I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on? Who's to say how much of you I have in the shot? Do you feature? Did you flash by? Are you blurred? Recognisable?
I was shooting video of a car park exit last year. (I was trying to prove to the shopping centre owners that it was dangerous.) Mundane footage. Some lady drives out in her car and sees me. Winds the window down and starts on the you don't have the right to film me carry-on.
I politely informed her that, I'm sorry, but I do. She's in public. That's the law (in Australia).
Another fun one, while I'm here. C. 2010, we're shooting a music video in central Melbourne. We're on the public pavement. There's a bank ATM waaaay in the background. Bank security come out. Sorry mate, you can't film here.
We told them, we can. We're on public land. So they call the cops. We politely wait for the cops. The cops turn up.
"This sounded much more interesting on the radio", the cop says. They left us alone to finish the shoot.
Just as the author says: “Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me.”
It doesn’t fall to the legal level, but a social rules level.
People who obnoxiously recording people in public, even if 100% legal, and disregard the wishes and conform of others around them deserve social consequences.
Some things should only exist at the social norms level. IMO it would be hunky dory if societies considered what “privacy in public” looks like in the modern age, and came to the conclusions like “no dragnets pls”.
You've got a very large, diverse population without a strong social identity and ever-fraying trust. So you won't consistently get basic human decency any longer. That's something which is extended to the in-group with which you have real social ties and obligations. Most people don't have this any longer.
I agree. I understand that there's no expectation of privacy in a public area and this is amplified by people having cameras/video recording capabilities in their hands than ever before. I think it's different though when it's at a private event though, like a birthday party, funeral, etc and folks shouldn't default to livestreaming
> So you won't consistently get basic human decency any longer. That's something which is extended to the in-group with which you have real social ties and obligations.
This is nonsense. People started taking photos of crowds almost as soon as the camera was invented.
While I think we all agree that this is crucially important, for many of us the affront to decency is not the capture of photons that have previously bounced off someone's skin, but the very idea that that person has a claim to those photons in perpetuity.
I think it's indecent to suggest that someone needs to avert their gaze (or in this case, their CMOS sensor) because I happen to be in the area.
Right. If you had a swimsuit malfunction on the beach in 1995, a few people got an eyeful of your unmentionables before you could grab a towel, someone might whistle or laugh, you'd blush, and then the world would move on and you'd forget about it.
If the same thing happens in 2025, there's a decent chance your unmentionables will end up posted online for anyone to ogle in perpetuity. If you find out about it, it could really eat at you.
I don't have a solution to it, or even know if there should be one. But I think it's undeniable that it's causing a fundamental shift in what "private" and "public" mean, in people's minds if not legally. We used to be more private in public than we are now.
Who cares, your body will degrade and ultimately decompose in few short decades.
If people aren't decent enough to wait till you are dead and bother you over the footage of you they've seen, you should go after them, not the person who recorded the footage. They are the ones who cause you inconvenience.
> Young girls are killing themselves every day over something you're saying "who cares" about
...I think this advances the point GP makes. We have allowed obsession over body image to take on religious proportions (falling off both ends of the spectrum, toward tiktok swimsuit edition on one end, and the burka on the other).
Part of this obsession is the claim of ownership of every photon that bounces off one's skin until it is eventually captured by someone else's eye (biological or electronic).
A healthy internet age is one in which we find comfort in our bodies, fitness in our habits, and security without needing to control every depiction of us.
I have no problem with that, but there are a lot of commenters here arguing that it should be enforced at a legal level, rather than a social rules level.
For a forum that tends to trend libertarian, I'm genuinely surprised by the level of enthusiasm for using the government to police the photos people take and share of people in public spaces.
> I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
I find it interesting how the winds have changed on this topic. 5-10 years ago it was a hot topic in online tech spaces (HN, Reddit, Slashdot and adjacent sites) about preserving your rights to take photos and videos in public spaces.
I can understand some people preferring not to be filmed in public or shared commercial spaces, but ultimately if you are truly in public then being photographed or recorded is just part of the deal.
I don’t think some people have thought about the second-order effects of things like requiring model release forms for everyone who enters the frame. Imagine getting a ticket or being sued by your busybody neighbor because you took a video of your kids in the backyard and they walked past. Laws like this are frequently abused by people who want to wield power over others, not simply people who simply want to protect themselves.
