8 ms·

I wish as technology becomes available which could be used for more Orwellian surveillance someone stood back and thought about ways it could be used for good r

I wish as technology becomes available which could be used for more Orwellian surveillance someone stood back and thought about ways it could be used for good rather than defending some absurd fear of terrorist attacks. Like... I remember a few years back there was an article about using high framerate cameras to detect the heartbeat of people the camera viewed in hospitals. I wish surveillance could be used to watch people at risk for heart attacks, bring it to their notice if one is detected in the early stages, and direct them to their nearest hospital - in a way that involves a concert of technologies/devices. Instead of CCTV cameras on every corner being used for criminals, use them to watch for health risks? Alert the person through their Apple Watch, send directions to the watch and phone, alert nearby first responders, notify family, etc... A route could even be established for an ambulance ahead-of-time, rather than as an ambulance rolls up to a signal. I'm tired of worrying about terrorists. Maybe I want to be blind to the small chance a carbomb is possible. I know the most innovative stuff is often a result of defense spending/planning, but I hate thinking a driving force behind technology today is people afraid of other people. </end-rant>

Tsiklon 9y ago
Unfortunately the cynic in me says there's more money in keeping people fearful.
- iammyIP 9y ago
  Nah, i don't think that's it. Fear is a feeling, which is per default not any more or less connected to "i need to buy this thing" than any other feeling. So why should fear encourage spending money more than any other feeling. How about the idea that a joyful person is much more inclined to spend money - but on different things. Just imagine a world without any fear, just with different kind of markets and the same amount of money.
  - astrobe_ 9y ago
    > Nah, i don't think that's it. Fear is a feeling, which is per default not any more or less connected to "i need to buy this thing" than any other feeling It seems to me that a significant part of the press and TV news are selling just that - fear. It doesn't take long to find a word like "threat", example taken at random, on the first page of the NYT ("Shinzo Abe: Solidarity Against the North Korean Threat").
    - chii 9y ago
      If you have fear, then you'd be more willing to give up certain freedoms to rid said fear. Freedoms such as privacy. Mark my words, there's going to definitely be massive facial recognition on the population, in the name of keeping you "safe".
  - Fricken 9y ago
    Joyful people don't spend much money because they're already satisfied. When people dish out for large homes, expensive cars and whatever else, they do it because they're insecure about something. If you subtract the cost of our insecurities and fears from the cost of living, life is actually really cheap.
  - tr1ck5t3r 9y ago
    Putting the fear of God into people has worked since the time of Jesus. Dont change what's not broken.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >Nah, i don't think that's it. Fear is a feeling, which is per default not any more or less connected to "i need to buy this thing" than any other feeling. So why should fear encourage spending money more than any other feeling. Because amassing stuff gives psychological relief from such anxiety ("shopping therapy"). The same reason people on midlife crises go on shopping sprees... >* Just imagine a world without any fear, just with different kind of markets and the same amount of money.* Not all possible worlds have the same level of shopping activity. It took heavy advertising and quite a lot of conditioning and pressure for early 20th century society to turn it into the shopping culture that it has today.
- zo1 9y ago
  Criminals should be fearful, so that they think twice before committing a crime against an innocent.
- alexashka 9y ago
  I don't know that there's anyone out there twisting an evil moustache, counting the profits from keeping anyone fearful. News do fear mongering for the same reasons people write click-bait article titles - it works. It works because humans are not that far removed from our ancestors - the primal buttons are the easiest to push and they work on the largest number of people. Anyone whose job it is to compete for people's attention, knows this very well. To pretend there's people far above who are 'bad', or 'good' is a coping mechanism to avoid seeings people and life for what it is :)
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >I don't know that there's anyone out there twisting an evil moustache, counting the profits from keeping anyone fearful. Doesn't have to be some actual singular person. Businesses, media etc work as collective entities, alone and together, towards their goals, that is optimizing their environment for maximum profit -- similar to how our cells, which are living things in themselves, do. If profit is the basic measure of success for an organization, it will reward those individuals behaviors that help it grow -- to the point that a perfectly normal company, like WV, from seemingly decent people, will create execs that lie about their pollution emissions, bribe politicians, etc., and -- among tons of similar examples. Similarly, it would try to expunge those in the organization that do moral or consumer friendly stuff that costs the organization money. >Anyone whose job it is to compete for people's attention, knows this very well. To pretend there's people far above who are 'bad', or 'good' is a coping mechanism to avoid seeings people and life for what it is People that do "what works" because it brings money in, other considerations be damned, are bad, end of story. Everything else is a coping mechanism to avoid seeings people and life for what it is (and for them to rationalize to themselves that they "just do their job").
