Comment by 1123581321
12 hours ago
This is a good article about some of the legal particulars. https://www.heraldnet.com/2026/02/24/snohomish-county-judge-...
The defense of the photos not being government business until accessed seems shaky. That the physical camera installations were purposeful intentions to conduct government business in those areas is a reasonable line; this doesn't set precedent for Google's information becoming public records because the police might do a google search, to use an extreme example.
The proposed legislative amendment that would exclude Flock footage from public records (which would make this judgment moot) makes sense in the light of red light cameras already being excluded by the same legislators. However, I'd like to see a more incisive law covering both that would compel a reasonable amount of public insight into the footage.
The defense of the photos not being government business until accessed seems shaky.
It's reminiscent of the NSA's argument that data "collection" occurs only when a search is performed on existing "gathered" data. File under "Stuff that's only legal when the government does it."
What should I be reading?
An older article was reposted here yesterday:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47210572
Scott Alexander has a decent article (or rather a guest blog post) at https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/all-lawful-use-much-more-th... that brings up the subject in the context of Anthropic and OpenAI's dealings with the Department of War (sic), and how their contracts with the DoW might be interpreted with regard to mass surveillance of Americans.
Worth checking out. I'm not personally knowledgeable enough to vouch for the veracity, though.
My prediction: “It’s not a “search” when an AI looks at the stored database and does sentiment analysis, because an algorithm doesn’t violate your privacy. It’s only a “search” after it’s flagged and an actual human with human opinions sees your private chats criticizing the supreme leader.”