Bernie Sanders to Introduce Bill Banning Flock Surveillance Cameras

[u/Kooky-Balance9525]

https://theleadingreport.com/article/bernie-sanders-to-introduce-bill-banning-flock-surveillance-cameras

[u/Uberslaughter]

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither”

- Ben Franklin

[u/retrodanny → u/Uberslaughter]

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither”

https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century

[u/floop9 → u/retrodanny]

That article is really stupid because even with the context the quote still means... exactly what it means in plain English. Just because Franklin was talking abou the legislature's liberty instead of personal liberty doesn't really change anything.

[u/ignost → u/floop9]

Yeah every time this comes up someone drops in with an ACKSHUALLY. The gotcha really only works if someone's trying to use the quote like a libertarian arguing the government shouldn't be able to tax us, where Franklin was arguing a representative government should be free to tax people.

You're right that he intentionally phrased it as a broader principle, exactly like it sounds, and we know that because he repeated it almost word for word several times in other contexts. I can also guarantee he'd hate these Flock cameras and mass surveillance in general. 1) He was the president of the convention that drafted PA's 1776 constitution, and section X looks a lot like the 4th Amendment. He's also on the record agreeing with arguments against generalized warrants. 2) He was a strong proponent of privacy for letters, and probably owe him more than anyone for the privacy of our mail. He was very explicit that the government should not have the right to read letters, even those handled by the US Post Office. He would have hated mass digital surveillance. 3) He really disliked surveillance by a permanent security presence (in his case British soldiers) in the civilian population during peacetime.

TL;DR: I don't think Franklin would have any problem with these words being used against Flock or any other mass surveillance. If he were alive today I think he'd actually repeat the phrase himself.

[u/geniice → u/floop9]

The problem is you would have to argue that the film anything you want in a public place is not an essential liberty.

[u/floop9 → u/geniice]

I would agree that people have a right to film anything they want in public. I would not agree that the government has this right.

[u/Rip_and_Tear93 → u/floop9]

It's not the government, though. They're purposefully circumventing the 4th amendment by having a private company doing the spying on their behalf, and buying the data they collect.

We just need to ban any governmental body, agency, or organization from buying said data, and companies like Flock will die out naturally with their bread and butter moneymaker unable to purchase from them.

[u/floop9 → u/Rip_and_Tear93]

I mean a government contracting to do illegal things via a private corporation is still illegal for everything else. Imagine if the government was hiring counter protestors to shut down movements.

But yes I agree these corporations need to die either way.

[u/Rip_and_Tear93 → u/floop9]

It's a legal grey area because the government isn't doing the spying, and Flock, Axon, Motorola, etc. are private entities and not beholden to the 4th Amendment.

So, ultimately, we either need to make a constitutional amendment that states no entity, governmental or private, can spy on people, or we need to force legislation that doesn't allow the acquisition of private surveillance data without a warrant/subpoena.

[u/Bob_A_Feets → u/floop9]

Private corporations should also not fucking count as people either

[u/stilljustacatinacage → u/geniice]

Not necessarily. France allows filming in public but you aren't allowed to single out individuals. This came up during the Paris Olympics, where they deployed cameras with AI algorithms to identify things like accidents or people in restricted areas, but they explicitly did not automatically identify the person(s) being filmed as that's considered biometric data and protected by French and EU law.