From "Big Data Surveillance"

Question

Does the Palantir Technologies network analysis breach the privacy of every single person living in L.A. or areas in which the technology is deployed? Is it justifiable to have a profile of every single person regardless of whether or not they have ever committed or been involved with a crime?

Answer 1

I think the profiles of every single person in L.A. or other areas are already there for the police to use. Either with or without the network, the police can investigate someone's profile and, even with that option, they won't bother someone's profile unless they have something suspicious. If having their profiles in the system considered as a privacy breach, I think we all have our privacy breached since we were born, because our birthday, name, and such information were being kept track of since.

Answer 2

I think it may breach privacy because these people aren't given the choice to give their information; however, we also have to look at how effective this algorithm is to keeping the citizens safe so we can try to determine whether the benefits of safety are more important than the citizen's security.

Answer 3

A related question: Have you ever been naked inside of a house near a window that only looked out at the sky? And if the sky were constantly full of drones patrolling (and recording video), is it justifiable that they could store video/pictures of you on their computers without your consent? The drone was out in a public airspace, but it was recording images of you while you were in a private location.

More currently, this relates to the concerns about Google Street View.