    - alexashka 9y ago
      You're perfectly describing capitalism's essence, with a cherry on top, labelling it 'bad'. The point I was aiming for, is that people like what's easy, what's natural. You're saying 'they're bad'. That's actually the Christian axiom from what I understand, that people are inherently sinful and bad. I'd like to suggest that feeling that way is a dead end. In other words - I actually agree with everything you're saying, minus the 'bad' label. I label it 'I'd do it differently' which's subtle but very important. Labelling what most people around you are good with, bad, is simply going to make you a misanthrone [0] and that'll prevent you from leading the life you want :) The point regarding coping - labelling people bad and good is an extreme simplification used for children. Once you're an adult, it's much more helpful to understand that what another does, you do in other ways, maybe much more subtle, and let go of harsh judgements. Judgements separate people into us vs them, which's what leads to most of the behaviour you're labelling bad in the first place. It's a very subtle point, that most people endlessly miss. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misanthropy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misanthropy
Pulcinella 9y ago
Yes! Imagine some sort of AI camera surgery assistant that can help keep track of things like surgical spouges. Imagine a set of eyes watching your back at hour 6 of a long operation that never gets tired or frustrated. It does create a different sort of "machines replacing humans" scenario. Instead of AI destroying us or replacing human workers because they are more effecient, machines replace us because they are just nicer people. They never get tired, hangry, frustrated. Superhuman levels of patience and empathy. I myself am a teacher, but I think I might prefer my children taught by TeachingUnit7000 who is just as excited about the lesson for the last class of the day as for teh first.
- cprayingmantis 9y ago
  Ah you just reminded me of an idea I had when I was pursuing my bachelor's. Basically I wanted to use Google Glass to create surgeon accountability software. It would record a surgeries and store the video then use CV to look at shaking hands, technique, tools, and process. I figured it would allow us to correlate processes to recovery time and outcomes. Could you imagine the data we could have gotten? It would've been astounding. However I went to the head of surgery in the med school at my University and was told that in no uncertain terms would any surgeon wear that or submit the recording that in fact it would turn into a malpractice liability. He just couldn't get past the harm that it would cause him.
  - stephencanon 9y ago
    I don't want to dismiss your idea, but it's also worth noting that the majority of surgical errors are decision-making errors, not technical errors. Most mistakes aren't anything you'll see on video; they occured before the case started when the surgeon decided to perform operation X when Y was more appropriate.
    - amrrs 9y ago
      Yes, I remember watching Atul Gawande talking about reducing Surgical Deaths by some 30ish % after creating a checklist for surgeons to do x after y after z!
TaylorAlexander 9y ago
I also am tired of "Terrorism" as a life concern (we should be worried about more realistic concerns). I will say however that the Apple Watch is now being (or soon will be?) used to detect heart problems and notify the wearer. So this kind of thing is happening. Similarly crime watch apps do exist and could use the Apple Watch for notifications and safe navigation. But if we had a crime detecting surveillance system there's no way to only use it to help good people stay safe. It would also be abused in ways that cause innocent people to suffer. I'd just like to see a society that doesn't throw people in to jail (ruining their life) for trivial things. I mean, such societies exist - I'd like the USA to be one of them.
- Jarwain 9y ago
  It could be abused in ways that cause innocent people to suffer, if we don't have the checks in place to prevent this. It could also be used to protect the innocent from being mistakenly charged.
