“The way that the law thinks about whether or not you should or should not have a complaint against being recorded depends on social context and norms,” says Tien, “And those are things that could conceivably change depending on how technology is applied.” This is why our rejection of Google Glass was more than just a fashion decision. These aren’t just hypothetical questions, they’re ones we answer with our actions. Do those students now no longer have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their rooms?
Tricky test 2 wake rose up again install#
Louis University in Missouri recently announced a plan to install 2,300 Echo Dots in dorms room across campus. If I visit a friend with a home assistant, do I no longer have a reasonable expectation of not being recorded at their house? Or what about dorm rooms - St. “There is a fair argument that if I have installed these kinds of listening devices in my home, I don't have a reasonable expectation of non-interception,” says Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. If you choose to put an Alexa or Google Home in your house-a device that listens to everything you say, waiting with baited digital breath for its magic wake word-you could be fundamentally altering the answer to the question of reasonable expectation. Airport security regulations might mean you can no longer reasonably expect that you’re not being recorded in a terminal or on an airplane.Īnd it’s not just government surveillance that has changed over the years - we ourselves are inviting devices into our homes and lives that could fundamentally alter what we can expect when it comes to privacy. Ubiquitous surveillance cameras in public mean that you no longer have a reasonable expectation that you aren’t being captured on video in many public spaces. But over time, technology - and our choices about said technology - has slowly chipped away at that certainty. You could reasonably expect to spend the vast majority of your day without being recorded - in the street, at your job, in your home. For a long time, the answer to this question was almost always yes. Even the Supreme Court, which established the reasonable expectation test in 1967, has admitted that the test can result in “an often unpredictable - and sometimes unbelievable - jurisprudence.”Īnd not only is it a tricky test, it’s also one where the answer changes over time. If this seems like a tricky way to decide privacy law, well, it is. It would take a case brought before a judge to find out. If she had been filmed or their conversation had been recorded against her will, would she have any kind of case for the invasion of her privacy? The short answer is: It’s unclear. The woman who was photographed on the plane wound up harassed and hounded off social media. Or take the case of #PlaneBae, a viral story about two people whose airplane meet-cute was documented by the person sitting behind them, without permission. The Wiretap Act also doesn’t stipulate what should happen if you’re in a bar and someone with Google Glass walks in and records you, with or without your knowledge. Is that a violation of wiretapping laws? It’s not explicitly clear. Let’s say you’re on the phone with someone and you think it’s just the two of you, but in fact they have you on speakerphone in their office and a third person is listening. There are more and more legal gray zones.īut there are now plenty of cases that fall outside the specifics of these federal and state laws. (And because doing so would get them media attention and perhaps some new customers.)Īs cameras and microphones creep further into our everyday lives, A group cheekily named Stop the Cyborgs pushed against Glass "to stop a future in which privacy is impossible and central control total." Even the bar in Seattle that briefly became famous for banning Glass did so in part because of a existing policy that forbid patrons from taking videos or photos without consent. The New York Times ran a front-page story about Glass, wondering whether it would mean the end of privacy as we know it. Glass was outfitted with a camera that the user could activate at any time, and this, rightfully, freaked people out. People were kicked out of bars for wearing Glass because the device represented a form of ubiquitous recording. The main critique of Google Glass wasn’t really that they looked stupid (although, to be clear, they did). Rose Eveleth is an Ideas contributor at WIRED and the creator and host of Flash Forward, a podcast about possible (and not so possible) futures.
0 kommentar(er)