When you extend the thinking to topics like news reporting and journalism it becomes obvious why you don't want laws requiring everyone to give consent to have video shared of themselves in public: No politician would ever allow footage of themselves to be shared unless it's picture perfect and in line with what they want you to see.
I don't think the author was arguing at all that these things should be illegal, more just that there should be more consideration of other people's preferences where possible.
It's also legal to play an annoying song on repeat all day on a quiet hiking trail, but people (rightfully) recognize that as improper socially.
>I find it interesting how the winds have changed on this topic. 5-10 years ago it was a hot topic in online tech spaces (HN, Reddit, Slashdot and adjacent sites) about preserving your rights to take photos and videos in public spaces.
I don't know about that. Aroudn this time was the peak of "Glassholes" for those who remember that phenomenon. People really didn't want someone to be potentially, passively recording their conversation. Would that not be a thing should Google re-launch Google Glass today? That might be a real factor given how Meta is trying to push AR glasses.
> I find it interesting how the winds have changed on this topic.
My very very strong gut feeling is that this is an influx of bots muddying the waters of discussion in concert with the unleashing of the secret police force that is ICE.
It seems to me that every real person sees the crucial importance of public photography in peacefully maintaining accountability.
And of course nobody in this discussion has said anything against photographing officials and news-worthy events.
"You should not publish photos/videos of private individuals without consent or a very good reason" and "you should be able to freely document police activity" do not contradict each other.
Is that true? There are many level of exercise of political, social, and economic power that happen in the commons. The camera is a primary tool of defense against injustice in this area.
Restrictions (especially with the force of law, but also social pressures) of the basic and deeply human capacity to capture photons and vibrations, and to make depictions of the results of that capture, are invariably used by the more powerful against the less powerful. eg: cops playing "copyrighted" material to prevent posting to youtube.
Much safer and fairer is to just give ourselves the same rights we might imagine are afforded to an alien, 4 light years away, looking through an extremely powerful telescope. Do you suggest that earth laws extend to this alien? Is she prohibited from posting the activities she can see of ours through her telescope?
Maybe our society has failed if publishing such photos is needed to maintain accountability... I really do not see that step for actually functioning society.
...we have evolved eyes, brains capable of retaining visual memory of what they capture, and communications media capable of describing and depicting those captured photons.
If you believe in the basic right of general purpose computing - not just a political right, but the idea that general purpose computing is the lifeblood of the internet age - then it seems to follow logically that the capture of photons and depiction thereof are part of the functioning the commons.
Part of the issue is, big portion of the footage being recorded, is not worth recording, let alone publishing. (Except for personal value of the person recording, but that doesn't require public sharing)
With the OP example, people getting recorded are not bystanders catching stray camera focus, they are the subject of the video. Without other participants, there would be little 'content'. Imagine going to an indoor climbing venue, recording someone else, and publishing just that.
Not to mention "auditors", whose goal is to use the ambiguous nature of feels-like-a-privacy-invasion-but-legally-isnt when you stick a camera in someone's face in a public place to try and get a rise out of people and prance around as victim.
I think this is a case where the reasonable person test is excellent. Is this use of a camera reasonable for personal/professional purposes
You should be expected to take reasonable steps not to victimise someone by use of a video camera, subject to public interest. That means filming strangers with intent to provoke them should be a crime but raging car park lady cannot reasonably claim to have been victimised. Consent affects what is reasonable without creating a duty-bound obligation not to film without consent.
We already have "reasonable expectations of privacy", why not flip that?
The idea of public and private needs a similar distinction like libel and defamation.
Ephemeral public has no expectation of ephemeral privacy, but me walking down a street with a handful of people on it should not lead me to expect that being recorded and having it broadcast to the entire human race, permanently, for eternity.
>...but me walking down a street with a handful of people on it should not lead me to expect...
You shouldn't have an expectation either way. If anything, the expectation that you will not be recorded is more of a violation of the social contract that the reverse. It's a public space that can be used for many purposes. If the effect on bystanders is minimal then attempting to exclude an activity is wrong. Can we say "I don't want you to see me, so look away whenever I am out." "I don't want to wait in traffic so everyone else has to pull over and clear the road when I am driving." "I didn't consent to this smell, so this restaurant has to turn off their stoves and ovens hours before I will be coming by."