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    cue RichardStallmanism, we need a stable open hardware effort to provide valueable technology to humans that actually need it.
- jsemrau 9y ago
  >I also am tired of "Terrorism" Many people are concerned. But as a matter of fact. More people die every single day in car accidents. We as a society should not give up our freedoms (the right to be forgotten, the right to remain anonymous) for the illusion of safety. As the recent London, Barcelona, or Charlottesville attacks have shown, you only need one crazy person to carry it out for whatever reason. And even with a sophisticated tracking network you won't be able to stop this effectively.
  - 2bitencryption 9y ago
    think you're preaching to the choir here
throwaway049 9y ago
It might seem like an absurd threat to you, but 8 people were killed by terrorists near my office in London a few months ago, including one of my colleagues. I would also not like to see Orwell's book bought to life, but perhaps you can find a more sensitive way to express your view.
- blitmap 9y ago
  I will admit that terrorism does not affect me personally here - not in the direct way you have experienced. I am sorry if I seemed insensitive. I feel that largely we don't innovate for the good of society anymore - only to gain greater control over unpredictable masses that can riot over a Tweet. (((But mostly to catch terrorists & pedophiles.)))
  - lygaret 9y ago
    Can you help me understand what the purpose of the "echo"[1] in your second paragraph is? 1: https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/echo https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/echo
    - blitmap 9y ago
      I was using it like an inside thought? - that's a weird reference to make. I chose an arbitrary number of balanced parenthesis to signify an inside thought.
      - lygaret 9y ago
        I don't feel it was that weird a reference to make, and the reason I asked was that I didn't want to jump to conclusions about it's use. Three parens surrounding words like "pedophile" is something that shows up a lot on Twitter, and is meant as a dogwhistle for antisemitism - just so you know and don't get caught off guard of someone assumes that's what you mean in the future.
bsder 9y ago
> I wish as technology becomes available which could be used for more Orwellian surveillance someone stood back and thought about ways it could be used for good rather than defending some absurd fear of terrorist attacks. The issue is the fact that a "binary test" has 4 outcomes. The good ones: Test says "True X" and "X is true". Test says "False X" and "X is false". The bad ones: Test says "True X" and "X is false". Test says "False X" and "X is true". Some of these can be problematic depending upon what "X" is, what the response to "X" is, what the probability of "X" is in the population, and what the probability of the "false positive" of "X" is. In medical, this can pose a real dilemma. At any individual test let's call the diagnosis rate 1%. If the false positive rate is about 1%, we are diagnosing one person who has "X" along with diagnosing one person who doesn't have it. Not too bad, right? Ummmm ... If "X" was heart disease, sure. Most of the interventions for heart disease are things like fix your diet, get some exercise, quit smoking, etc. If "X" is breast cancer, not so much. Interventions for cancer start with something like a biopsy which can have lots of complications (hematomas, secondary infections, etc.). In addition, a cancer may not spread, or something else may kill the patient before if you left it alone. So, the damage done in the response determines how low the false positive rate has to be. In addition, there is a psychological aspect to a diagnosis that a lot of people overlook. A false positive for "heart issue" on your wristband can upset certain people so badly that it causes an issue. And I haven't even started talking about the false negative rate problems. What will you do when people start saying: "Nah. I don't need to go to the doctor, my Apple watch isn't flagging anything." This is why this kind of stuff gets deployed for "terrorism" first because there isn't any consequence to the manufacturers whether they're right or wrong--so they don't care about the relative probabilities. The fact that some random schmuck gets detained and searched isn't the manufacturers problem.
leggomylibro 9y ago
We need a sort of Geneva Conventions for privacy and unwanted intrusions on attention. Creating something like a wide-scale database about individuals based on data collected without their consent or under duress could be treated, internationally, like the deployment of nuclear weapons in a first strike. Likewise, we could charge people who deploy pop-up ads with crimes on the magnitude of a mugging. Botnet operators could be hunted with the zeal we currently reserve for drug smugglers and media pirates.
