Because the scaling effects of automation change the natural balance of the implications of no public privacy.

For instance, the South Dakota supreme court recently found that leaving a webcam on public property for months in order to record everyone who showed up to and left a private residence to be a fourth amendment violation.

https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2017/nov/16/south-dak...

Missing the key part that this was done by the police targeting a specific home. Otherwise security cameras would fall under this category.

When you walk around in public, you are emitting photons that let me see you nude. Well, no human I know of can actually see you nude, but with some technology I can definitely do it unless you wear special clothing. So would you say me using that technology to take pictures of the photons people freely admit in public is fair and that I can then go sell those photos? Or does technology change things from how our society use to work?

In the same way a photo of the visible spectrum is not the same as a photo of lightwaves outside the visible spectrum, a photo is not the same thing as seeing someone, and using that photo to track their every facial expression, emotion, and interaction isn't the same as a photo.

Law has not yet caught up to technology, so we need to change the law.

The existing expectation of privacy assumes the capabilities of regular human beings. Humans cannot reasonably observe thousands of different locations simultaneously, 24/7, and remember of millions of faces. Machines can.

An analogous example: There's no speed limit for walking/running because human beings cannot run fast enough for it to be a problem, but we had to come up with speed limits for cars because they could do much more damage due to how fast they could go.

Because there's a difference between, "oh look, JustSomeNobody just went into the mall" and "JSN went into the mall, then he bought a slice of pizza, next he sat in the massage chairs. After he got up from the massage he went into the As Seen On TV store and bought some cheap doodads. Finally he exited the mall 45 minutes after he entered it."

Also, while anyone _can_ take a photo or video of you, they cannot do whatever they want _with_ that photo or video. If they use that photo to portray a scenario that simply did not happen then they can be in some serious trouble.

Anyone being able to take the photo and you being recorded all the time are two really different thing.

Tracking movements of certain populations through mass surveillance is not the same thing as being photographed in public.

Facial recognition going mainstream will have large ramifications.

This is disingenuous or naive and keeps being repeated in privacy discussions.

People don't expect privacy in public but they also don't expect all all their public movements to be recorded, stored, collated and analyzed.

These are 2 different things with dramatically different consequences. Any discussion on privacy needs to account for the distinction.

You're right, it's very well established in the law and as it turns out people do have a reasonable expectation that they will not be under surveillance in public.

I'm giving up privacy but I'm not agreeing to my likeness being used for profit. If someone uses my likeness for profit - say an artistic photograph - without my consent I can sue for damages. Mass facial recognition is similar because they sell the data and link it to other data, thus making other data more valuable. Without my face this value wouldn't be added, therefore they need to compensate me for it.

I think we as a society (or rather as a collection of societies, as I should acknowledge non US HN people) should be able to decide, hey, I don't want companies/cities/individuals tracking me wherever I go, knowing about which doctors I visit, where I sleep over, etc.

That is technically true, but isn't relevant.

Just because a person can take my picture in public doesn't necessarily mean they should be able to use face recognition to find out my name and lookup other information about me.

I think this is less about the right to privacy and more about the right to be forgotten.