Reality is that you can't exclude others if they aren't doing something that excludes you.
To be clear, I am talking about a hypothetical ought-to-be and not specifically discussing the current law anywhere.
I hear you and I agree public spaces involve us working and coexisting together, not tailoring the public space to what one person wants.
On the other hand, there is something in me that doesn't like for-profit rage bait creators monetizing how I react to a guy shoving a camera in my face and doing something irregular. I feel like it is a type of assault we don't have a name for yet but that should conceivably be criminal.
I just realize that I'm acting like the those that first saw the printed word or a camera and felt uneasy about it, I am just an old man angry that video cameras and globalization of content exists. I'm probably just a luddite trying to stop the world from progressing.
The way they do it in Germany is it's legal to have a recording that incidentally includes a person but it's not legal to have a recording of the person.
The author suggests this was not a public space. Legal or not, it's more about not being a jerk. I think this is especially important in the context of a hobby, and the local community around that hobby. There are easy ways for everyone to get what they want in these situations.
So, why not get a release? Why not perform some light video editing to cut/blur out people who don't want to be there? These are not high bars to clear. I've done similar things, you have every opportunity to talk to the group and sort this out, and explain why you're filming and where you're publishing. Then people can come to an informed decision...
I think the context of the original article is important: at an airsoft range, you’re on private property. You’ve signed a waiver to be there, there’s already rules to follow. Having formal rules for filming would be a totally reasonable and practical thing to do.
Just like some gyms are accommodating to people filming TikTok’s and some aren’t, an airsoft range could have camera or no camera days, if that was something their players wanted.
It's always a possibility that the owners of the range have already considered this and found there is virtually no market for no-camera days. Excluding your most enthusiastic members to include a miniscule number of camera-shy weirdos is unlikely to pay off.
The venues for these things are private and so they can set their own rules. The author proposes a rule: A simple purple lanyard indicating that you don't wish to be included in the published film.
This doesn't necessarily need to be an article, because the author could have just handled it with each venue individually, but this just gets the conversation going about general sentiment and wider applicability.
My guess is that early on this kind of youtuber was relatively rare and so being captured occasionally wasn't a big deal, but that now the trend is catching on, a it's happening regularly and becoming a concern for some people.
The author is a tech lawyer. I think the article is there to start discussion. I agree with him that if private venues allow people to record like this they should offer, at the very least, an opt out. "Purple lanyard" seems like a good way. It's also a pretty easy spot in post production where you can either blur or cut as appropriate.
I occasionally see people saying “well, if you don’t want to be in photos published online, don’t be in public spaces”.
This is nonsense, for a number of reasons. Clearly, one should be able to exist in society, including going outside one’s own home, without needing to accept this kind of thing.
In any case, here, the issue is somewhat different, since it is a private site, where people engage in private activity (a hobby).
In many hobbies, recording footage and reviewing it later is very valuable for improving. Think about football players reviewing game footage as a team to discuss what they did well and what went wrong.
Many hobbies are like this. The majority of footage people record on their GoPros is for themself. It's rare for someone to edit it into a YouTube video. Even more rare for someone to go see it.
The AirSoft example is interesting because players where so much protective gear and face masks that it would be very difficult to recognize anyone's likeness anyway.
If you are doing it because you're a creator on YouTube and you are getting paid through views on YouTube, aren't you then required to get release info? If it's for personal use, sure thing, but when you are making money on it then you should absolutely get releases and default to bluring non-released individuals.
I think the bigger issue is that our laws (in the US at least) haven't really caught up with this gig/creator economy. It would be no different than a blockbuster film group filming a war/battle sequence and having to get permission ahead of time from the location and individuals.
My work will have signs up or ask explicitly if they are filming and intend to publish. If you go to a private org with the intention of filming, you should follow the same rules for a full-budget production group.
> If you are doing it because you're a creator on YouTube and you are getting paid through views on YouTube, aren't you then required to get release info?
The model release laws are usually tied to commercial use where some endorsement is implied.
That’s why your company must secure a model release when filming in your office: The material is being used in a manner related to the company and as an employee in the video you are implicitly part of that.
