There's a difference between being in public and being tracked.
Of course they don't have expectations of privacy in terms of people being able to e.g. take photos or videos of them. The same way people can take photos of you or me.
But broadcasting someone's real-time location to the whole world all day long, in real time, is something else entirely. That has never been considered part of being in public. That's targeted surveillance, which is very, very different.
It should be noted that SFMTA, the alleged victim of this website, uses a network of 400+ Flock ALPR cameras to track the movement of every vehicle in the region. They're able to do this not because of some special agency authority, but because it's legal for anyone to surveil public areas.
It might be fair, but is it a good idea? What you are doing is justifying something you wouldn't agree with because it targets people belonging to an organization doing the thing you don't agree with. That is can be problematic because
1. They now can say 'well it is done to us why can't we do it to others' instead of engaging with real arguments about using ALPR flock cameras to track people
2. You assume that a person working for an organization is automatically complicit in the decisions of that organization and is therefore fair to be targeted by systems you don't want targeted at yourself -- this is fine when in war or other struggles deemed worthy of placing aside normal human morality temporarily, but is this one of those?
3. This type of thing can turn into a race to the bottom where each side escalates compromises of their basic value systems
> Of course they don't have expectations of privacy in terms of people being able to e.g. take photos or videos of them. The same way people can take photos of you or me.
Might be a culture difference with europe but I find it rude if someone would take a picture of me without asking. I can think of few purposes (stalking, facial recognition training or tracking, sharing in a chat group to make fun of) that you can do with a picture of a random person on the street that you'd not get permission for when you're required to ask
It's always a balance: if someone wants to do it for legal reasons (I just stole their purse and am running away) that's very different. There's almost no law that works absolutely anyway, there can very often be overriding reasons that are already defined in the law (or another law) or that a judge will accept. Just talking about the default case
It's not only a culture difference but a legal one. It's not just rude, it's actually illegal in some parts of Europe. Some parts of Europe remember what it was like when people went around photographing other people and making reports on them. Furthermore, in the Netherlands, for example, there's a portrait right that photograph subjects have.
Well yeah, there is that, too. I don't really care about the law so much as ethics though because law follows societal norms and this law isn't commonly enforced anyway
Of course it's rude. But we don't criminalize behavior that is merely rude. It's rude to swear at someone or fart in their direction too.
In public, US courts have established you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Because you're in public. Someone can take photos or videos of you, whether you're in the background or whether they're zooming in on your face.
Obviously if you're getting right up in their face and refusing to go away, that turns into harassment and you can call the cops. But it doesn't matter if you're using a camera or not.
How do you think these public officials with massive paychecks and life long massive pensions operate; they drive around in the most noticeable little vehicles that you can spot from a mile away. If you needed to track them for some reason you would just follow them, and most likely people in the neighborhood probably already know their routes anyways.
It seems you are fixated on something you just can’t let go, as if these are some kind of undercover agents selling kidnapped and trafficked young children and he’s blowing their cover … they’re writing traffic tickets off $480 dollars … the least we spoiled be able to do is track the public official while they’re writing excessive fines.
What the cost of living inside SF is, is irrelevant to the matter. As city employees they also have other benefits related to commuting and no one makes them commute into the city for that job that pays at minimum $70k and up to $100k in a country where the average wage is $39k...the average...and it is for *checks notes* driving around, looking, and pushing buttons all day.
You seem to lack perspective, probably because as most here, we all likely make well above what the average person makes around us. It can be forgiven as ignorance, but it's the same thing as the people around me who are worth 9+ figures who flatter their multiple staff with all kinds of pleasantries and benefits while paying them 6 figure salaries out of an odd poorly understood "guilt" or something that is prevalent among those who are better off than others.
I get your point, but reality is that under no objective perspective is $100k a bad income for what they do, especially since those "officers" pull in $90 million per year in citations.
But to answer your question, no, you will not be living in Sea Cliff on even $100k, but seriously, let's put into perspective what someone who drives around, looks, and then pushes buttons to print out a paper should be making. How many other people could be doing that job. I guarantee that it's not even a competitive position that hires in the best interest of the public.
You seem to be the one lacking not just perspective but correct facts.
> for that job that pays at minimum $70k and up to $100k in a country where the average wage is $39k...the average...
Where are you getting an average of $39k from? The OECD lists 2024 US average salary as $82,933 [1].
So this is a job that pays from less than average to a bit more than average nationally.
But, the mean hourly wage in San Francisco is $48.15 [2], which is slightly over $100K annually. Which makes it a job that pays from well below average to average at best.
> and it is for *checks notes* driving around, looking, and pushing buttons all day.
You clearly have no concept of the kinds of dangerous physical encounters cops have with scary, crazy, threatening, lunatic people on a regular basis.
> You clearly have no concept of the kinds of dangerous physical encounters cops have with scary, crazy, threatening, lunatic people on a regular basis.
Parking enforcement people are not police officers, nor do they have any of the powers of one.
