Fellow residents, is search without probable cause acceptable?

What a life you have there SqueezeOne.

It must be very fulfilling, trolling the forums at all hours of the day, name calling and deriding people for their opinions.

I'm going to guess that you don't have much of a real life to speak of, which is ironic, given that you are constantly telling people that they are confusing RL and SL.

You'd also get AR'd if you took a photo as eveidence, as that violates Today's Community Standards. As of this time today, anyway.

There's also this little fact that everyone seems to cleverly omit...THE CASE ISN"T FINISHED YET. There are all types of appeals and higher courts it could go to.

One judge is not the final decision maker most of the time.

One judge isn't necessarly a final decision maker, but you can't violate a judge's ruling just because a higher judge might overturn it eventually.

Case hasn't been completely decided yet.

Forgetting that part is a nasty habit on the SL forums as far as I can tell!

I've said nothing about the case itself. Perhaps you should begin to read a little more carefully.

I'm reading fine...there's no need to resort to attacks unless you have nothing left to prove your point.

What I was saying is that a judge's decision isn't law until the case is closed. That hasn't happened yet in the case we were talking about. If you weren't talking about the same thing we were talking about then why did you bother saying anything?

A number of the comments here are simply red herrings.

The question isn't whether the Fourth Amendment applies. The question is whether people should have privacy in SL. The Fourth Amendment is simply cited as a reference that supports the philosophy of privacy as a right, not as a legal requirement. So the arguments that not everybody lives in the US, or the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to private parties (which isn't entirely true), and so on aren't relevant to the question.

The point that SL doesn't implement privacy is also a red herring. The question is about what people think ought to be the policy, not whether or not it can be implemented currently in SL. So what if you don't have privacy now, those are all features that can be added.

Likewise for the point that Linden Labs, as a private company, can do whatever they want with their property. It's true, but that means that one of the things they could do is to establish an explicit policy that snooping into parcels or buildings obviously intended to be private is a violation of the ToS. They could even establish a policy that prohibits their own employees from doing that without first going through an approval process that would determine whether or not there's just cause.

So let me rephrase the question a bit, and ask some related ones:

Should LL have a policy that says it's wrong to snoop into places in-world that are clearly private?

Should LL have a policy that limits the extent to which their own employees can do that?

Should LL implement changes and features in SL that would make it more difficult or impossible for users to snoop in a parcel that's been set up to be private?

This is entirely about what the policies ought to be, not whether they're legally mandated or implementable.

Yes! "Camera blocker" walls IS a great idea. Would solve a LOT of problems. Let's get it done. Who has the expertise to file a JIRA fix request?

yup. real life laws take precedence over fantasy.

I don't think we're ever going to get clarification from LL on what constitutes "a reasonable effort at trying to establish a zone of privacy" with regards to making us immune from scrying or tattling eyes.

Clearly, they feel it is their right to search and modify/delete any content they come across that violates their standards, as there have been several reports of things just mysteriously changing without explanation.

We can hope they respect the ATTEMPT to establish a zone of privacy and reject unreasonable complaints from peeping-toms that ignore it, but that will likely depend on the type of content/conduct involved as well.

It seems to me, I haven't slept recently so maybe I'm mistaken, that the conversation seems to be wandering from the original point. There are a few ways to look at it. What do we as individuals believe is acceptable? What does the general community consensus find acceptable? What does LL itself consider acceptable and within their rights? What does US law (where the servers and LL's business headquarters are located) dictate as "acceptable"?

Is unhindered search and seizure and whatnot acceptable or legal in SL? Well, I don't find it acceptable, but it's incredibly easy to pan your camera around into supposedly "private" areas. I have no illusions of privacy in SL. I understand that it's just not a realistic expectation, and that things such as sky boxes and privacy orbs are at best an illusion in and of themselves, and at worse (privacy orbs I'm looking directly at you) a very annoying form of harassment (By the time you finish reading this message, you will have been orbited/teleported home/ tossed across the sim directly into another privacy orb's territory/ or otherwise hassled all for the illusion of privacy some idiot wishes to maintain when they're not even around just because you had the audacity and utter hubris to believe you could wander across the privacy orb minefield that is the mainland).