If the AirSoft facility was filming customers and using that footage in an ad, they would probably require model release forms.
There are freedom of speech protections covering the capture of likeness for artistic display, editorial use, and so on.
If the YouTuber made some video in this case as an ad for some AirSoft product and included other people in it without model release forms in a way that implied they were part of the endorsement, they could be in trouble. If they’re just making videos reporting on their games then I doubt there’s an argument that you could make requiring a model release, even if the channel was monetized.
This is also why news channels don't need to secure model release forms when reporting on public events. If we required everyone to do the model release form thing to show any video of them, you would never see any negative videos of politicians or criminals agin.
Blur the people who didn’t give consent. The problem is cultural, not technical. Even YouTube has the native ability to blur out faces at the click of a button.
OP offers a reasonable idea of wearing a lanyard or badge to indicate you'd like to be censored out of the final video. that's practical and provides community enforcement -- for example if someone publishes a video with a subject like that, the community can shame them for it.
The alternative is for the venue to have "recording time" and "non recording time." If you go during non recording time, you're not allowed to bring cameras into the space. And if you don't want to be recorded, you go then. And if you want to record, go during recording time.
Think of it like a public pool. It is unreasonable to say that there should be public pools that children aren't allowed into, but it's also unreasonable to expect all adults to want to swim with children. This is why we have the concept of adult swim time.
Here in Spain if you don't get explicit consent you can get sued for publishing the video (it's fine if you only showed it to the shop owner and didn't publish it), but if someone tells you explicitly they don't want to be recorded you have to stop and delete the video (I assume if you refuse they can just call the police, but I've never seen it happen).
Well, the first step is not being sued and taken to court, but receiving a cease-and-desist letter. But for that to happen, the person that has been videoed needs to be aware of that his face is on YouTube, which in most cases you won't even notice unless it's a video with a very high click count.
Stop taking video in public, or at least of the public. You just assume you should be able to do that and the whole world should adjust to your preference. Maybe it should be the other way around.
Do you also support a blanket ban of CCTV in public spaces? I am pretty sure that the bank had a camera in the ATM recording a public pavement 24/7 and nobody bats an eye.
You can use AI to blur anyone that doesn't give permission. You can't use the excuse of "it's too much work!" It should be the law that you can't indiscriminately video everyone for your own financial gain.
Airsoft sites ban/allow videos in certain matches.
Not rocket science. We manage in public spaces like toilets ok.
They also point to purple lanyards in conferences and suggest an equivalent in Airsoft.
Why is this comment going back to zero? Does Hacker News not have the ability to move forward? Is this a central tenant to the nihilism worship that is Hacker News?
Don't publish the videos unless you have a good reason to. There is no upside to just throwing everything you record on the internet. People don't watch the videos, your channel is degraded by having tons of garbage on it, and people in the videos don't want to be online like that.
If you stop pretending that a random video is somehow going to 'go viral' or make you famous, the entire problem just evaporates.
If you want to publish videos put the effort into making good ones that people will actually watch, which means raising the bar by (in part) finding people who want to be in them. Videos of random people doing pretty mundane things like their hobbies won't turn you into the next YouTube star.
Yes, this is what the author is concerned about. There’s a big difference between being filmed incidentally, and being filmed on purpose for the activity you’re engaged in. Being accidentally in the background is one thing, while being the subject of a video and having the camera aimed at you is another. Even though public photography is also legal where I live, and I believe we should keep that right, if I filmed close-ups of people in the car park getting in and out of their cars, I’d expect most people would object and find it uncomfortable.
> I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
i think i would prefer this. i'd rather live in the world where no one can record or photograph you in public than the world where you're streamed or entombed in a vod for life.
Shooting video for yourself is one thing, sharing it to a third party like Google, MS, or Apple is another. Unfortunately many people have been brainwashed to not consider or even understand the difference.
I'm fine with being recorded as long as you keep it private. Not with that video ending up on your Drive backups or OneDrive etc, let alone YT.
This is drawing a very different line from the majority of conversations in this thread, I imagine.
"Sharing with a third party" because you have phone backups enabled is very different from streaming live or uploading to social media, like most are actually discussing here.
