this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2026
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Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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And if not, its existence is highly overdue.

Where tracking of privacy-sensitive activities of individuals in public, traditionally required exhaustible resources (as in agents physically shadowing targets); cameras and other sensors can (and will) track said activities of any individual in public, regardless of being targeted (not that targeting individuals is possible to begin with: only after collection, one can pinky swear not to look at, or discard information regarding non-targets).

The main difference being, one traditionally having effective "expectation of privacy" in public (unless specifically targeted by authorities: having sufficient reason to allocate resources to the individual), but in the context of modern technology we lost the benefit of the doubt. And unless never setting a foot outside again, any arguably more incriminating personal data (naked in the shower versus protesting an oppressive government) should be "expected" to be collected.

So because "privacy" is historically tainted with said demoralization, any efforts to defend "privacy" in "public" (where one can truly no longer have expectation thereof) are doomed to fail. Therefore I wish to have a term, without ambiguity introduced by any subjective matter (that is "expectancy": the individual's versus a typically biassed judge's); one that makes no distinction between personal data being collected in private, or in public.

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[–] Dryad@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Stalkflushed? Dunno.

On the thinking though, might there be any legal argument for unreasonable search and seizure? Yes there’s not expectation of privacy in public, but an officer might still be expected to have a warrant or at least probable cause before searching my car in a Walmart parking lot without my consent.

Sure I don’t expect privacy from Walmart’s security system, but I don’t have reason to think law enforcement is monitoring it at all times. 24/7 law enforcement surveillance seems like it should fall under “search” there, because unless you have reason to be watching me, you’re searching for something anyway.

And officers have literally been caught literally stalking people without warrant with these systems. How is that not unreasonable search?

So yes, there’s no expectation that the public should look the other way, but I should be able to expect to not have big brother looking over my shoulder at all times.