On the other hand, poking your camera into other people's business is (and this really ought to go without saying) incredibly bad form. Moreso if you then attempt to report people for what they're doing behind closed doors.

As someone else stated, it is then up to LL to act upon these vigilante snoopers' ARs. Now, LL can act or not act as they choose. It remains to be seen how far within the law LL can act upon them, though.

It seems to me that people talking about the ongoing lawsuit seem to miss a vital point. Whether or not the person suing LL did anything wrong to begin with, the court will set a precedence on LL's actions against those who step outside LL's policies. The extent to which LL can come after people. And in light of LL's talk of policy and community standards and whatnot, it seems all residents stand to gain from LL's ability to seize personal assets being limited. How LL reacts to ARs is inconsistent, and the policies themselves are vague. With how the TOS is worded anyone, it seems, could find themselves banned at any time for almost any reason. They don't even need a reason. They could begin banning anyone with more than a few hundred USD in their account, simply to prevent those people from cashing out.

This case will set a precedent on just what LL can and can't do in that regard. Customer rights and all that, this may be LL's world inside the grid, but the grid servers are in the US and must abide by certain rules set there, so yes a Judge in PA could potentially affect things in a very direct way.

Beyond the legal scope of things, there is "just how much will the customers put up with?" There will come a breaking point, and of course so long as there's no competition LL can get away with quite a bit in that regard. and will put a definitive limit on what is "acceptable" from a legal standpoint.

OK, it isn't a right per se, but it is neighborly to pretty much let folks be in a private dwelling. On the other hand, if someone has a super obnoxious security system, it does make me curious to see WTF they have going on in there that gives them the right to bounce me half way across a sim.

Inventory is also something I prefer to keep to myself. Noone should get to read my crappy rough drafts in notecards. Or be forced to.

This can't be enforced on the client side, unless LL shuts down the open sourced client idea.

The only way to enforce this (for humans AND bots) is to cache nothing on the client but what the user can see or has just recently seen. (instead of caching all things within range of the avatar).

This is partly done already, but only in an "angle of view" sense, not a "this wall is blocking my line of sight" sense.

The additional computation necessary on the SIM server to determine which prims and objects should or should not be sent to a client, (based on their camera's line of sight) would seriously increase the processing required on the SERVER end.

The COST associated with enforcing this will be increased LAG anytime anyone moves their camera. Not just for the person moving their camera.... but for EVERYONE else in that sim.

I dunno about you... but for me... More lag is NOT an acceptable price for privacy.

Again...too much RL thinking being put to SL. Privacy isn't guaranteed on a privately-owned server being made public by it's owner.

That's all SL really is.

Now, there are certain laws that do intersect with SL (which is all still up in the air since this is a new situation) but "privacy" isn't one of them from what I've seen so far.

Also, LL may not have said specifically what it means by "reasonable privacy" but it should be obvious by the tools we are given. We can ban and mute people on our own or you can report abuse to LL for their investigation.

Now, as far as what being a "good neighbor" is, you should act how you wish people to act towards you...but that's universal as far as I'm concerned.

I agree with those who say that players have no RL legal rights ingame. That said, in the interest of being helpful, I have pointed residents who are disturbed about LL's position to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which litigates for civil liberties on the Internet. They would know better than this humble nerd wannabe But I very much agree with Kidd above that legality is not the issue.

The real question is, do the bulk of residents WANT civil liberties-style protections in SL?

LL is a business that will only survive if residents login. If most residents make it clear that they find bowdlerizing of SL content unacceptable, that they will leave if they are harrassed by other residents for sexual content or acts … LL will take care. LL walks a tightrope. If their brave new world is labelled in the press as just another sex site, its market value is vastly decreased. On the other hand they cannot afford to have the huge percentage of residents who engage in inworld intimacy leave because they feel ostracized.

