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> But when we talk privacy and personal data there should be no gray zone.

It took me to move to Germany to figure that privacy is a spectrum, and I, despite being a crazy on privacy and security, actually don't want that much.

I've been to a German factory where robots could not distinct between humans and objects bc Datenschutz.

My colleagues had 3 bikes stolen in a week bc we have no CCTV cameras.

Privacy definitely has costs, and not only for business, but for regular people in daily life. It should, as anything, be balanced against costs of doing business, people security concerns.

Same goes for security: few private cctvs are ok, massive coordinated surveillance and chat control not ok. Everything is on spectrum and is a trade off.



I'm curious how the CCTV would have prevented the bike theft?


Yeah, I can tell you that the only thing CCTV does is making the thief wear hoodies. And you get some clips of them carrying expensive bikes around the corner out of CCTV range to their parked transporter.


Even without hoodie… who was it? Some dude.


True. I don't know from where people get the idea that the police would bother with an investigation for your (personally important) case if you had full-on surveilance.

You may have your laptop snatched, go to the police station and show them the exact location of the thieves using e.g. find my Mac. The will do nothing, even if it's in the building across the street.

Now, showing them some blurry (at best) faces in CCTV footage and ask them to investigate? Good luck.


> I've been to a German factory where robots could not distinct between humans and objects bc Datenschutz.

It sounds interesting but I'm not sure what it means. Could you clarify this?

Related, recently in the UK news. British Transport Police won't even look at CCTV for bike theft at train stations (because of resource constraints, but the presence of CCTV doesn't automatically mean it will be used).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8jm3wxvlkjo


Private CCTVs are legal, you just can’t have it film a public area. And I’m grateful for that.




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