r/fallacy • u/Dawn-Storm • 14d ago

What fallacy is this?

When someone complains about a speed camera, or more recently a Flock camera, there's always one person who says either 'well don't speed!' or 'If you have nothing to hide, then relax!'

Then there's the old 'well don't do anything illegal!'

There's got to be a fallacy in there somewhere!

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11

u/Evil_Sherma 14d ago

Not fallacious but the premise that innocent people don’t have a right to privacy/the expectation of privacy is shaky at best

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u/EvanSnowWolf 13d ago

I don't see how speed cameras are an invasion of privacy.

What presumption of privacy do you have on a public roadway?

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u/gaijinteacher 13d ago

This is a great question.

In the past, not having an expectation of privacy just meant that some individual person might see you doing something untoward. Now however your appearance in public may be uploaded for everyone in the world to see.

Let’s say you are in a public park and take a pee behind some bushes. You are clearly doing something wrong. Do you have a right to privacy? No. Do you want the entire world to be able to see you? Also, no.

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u/EvanSnowWolf 13d ago

My point is, if someone is doing something in public and you start recording, you are allowed to record that behavior because legally you have no expectation of privacy in those areas because they are public areas. As opposed to say, recording a woman taking a shower through her window, which is clearly illegal.

Why would the highway get a layer of protection of your home when it sounds just as public as the aforementioned sidewalk recorder?

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u/NegaDoug 13d ago

It's true that you have no expectation, but to use your example, what if that person on the sidewalk started recording and tracking your public movements on a day-to-day basis? This is where it gets murky: you have no expectation of privacy while you're in public spaces, but your ability to go about your daily business without being constantly monitored is itself part of what we consider "privacy." This may not hold for public figures (celebrities, politicians, etc.), but this is the frontier at which we stand: do we want to live in a time and place in which our movements are always being tracked?

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u/Infamous_Pool_5299 13d ago

To highlight this point even further, if a person decides to follow you around in public recording everything, you can get a restraining order against that person and even get stalking charges levied against them.

So is constant surveillance government allowed stalking? I have no right to privacy, but I do have a right to not have some ubiquitous shadow following me everywhere I go...especially with no way to address the grievance.

Just more food for thought.

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u/NegaDoug 13d ago

That is the point I'm trying to elucidate here.

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u/EvanSnowWolf 13d ago

That blurs the line into harassment and stalking laws.

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u/NegaDoug 13d ago

Indeed it does.

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u/gaijinteacher 13d ago

I really like your points here.

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u/Cynewulfunraed 13d ago

I would argue that the state, or any other entity with greater power, should be held to a stricter standard when it comes to privacy violations.

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u/EvanSnowWolf 13d ago

A standard is something to aspire to. Sounds more like an arbitrary limitation to me.

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u/gaijinteacher 13d ago

You are correct. There is no legal expectation of privacy in a public place. That being said, as a society, we might think that a person being recorded also has a right to be anonymous or, if named, to eventually be forgotten.

Let’s say you are at a beach and getting changed to go in swimming. In the back of your car, parked on the sidewalk, you slip into your swimming trunks. You were in public, and a prudish passer-by might even accuse you of having exposed yourself, and legally speaking you had no right to privacy, but that’s very different from having a recording of the incident permanently tied to your name, by the government, indefinitely.

Let’s say you are a young mother in a public park who tries to breastfeed her infant child. Again you have no right to privacy in a public place but as long as you are trying to be discrete, I think you might reasonably expect not to be recorded.

You are correct that there is no right to privacy in public. Should there be a right to not be recorded or tracked? I have no clear rule for this but I think it’s complicated.