It would be interesting to see if classic protest tactics, such as a half-day boycott, could be used to make LL notice that a large percentage of residents are perturbed about LL inciting inworld surveillance by residents. But that would be nearly impossible to put together. Tho I'm sure LL would enjoy the publicity if it did happen

p.s. Side note: When ingame information is used for RL purposes, I hope that legal considerations DO come into play. E.g., if LL were to sell information to Travelocity about which players with US addresses frequently visit the Amsterdam sim, presumably US consumer protection law would govern that transaction.

First, I'm all for setting up whatever standards about privacy and thou shalt not cam in on thy neighbor while they are engaged in private matters, however, I have to respond to this section...

Disable cam controls is really really helpful when one is terraforming an entire sim or working on any large build. I spend probably 50% or more of my day zoomed out at all different angles and distances. In fact, bringing Des back into this, when he put a giant prim weather layer up over VictoriaCity when I was setting up houses for people, about drove me mad as I'd zoom out and bam, his fake weather prim would be between me and the very tall building I was trying to move around and align properly.

I, and probably every other builder and developer, would scream bloody murder if this was taken back away.

Also, the cam distances allow me to keep an eye on my sandbox sim from any point on my existing estate, allowing additional rules enforcement there that I wouldn't otherwise be able to provide.

Oh, and its great for shopping in really laggy areas. Just cam around, do your biz and get out without having to trudge through the slop.

But I sure don't use it to cam into private homes or skyboxes.

Char

First there is this:

... and then there is this:


Fools.
Attacks.

Which is it going to be, Squeeze?

I don't really get the difference between the first 2 options, what about if you allow searching by an authority but not anyone?

Heh, yeah, Kidd, welcome to red-herring central.

Your post is right on the money.

My response to your three questions:

1. Yes, LL should and, in some form, eventually will have to establish policies, code, and enforcement to prohibit snooping. It is not just the sex scene, which is obviously troubling enough to many people. Consider the businesses LL is trying to attract to SL. Are they going to want to conduct business in a place where they and their clients can be spied upon by competitors and others, as well as intruded upon at will by noobs brandishing three foot dongs? I think not.

2. I'd rather LL employees behave themselves also, but am undecided on this issue - it is their grid, after all. I think restraint certainly should be their policy, just don't know if it will need backing up with a formal due-process procedure.

3. And implementing features and other changes to block snooping - essential. There are too many jackasses and malefactors who take the position: "I have the power to do sunch-and-so, so I have the right to, no matter how rude, antisocial or plainly immoral it might be, and therefore I will!"

But a presumption of privacy is a foolhardy presumption indeed. The bottom line here is, if some snooper cams into your skybox and finds your kiddie porn posters on the wall, claiming he's searched your skybox without a warrent and thus the evidence is inadmissible... wont cut it. YER GOIN DOWN MAN, FACE TO THE FLOOR, CUFFED BY THE BELGIAN POLICE. Sucks that there are people running around peeking in the windows looking for whatever, but LL isnt gonna stop it.

However you could argue the SPIRIT of the 4th ammendment would be nice if it existed in Secondlife.

It possibly is in the Linden's power to grant that, if they chose.

Machinima
Building
Private Estate Management
Terraforming
The list goes on, and its benefits far outweigh its privacy "gotchas"

I also like the idea of camera free prims, but as Rusty pointed out, that's not technically reasonable. I really do wish it was.

I don't remember anyone telling me when I signed up that i have any right to privacy in SL. And honestly I think those who expect it are a tad deluded.

Whether it is expected or not, it is an extremely desirable feature plainly needed and wanted by a very large number of people, and one that LL would be very wise to improve and make as malefactor-proof as is feasible. One can debate its feasibility, but it is hard to see why someone would oppose it aside from persons who have some special interest in snooping.