Like most things with "Europe" - it depends, because it isn't one state with universal laws or even cultural expectations. Go to somewhere like Poland and everyone will have a dashcam and it's almost expected at this point(imho). But in neighbouring Germany you are technically allowed to have a dashcam, but any recording is legally inadmissable in any court case. So even if you have a recording of someone crashing into you, it can't be used because the other person never agreed to be recorded. Meanwhile Austria and Portugal have banned them completely, even for personal use.
Germany specifically doesn't like dashcams that record continuously. Legal ones just keep a short buffer and when they detect a crash or a button is pressed (or a voice command in fancy ones) they'll write it to storage. Because if something happens you have a valid reason to have and use footage, you just can't record people without a reason.
I think there is at least something of a middle ground for almost-but-not-quite-public spaces and events. In this case the author is talking about airsoft games; it seems totally reasonable for the venue or organizer to enact policies, whether "no cameras allowed" or "purple helmet means don't show / blur this person".
In fully public spaces I think we're pretty much out of luck, though I do think that laser/lidar-based countermeasures should be legal.
If AI photo/video generation continues to improve then it shouldn't be a problem as the photo/video taking culture will most likely die off once people assume any photos/videos they see are generated.
> I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
This seems reasonable to me. If its airsoft, how many people are involved? 10? 20? Just go around and ask people if they will allow you to post video of the game with them in it.
> Another fun one, while I'm here. C. 2010, we're shooting a music video in central Melbourne. We're on the public pavement. There's a bank ATM waaaay in the background. Bank security come out. Sorry mate, you can't film here.
> We told them, we can. We're on public land. So they call the cops. We politely wait for the cops. The cops turn up.
Heh. As a photog I've have plenty of similar run ins with people...but only when wielding an SLR (or similar). Was once standing on a sidewalk, saw a building that looked cool, took a picture. I'm more into architecture than people. Security comes out from the lobby to accost me. I very politely told them "Dude, I'm on the sidewalk, you can't do shit"
I also had the local transit agency threaten to call the cops on me for taking photos. Literally of just the platform and rails (without people) when I was trying to document the system for Wikipedia. Even though on their website it EXPLICITLY states that what I was doing was within their rules. Ignoring the fact that it was totally legal regardless.
That time I just (metaphorically) ran away rather than dealing with a belligerent station agent. Was what I was doing wrong? No. Was it legal? Yes. But did I want to deal with the transit police? Nope.
The thing that drives me batshit nuts is no one seems to care if you're taking a picture with a phone. The latest iPhone have megapixel counts in excess of many DSLR and mirrorless cameras. I can be way more sneaky with my phone. By using a DSLR type camera I'm being very public that "Hey, I'm taking a picture here" that should assure people, rather than scare them.
The the author of the article wasn't in a public area, but in a private area at a private event, perhaps model release forms are a really good idea for participants.
Well the majority of the facilities are private land, right, not public, right? Organize formal sessions during which photography is prohibited. If you don't get any takers, the sport might have left you behind.
The alternative is not uploading video of people doing a hobby.
I don't think your situations are the same as someone appearing on some youtube channel without their consent every single week unless they opt out of participating at all.
If I see someone filming me while driving I usually give them the finger. I suppose that's my consent for them to do whatever with it. I don't foolishly believe they can't do it, but I do suggest maybe they shouldn't.
What if there was some sort of middle layer escrow holdings platform for users to sign up to that has your identity, facial biometrics, and crypto wallet. The user can also specify how they want their likeness used, or if they do not want to appear, etc.
Any user uploading to a video platform has to run their video through this integration user-facial detection layer at some point in their editing pipeline. Payments are made accordingly.
>I get it, but the alternative is what? Get model release forms from anyone in a public space every time you turn your video camera on?
Not every thing has to be recorded.
It is like all those runners and cyclists who log and share all their runs/rides on Strava without even taking the time to figure out if it really serves a purpose other than a vain attention seeking.
In Germany it's generally illegal to film people apart from certain exceptions (mostly public events and public spaces). Even when filming something in public, you must be filming the event/space and not a person or group who happens to be occupying it, which is a fine distinction. Even surveillance cameras have strict requirements to be legal. You don't want to be the guy who goes to jail for having a surveillance camera, right?
