More subtle differentiations than that are made by law and handled routinely by courts. Remember it's not (yet) an algorithm that has to be precisely specified. Things like intent and effect can be considered and judgement applied in court by a person whose title reflects their responsibility to do exactly that.

I'm not a lawyer or a legislator it's not my responsibility to write law phrasing to your satisfaction. This would be handled the same way other plausibly deniable things like fraud and harassment are handled. By evaluating the context, subpoenaing records and conversations, questioning under oath, looking at the effects and history of actions of the individuals involved.

>write law phrasing to your satisfaction

I wasn't trying to be combative, I just thought you had an idea that I hadn't thought of that would satisfy the privacy concerns with the freedom to photograph in public concerns.

>By evaluating the context, subpoenaing records and conversations, questioning under oath, looking at the effects and history of actions of the individuals involved.

So a lady gets arrested for photographing her child with your house in the background, she would now have to be interrogated, give a deposition under oath and go trial and go through all that?

Writing good laws is hard.

No I'm just trying to avoid that classic HN situation of being talked into making specific assertions outside my expertise and then technical flaws being used to dismiss the broader point I'm making.

Writing good laws is hard sure but you're approaching this having already accepted the framing that the only way to prevent this police overreach is to restrict everyone from doing similar things. We can just prevent the police from doing this. We don't need to write a perfectly generalizable restriction on everyone's ability to take pictures or whatever. The cops aren't the public and should be subject to additional restrictions beyond what the public is subjected to.

>having already accepted the framing that the only way to prevent this police overreach is to restrict everyone from doing similar things.

My position is people should be free to photograph in public anything they can see. That's currently how the law is written. I don't think it's perfect, but I can't think of a better alternative (thus this discussion).

>The cops aren't the public and should be subject to additional restrictions beyond what the public is subjected to.

I agree as an ideal, but in practice there are a lot of barriers.

  - They can legally arrest you, even if you didn't break any laws and aren't required to even know the law.
  - They aren't legally required to help anybody.
  - They have blanket qualified immunity granted by the SCOTUS.
  - Each police department and sheriff's department is their own jurisdiction, so any blanket restraint would need to be done at the federal level.
  - They have one of, if not the strongest unions in the country.
  - They have strong political support that is just now eroding a bit in blue states.

We are having a hard time just managing police brutality and unnecessary force currently.

An interesting irony is that the more laws / restrictions we ask the government to put on people, the broader jurisdiction the police have over our everyday lives.

An old example is jaywalking. Since jaywalking became a crime, the police can stop / detain you, legally require you to identify (and arrest / charge you if you refuse) and possibly Terry frisk you just because you walked across the street in a certain way.

Because of this, when people propose making a law to prevent people from doing something not-egregious, like say smoking at the beach, I'm against it. It's not worth the intrusion for me and my kids and my kids' kids, etc.

Anyway, I've gotten way off topic. Thanks for the discussion.

Yeah I mean yes this is a small & compromised step on the path towards the necessary goal of completely eliminating the police. They are wholly incompatible with any conception of freedom or justice.

Sure, it is hard. But there's a gigantic middle ground between "no photographs ever that contain any part of your house" and "permanent digital video camera whose footage is invisibly passed on to the government". It is far from impossible to write some rules that balances these things. Yes, there will be loopholes: a criminal who wants to photograph your house could come by with their nephew and stage a photoshoot. But we live with those kinds of exceptions already: as giraffe_lady said, the law is not an algorithm.

>"permanent digital video camera whose footage is invisibly passed on to the government".

I'd be fine with regulating / banning without a warrant the second half of that sentence. I don't want to prevent people from having security cameras outside their home, those are pretty useful.

The current loophole is police asking the same 3rd parties that host your data for that data and those 3rd parties can comply without your consent. We'd need some type of data ownership laws for that sort of thing. I'd certainly support that. There are laws around NIL (name, image likeness) and ownership thereof. I'l like to see those applied to third party data storage vendors, but like dragon_lady mentioned, it's a step.

Of course, that wouldn't prevent the police asking your neighbor or local business for locally stored footage.

>the law is not an algorithm

Laws should be as specific and un-vague as possible to prevent abuse, mainly from the government itself.

By saying the government isn't allow to video or photo surveil someone's home without a warrant.

A parent is not the government, and even though warrants are easy enough to get in most places at least they're following the letter of the law if not the spirit by getting one.