Parking in an implicit crosswalk. (Go look it up, I had to). Parking for 3:14 in a 3:00 while picnicking in the park. Parking in church service overflow.
All things I’ve been ticketed for or towed for in SF. Those mfuckers just out to make money. They literally write more tickets when sfmta has a budget shortfall. It’s not about public order it’s about revenue.
Tracking enforcement officials decreases their ability to enforce and makes them easier to target.
ICE agents shouldn't be doing their enforcement. Deserve to be targeted, and given there is very little transparency to their actions, anything to check their actions is an improvement.
SF parking cops are not evil, operate transparently, and limiting their capability to enforce is not important to keep rule of law applicable.
Public officer tracking apps can be okay, but only if you deem those public officers to be severely lacking in public oversight, and massively overreaching in their enforcement.
>Tracking enforcement officials decreases their ability to enforce and makes them easier to target.
Why is that a bad thing? God forbid the enforcers only have the effective power to enforce where there is sufficient local support that they feel safe doing so. Sounds like a pretty effective check on power to me.
There was a case in my city a few years ago where the state police pulled someone over, found the passenger had weed on his person was in the process of arresting him but had to abort and he fled on foot because they initiated the stop in a supermarket parking lot at a busy time and the passers by were numerous and displeased enough the officers felt unsafe.
I get that people get their panties in a knot over the idea that the government might have less practical ability to enforce petty civil nuisance stuff like parking but the flip side of this is that when you need serious resource investment to do things people don't like (like arresting weed dealers, ICE raids, etc), you do a lot less of it. And that's a tradeoff that I think is very worth making.
If you don't think this tool poses any risk to these people let's try walk through a scenario.
Let's say someone sees a parking warden they find physically attractive. They follow them for a bit and when they write up their next ticket, the stalker pulls up this app to get the officer's ID. The next day they pull up the app to see where the warden is working that day - they drive over there, and it takes them maybe half an hour to find the warden based on the lag between last-ticket-location and real-time-location. They strike up a creepy conversation and the parking warden eventually leaves, disturbed. The next day, the parking warden is working a night shift - they've been told to patrol a dark neighborhood where there are plenty of alleyways that nobody can see into...
See where I'm going with this?
Anything which allows someone to get ongoing location data for a person who they've just come across on the street is inherently a danger to the surveilled person.
More likely someone gets a ticket that's bullshit, winds up paying, and this happens enough that they have their buddy wait for the person and throw a brick at them or something.
This is a wild hypothetical that tries to blame a tool for the problem of a user. Won’t anyone think of the children?
Let’s modify your post to highlight the absurdity:
Let's say someone sees a parking warden they find physically attractive. They follow them for a bit in their car and when they write up their last ticket, the stalker gets in their car and follows the officer back to the station and then to their home. The next day they pull up to the warden’s house and follow them to see where the warden is working that day - they drive over there. They strike up a creepy conversation and the parking warden eventually leaves, disturbed. The next day, the parking warden is working a night shift - they've been told to patrol a dark neighborhood where there are plenty of alleyways that nobody can see into...
See where I'm going with this?
Anything which allows someone to follow a person in a vehicle who they've just come across on the street is inherently a danger to the surveilled person.
For anyone else looking for which of these 200 words are actually different, this second post follows the person home instead of using the tracking website method
There's a gigantic difference in the ability of the surveilled person to protect themselves in the scenario you sketch versus the one that I sketch. In your scenario the surveilled person has a chance of noticing the fact that somebody is physically following them. And when they have eyes on the stalker, they can call the police to come and address the situation when they predict the stalker might escalate.
In the scenario that I sketch, the stalker runs zero risk while obtaining the information. Hell, they don't even have to log in to this tool, so there's zero record of who accessed location information for which parking warden.
And yes, it is absolutely incumbent upon the creators of tools to take into account how they might be misused. To pretend that all humans are of right mind and incapable of doing harm and only design for the case of ethical use is laughably naive.
What a strange line to draw when in both hypothetical scenarios the stalker actively engages in a creepy conversation with the target before “you see where I’m going with this?” happens.
I mean it's only fair, I would prefer that both ordinary people and public officials were granted privacy in public spaces, but we don't so they don't.
Citizens can't hold public officials accountable when they're only accountable to other public officials.
So take this to the maximum, lets say in 30 years (honestly probably a lot sooner) - should police have trackers on them that give YOU accurate up to the second 3d/GPS location of all of them and done in an app that's attached to a drone that shoots people. Since they are in public this is the obvious thing you're looking for.
Keep in mind the site doesn’t track officers in real time, it reports the last location and timestamp of a ticket.
Realtime police officer location data would interfere with arrests and investigation, but realtime reporting of incidents is critical public data that shouldn’t be fear mongered away.
If officers giving tickets are in fear of their life, taking down a tracking website isn’t the change that keeps them safe...
I'm trying to show how people on here are saying because someone is in the public we are owed exact xyz location data of said person is fucking ridiculous.
Are you against ICE agent tracking apps as well?