Tangentially, nightclubs put stickers over your phone cameras and that is a great idea.
Good to know you reside on the other side of the planet. I wouldnt want to meet you in public under any circumstances. So much entitlement and disregard for other people is sickening.
There are a lot of '1A' auditors on youtube. They can be nasally and annoying but it's hilarious how often people go into a rage that they're being filmed despite the fact the people getting angry are doing the same to everyone else.
I don't trust the UK government either. But I'm both British and Australian and I see the need for a centralised identity service.
Because the alternative is that we provide our passport to every online service that 'needs' to verify our identity. Then – lo, would you believe it! – they get hacked, and now all of our data is in the wild again.
I'd much rather the government, who already know everything about me because may I remind you they issued the documents, had some way of that company querying my 'verified identity'. They might do it by me providing, say, an ID number string which is looked up. That's all they get: my ID number. In return, they get confirmation that I am who I say I am.
Oh by the way I already have at least 2 of these ID numbers as an Australian citizen. My aforementioned passport, and my driver licence. Both of which I know I should keep 'private', lol, but if I want to interact with the world in any meaningful way the reality is that I spray these digits – along with my date of birth and address and whatever else they ask for – all over the goddamned place.
What service needs a solution to verify identity that doesn't already exist?
Banks do KYC now. Employers already need a National Insurance number to employ someone. Benefits get paid to a named payee. Emergency healthcare needs no insurance and waiting lists come via a GP who indeed knows me.
What service needs a further centralised deposit of power over identity?
In Australia (and many other countries), we need to KYC when we get a new mobile plan. This makes sense: you can do a lot of criming with a 'dark' phone number.
> In September 2022, Australian telecommunications company Optus suffered a data breach that affected up to 10 million current and former customers comprising a third of Australia's population. Information was illegally obtained, including names, dates of birth, home addresses, telephone numbers, email contacts, and numbers of passports and driving licences.
Yes, all of these services. Plus a ton more - hotels, car hire, various government digital services.
For example I get married abroad and I need to change my name, if a system was present I could just go to a website, enter my request, identify and then wait for my new docs to arrive, all while staying abroad.
But it’s even better - banks / employers don’t need all of my information all the time, thy just need to verify that I am who I say I am at that moment, so the credentials I am giving them through a digital system can reflect that. Call it requesting a scope from a government openid system.
And I have the power to revoke that.
And all of the various little government agencies don’t need to request all the documents to bootstrap trust every single time, they can just be given a convenient (timed) access token by me.
Implemented right, it gives much less data to people in a much more convenient and secure way. I guess the “implemented right” is the problem.
But maybe that’s an orthogonal thing that needs to be solved by itself? How we have an independent central banks that doesn’t (shouldn’t) succumb to the whims of governments - they have a clear narrow mission and they are supposed to follow it regardless of what an administration would want.
If we had an “auth provider” government thing that’s mission might be more closely aligned with the population, giving a government _just enough_ data to make it efficient but so it cannot abuse it.
Built in adversity and distrust is how we finally got a government to “work” with the separation of powers and all of that, maybe we need to think about improving the political system with some know how from web tech, cause I think working efficiency, effectively and reliably in an environment of mistrust is what web tech is known for.
> Because the alternative is that we provide our passport to every online service that 'needs' to verify our identity.
I really really really don't want to 'verify my identity' everywhere. Why the F is that normalised these days?? If I buy something online my payment and delivery address is all they should need. And all they've had to have for the last 30 years
> I'd much rather the government, who already know everything about me because may I remind you they issued the documents, had some way of that company querying my 'verified identity'.
Um yeah but right now they don't know what you do with your life all the time. Anna have absolutely no business to.
As an adult, you probably need to authenticate yourself in the following situation.
opening a bank account, getting a credit card, getting a mortgage or a loan, buying a flight ticket, signing up for internet service, signing for mobile services, buying a concert ticket and the list goes on.
What's common here is the service provider need to know you are actually the person say it is you and not someone else.
Back in the old days where we apply the service in person, you can take your driving license or passport to authenticate yourself, but with myriad of services now moving online, we need a centralised system that mimic the physical ID.
For a flight ticket I just ID myself at the airport so that's not an issue. For concert tickets I don't need to do this now. For internet service I absolutely don't need that, all they need to know is that I pay.
