacy" argument should really only be used when discussing whether recording should be legal, not when determining whether someone is a jackass according to social norms.
You got it. I'm on my front porch, and clearly anyone on the street walking by could hear me. But to know that it's possible to record my entire conversation is creepy.
I've learned my lesson and now invite people to our backyard, which is free of any cameras.
You're comparing apples and oranges. One is legal and the other isn't.
They absolutely have the right to record audio that is audible on their property. It used to be the norm that if you don't want your neighbors hearing you the onus is on you to speak quietly in a private place. With the increase in such devices the norm too will shift to "know that a device is recording audio in certain zones"
That's not exactly true. Many states have laws outlawing recording "private" conversations without the consent of all parties. As far as I know that would even include recording someone having a private conversation with you on your own property. Whether or not someone talking on their own property and their voice carrying over their property line would qualify is up for debate.
That's actually a good point. I'd like to see if someone has done an analysis on this. Factors to consider:
- Whether the recording was intentional (i.e. if I set up cameras for security, and it so happens to record all your conversations on your front porch, this is unintentional, but if I set up a microphone by the wall, it's intentional).
- The type of communication - most resources I'm finding discuss phones and similar channels.
From what I could find:
I just checked one state: Video recordings are fine, but if they capture the audio of the conversation, then it's a violation of the law.
Other places define a violation of reasonable expectation of privacy to require an explicit intent to eavesdrop - so if it's a side effect of my security system, it's not illegal.
In a number of states, your front porch or backyard are not considered private places. If the conversation is between you and someone else (not the neighbor), then by federal law, intentionally recording the conversation is illegal (neither party consented). When it's unintentional, it'll probably vary from state to state.
In most places they can point the cameras onto the exterior of your property. But if it can see inside a bedroom (even if the window is open and no curtains are drawn), it can be a violation.
Interesting side effect of searching for this: Video monitoring of your baby may be illegal!
I wonder if these laws run afoul of the ADA - You can't do zero-party consent audio recordings - but you can record video, which could just as easily capture a deaf person's conversation using sign language. Basically, it sounds like this law affords protections to only certain, non-disabled citizens.
I agree but to a point. I am curious how this plays out when what is recorded wouldn't necessarily be audible or intelligible by the human ear but is able to be picked up and amplified via post processing or more sensitive devices.
Will we then just have to always assume that a device is recording audio in all zones?
Countermeasures will be figured out, but it's an interesting thought process.
It's a scary thought process, but yes - you will have to assume it and technical[1], not legal countermeasures will be thought out.
Sure, one can have laws, but these kinds of laws are incredibly hard to enforce when it becomes trivial for everyone and their grandmother to break the law. It's frankly much easier to police Lyft/Uber usage than this.
I agree the parent is wrong that they do have the “right” (really more it’s not-illegal) but don’t think it doesn’t mean it’s not unreasonable and obnoxious.
I really wanted to avoid any legal issues with them. We decided talking/texting is best. My wife is a litigator, and even she didn't want to go there.
If you share a wall with a neighbor, it's always best to try and resolve things through direct communication. Our kids still play together, and they still come over and vice versa.
I made my point, and they actually engaged in helping mitigate my concerns. I certainly can't ask them to remove their camera, so that's why we took this approach. They met us half way, but clearly felt something more when one of them over reacted.
Laws are the lowest common denominator of social behavior. Not illegal - does not mean it’s not anti-social behavior.
I also the think there is a practical difference between occasionally/potentially being observed when entering/leaving your property, and having your comings and goings surveilled 24/7/365
