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Posted by samfriedman 4 days ago

ICE and CBP agents are scanning faces on the street to verify citizenship(www.404media.co)
386 points | 343 commentspage 3
dmitrygr 4 days ago|
'Katz v. United States' was quite clear - you have no expectation of privacy in public. Anyone may photograph you and use said photos. Do I like it? No. But that is the current caselaw in USA.

"What a person knowingly exposes to the public [...] is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection." - Justice Potter in 'Katz v. United States'

advisedwang 4 days ago||
They legally can take a photo of you, sure.

But they aren't just taking a photo from across the street. They are also:

1. "briefly" detaining you to make you face a camera and take of hats etc for the app to get a good enough shot.

2. arresting you if it doesn't correctly identify you

3. using protected characteristics to decide who needs to get scanned.

jazzyjackson 4 days ago|||
Taking photo is one thing, storing biometrics to compare against without consent is quite another

Illinois has the Biometric Information Privacy Act.

https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/ILCS/Articles?ActID=3004&Ch...

dmitrygr 4 days ago||
Fair. If anything is stored, it likely would be illegal in some states.
qingcharles 4 days ago|||
Frustratingly, the BIPA might exclude these offensive actions. It was really designed to protect customers from bad businesses. This sort of action probably didn't factor into it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45750955

From the statute: "A private entity does not include a State or local government agency."

advisedwang 3 days ago|||
Something must already be stored, for them to be comparing the photo against.
dmitrygr 3 days ago||
Hypothetically: driver license/passport databases are theirs already
softwaredoug 4 days ago|||
If they ignore all other forms of evidence that you're a citizen, that goes beyond privacy in a public space
jimt1234 4 days ago||
This ^^^ What is the point of having an ID in the first place, if they can just ignore it?
cosmicgadget 3 days ago||
Keep in mind that what "anyone" can do and what "anyone serving in an official government capacity" can do are different.
dmitrygr 3 days ago||
The case I cited specifically talked about government doing it.
cosmicgadget 3 days ago||
For facial recognition or just plain photography? Obviously Katz predates the former.
dmitrygr 3 days ago||
Katz jut said "what a person knowingly exposes to the public" IIRC. We'd need a new SCOTUS case to clarify whether data derived from physical features that can be used to identify you still counts as such
cosmicgadget 3 days ago||
Agreed.

> what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.

Identity might be, might not be.

t0bia_s 3 days ago||
So lets scan faces of agents and identify them. We can use those technologies in both ways.
crote 3 days ago|
They, of course, wear full face masks.
mperham 3 days ago||
I presume this is powered by data collected by the face scanners at airports when you go thru security?
micromacrofoot 4 days ago||
Any shred of trust that was left in our federal agencies is going straight down the drain.
zzzeek 4 days ago||
the people who run YC and Hacker News have Peter Thiel's phone number.

that's all I'm saying

notahacker 3 days ago||
They're too busy writing brave, orthodoxy-challenging essays about wokeness...
toomuchtodo 3 days ago||
They would call and say what? "Go home you crazy weaponized narcissist, you're drunk on power and delusions of techo authoritarianism." If you're challenging someone who can hurt you, you should not approach until you are highly confident you are going to win, whatever that looks like.

I hope the folks mentioned are, and continue to remain, somewhere safe while this plays out.

zzzeek 3 days ago||
More like they'd come out publicly against what Thiel and Palantir are doing, given that they are members of, and colleagues within, the same communities of moneyed tech leadership.
toomuchtodo 3 days ago||
And...what would that change about what Thiel and Palantir doing? A strongly worded letter will not lead to meaningful change against someone who does not care.
zzzeek 2 hours ago||
huh? public figures should not speak out against things they disapprove of, particularly by people they are known to be closely associated with? at the very least they should do it for themselves, to publicly distance themselves from something they disapprove of. Otherwise, we assume they approve, and that is the actual point of my post, which is as long as they stay silent about their colleague, we have to assume YC types have no problem with this stuff. (which we knew anyway. but their silence confirms it).

like here's most of RFK Jr.s actual family saying he should resign: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/rfk-jrs-family-members... what losers! they should have said nothing and stayed silent. because what's the use right? The use is at the very least, we know that they, the immediate family members, do not approve of their sibling's actions.

jameslai 3 days ago||
Do they just deport tourists? What is the plan here?
ericzawo 4 days ago||
"Pick up that can."
linuxlizard 4 days ago|
"I'm behind on my beatings."
nowaymo6237 3 days ago||
Nice to see the post 9/11 digital surveillance and beyond finally get its usage by a fascist takeover
cornhole 2 days ago||
the gestapo is in town
intalentive 3 days ago|
The funny thing is these heavy handed tactics don’t scale. ICE’s own statistics show that deportations are down from the Biden Administration’s numbers last year. So what’s the point? To scare people? To set a precedent? To normalize civil rights abuses? Any right-leaning people who support this should understand that it could easily be used against them.
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