And mortgage, bank etc I just do on premise of course. These things are rare and important enough to warrant to just go there.
Given the ongoing "age verification" fiasco, I'd be quite wary of giving UK government any more digital powers. They don't seem to be any good at using what they have.
Yeah age verification is another such idiocy. The EU is starting this BS as well. Great way for conservative politicians to make a name for themselves with their backers, but other than that it's not effective at all, considering the torrents are full of this stuff with no gating whatsoever.
> If I buy something online my payment and delivery address is all they should need.
That's what verifying your identity is for. The payment. This cuts down on fraud. My credit cards often require me to enter a code they text me for a purchase to go through, when it's somewhere online I've never shopped before. That's confirming my identity. And my credit card needed my identity originally to look up my credit history, because they're literally loaning money.
Businesses want to know who you are to reduce fraud. Otherwise people input stolen credit cards, the charges get reversed, and the business is out of merchandise and money.
Obviously if you pay in something irreversible like Bitcoin then a business generally couldn't care less who you actually are, as long as there aren't any know-your-customer regulations (like if you're a bank or the address is in a sanctioned country etc).
The "credit card" model for buying stuff seems to be flawed. When you give some company your credit card number and CVV to buy something, they could always turn around and give the number to someone else.
The fix is very simple, but requires more interaction: (1) You ask merchant for stuff (2) Merchant sends you a "money claim" (3) you sign your money claim (4) the merchant takes the signed claim to the bank (5) the bank verifies the signature using your public key (6) bank transfers the money to merchant from your account
Absolutely, credit cards are insanely insecure, everything that is needed is written on it. I don't know why we are stuck with this archaic American system. They patched it with a form of 2FA (Mastercard 3D Secure / Visa whatever) but it's still really patchy and in many cases is not even triggered at all even for big purchases.
But here in Europe we have much better payment methods like iDeal in Netherlands and Bizum in Spain (now going pan-EU with Wero)
That's basically how PSD2/SEPA payment flows function in Europe if there is a functional eID system. I think I've used such a system for nearly a decade now.
Airlines and airline middle-men organisations are the worst offenders and centralised identification is not going to help there. Having flied with a few airlines, your details are out there. In the UK, national and travel passport are the same.
Your mistake is assuming good faith on behalf of the government who arrests thousands of people for social media posts. Beyond faith, they are incredibly incompetent and this data will be stolen.
Just because it’s social media doesn’t excuse inciting violence or hate speech. I’m not going to claim that every arrest in the UK due to social media posts was just, but I also disagree that social media should permit unrestricted speech.
You miss GP’s point. They’re not assuming good faith, they’re pointing out that the government already knows identity credentials and can, encrypted or not, quite easily correlate digital activity with those credentials.
The question isn’t whether the government can/will identify and track you. They do, in good faith or bad. This is unfortunate and attempts to allow them to decrypt or acquire additional data about citizens’ activities (like chat control) should be opposed, but identity/activity tracking is omnipresent and irreversible.
The question is whether identity credentials should be available which reduce the risk of additonal credential theft or bad-faith action (e.g. by other entities stealing non-secure-for-digital-use credentials like passports).
They didn’t arrest anyone for “making social media posts”. The police (not the government) arrested people due to the content in the posts breaking an existing law. Big difference.
Funny enough, we had a hell of a time running a helpdesk where we designed the docs -- many of which I wrote myself -- to be executed exactly as written.
Guess what humans hate to do? Especially the smart ones, which of course you want to employ on your helpdesk? They just would not read the damned instructions.
I think this was because many of the instructions were dumb. We were explaining decades-old bank stuff. It didn't make sense, but it's what you had to do! So these guys tried to 'fix' it, and in doing so, broke it.
The whole support model was predicated on this idea that the 3rd level guys would write stuff that the 1st level guys would slavishly follow. It never worked.
You could probably fix this, to some extent, by adding a sidebar to the instructions that 1) acknowledges that the procedure doesn't seem to make any sense, and 2) points out why the seemingly obvious fixes won't work. That's usually immensely helpful to me as a reader, so I don't have to waste time wondering if I misunderstood the instructions or the author misunderstood the procedure.
