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.

> 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

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.

>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.

That's the example you run toward?

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.

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...