That's why I like GNU documentation. The don't explain the program, they explain the user domain model and then everything just clicks. The first time I read one of those, I was like: Where is the actual documentation? I want to skip this. But what I was looking for does not exist. This seams tedious for the first time, but then you appreciate it, because it saves time in the long run.
Maybe being able to follow a set of (seemingly silly) instructions should be part of the interview/onboarding process. And emphasised at job performance time.
Problem is a lot of times silly instructions are silly because they are wrong. Like why did you turn left and try to drive through that river? Those instructions assumed a bridge was there but it washed away 10 years ago. A new bridge exists, you can see it, obviously take that one instead.
Consider that if you spend 9000USD on bandcamp you can pass the files on to your great grand children
I've been buying used CDs on ebay when I can get them for ~8USD per album, and buying FLAC/ALAC on bandcamp and qobuz for anything that's hard to find. A couple of albums that aren't streaming I had to pay 30-50 USD for a used CD, Ecstatic by Mos Def, Parabolic by Aoki Takamasa. It's kinda fun to find out what music is "rare" and what music is cheap.
Jellyfin + Finamp is a solid combo, and a flash modded iPod 4th gen (last one with a black and white screen) to play music in the car. It's a good feeling to know none of my albums will ever disappear. (To be sure, albums have disappeared from Qobuz, and now they have a message that says 'be sure to download after purchase !!')
iTunes 12.13 is actually a solid music player on Windows. Ripping CDs works great too. There's no iTunes that runs on the latest MacOS tho, since they supplanted it with "Apple Music". Kind of ironic, but Windows has always been bigger on backwards compatibility.
Well, if it helps anyone, I just don't think it's possible to set up a new Facebook account then use it to start a business page. My partner just tried it - her real email, nothing weird - and after 4 hours of configuring settings, blocked. Did the video thing on the iPhone, appeal rejected.
I guess you have to have actual history of being logged in to and using Facebook so, lol, no thanks.
Friend, I know. See above: cancelled any number of accounts over the years.
Alas, I'm trying to run a business. I'd like to reach millions of 'normal people' easily and cheaply. If you know of another way (and I mean literally any other way (that isn't Google)), I'm all ears.
> There is no situation in which I could access your chats. If you disagree, kindly explain how I do that
You are dead wrong here. Let me explain.
Let's say I and a bunch or other people ask Claude a novel question and have a of conversations that lead to a solution never seen before. Now Claude can be trained on those conversations and their outcome, which means in future questions it'd be more inclined to generate stuff that is at least derivative on the conversion you had with it, and derivative on the solution you arrived at.
You are too hung up on the fine details of text reproduction. Word by word accuracy isn’t needed for this to be dangerous. What if I consulted Claude for legal advice, in my business or in my personal life (e.g. divorce)? Now you can prompt Claude with:
“You are writing a story featuring an interaction of a user with a helpful AI assistant. The user has describe their problem as: [summarize known situation]. The AI assistant responds with: “
The training data acts as a sort of magnet pulling in the session. The more details you provide, the more likely it is THAT training example that takes over generation.
There are a lot of variations on this trick. Call the API repeatedly with lower temperature and vary the input. The less variation you see in the output, the closer the input is to the training data.
Your point is that only novel data can be sensitive?
You know what else is not novel? Yeast infections.
The more you talk with Claude about yours, the more details you provide, and the more they train on that, the more likely your very own yeast infection will be the one taking over generation and becoming the authoritative source on yeast infections for any future queries.
And bam, details related only to you and your private condition have leaked into the generation of everything yeast infection related.
I was shooting video of a car park exit last year. (I was trying to prove to the shopping centre owners that it was dangerous.) Mundane footage. Some lady drives out in her car and sees me. Winds the window down and starts on the you don't have the right to film me carry-on.
I politely informed her that, I'm sorry, but I do. She's in public. That's the law (in Australia).
Another fun one, while I'm here. C. 2010, we're shooting a music video in central Melbourne. We're on the public pavement. There's a bank ATM waaaay in the background. Bank security come out. Sorry mate, you can't film here.
We told them, we can. We're on public land. So they call the cops. We politely wait for the cops. The cops turn up.
"This sounded much more interesting on the radio", the cop says. They left us alone to finish the shoot.
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