Waterluvian 9y ago
I've always believed that the price of freedom is that from time to time some of us are killed. Obsessing over making that number zero is essentially handing your freedom back, saying, "no deal..."
- zo1 9y ago
  That is such a false-dichotomy. You can have freedom and safety at the same time, and need-not sacrifice one for the other. The reason people say that one has to lose at the expense of the other is because of weird "freedom losses" such as privacy. Lack of privacy is not a loss of "freedom". Surveillance, again does not mean a loss of "freedom". That is, unless you're doing something wrong, in which case the system is behaving exactly as it should (identifying someone that is doing something wrong). Tech-people constantly talk about old laws having to "change" for the new technological landscape we live in. But we rarely talk about changing how crime and justice gets handled in the new landscape. And it is a discussion we need to have, because we're moving into territory where automated systems can very easily detect and identify the occurrence of crime. Magically moving into "surveillance reduces our freedom" because it catches all of the commiters of that crime, which never used to be the case until technology enabled it, is a disingenuous path to take. Just look at red-light or speed-trap cameras to see how it's already been playing out. Sure, once we start going into territory such as mandatory curfews and what-not in order to combat crime then you can start saying that we're losing freedom. We're not even close to that, as much as that pains me because I think that a government that permits the existence of easy-to-stop violent crime in 2017 is a morally bankrupt one that is complicit to those crimes on some level.
dTal 9y ago
Now why on earth would I want to help come up with better justifications for people who want to spy on me, just because their current justification - fear of terrorism - is irrational? This seems like really screwy logic. How about we just don't spy on people? Or, if you think it could be used to help people, maybe start from a point of "how can we help people" rather than working backwards from "how can we come up with legitimate uses for mass surveillance".
- blitmap 9y ago
  I'm of the opinion surveillance will not decrease or stop, so we should find screwy ways of having it work for a societal positive - and not be a fixture in the landscape on the war on terror.

Tsiklon 9y ago

Unfortunately the cynic in me says there's more money in keeping people fearful.

iammyIP 9y ago
Nah, i don't think that's it. Fear is a feeling, which is per default not any more or less connected to "i need to buy this thing" than any other feeling. So why should fear encourage spending money more than any other feeling. How about the idea that a joyful person is much more inclined to spend money - but on different things. Just imagine a world without any fear, just with different kind of markets and the same amount of money.
- astrobe_ 9y ago
  > Nah, i don't think that's it. Fear is a feeling, which is per default not any more or less connected to "i need to buy this thing" than any other feeling It seems to me that a significant part of the press and TV news are selling just that - fear. It doesn't take long to find a word like "threat", example taken at random, on the first page of the NYT ("Shinzo Abe: Solidarity Against the North Korean Threat").
  - chii 9y ago
    If you have fear, then you'd be more willing to give up certain freedoms to rid said fear. Freedoms such as privacy. Mark my words, there's going to definitely be massive facial recognition on the population, in the name of keeping you "safe".
- Fricken 9y ago
  Joyful people don't spend much money because they're already satisfied. When people dish out for large homes, expensive cars and whatever else, they do it because they're insecure about something. If you subtract the cost of our insecurities and fears from the cost of living, life is actually really cheap.
- tr1ck5t3r 9y ago
  Putting the fear of God into people has worked since the time of Jesus. Dont change what's not broken.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Nah, i don't think that's it. Fear is a feeling, which is per default not any more or less connected to "i need to buy this thing" than any other feeling. So why should fear encourage spending money more than any other feeling. Because amassing stuff gives psychological relief from such anxiety ("shopping therapy"). The same reason people on midlife crises go on shopping sprees... >* Just imagine a world without any fear, just with different kind of markets and the same amount of money.* Not all possible worlds have the same level of shopping activity. It took heavy advertising and quite a lot of conditioning and pressure for early 20th century society to turn it into the shopping culture that it has today.
zo1 9y ago
Criminals should be fearful, so that they think twice before committing a crime against an innocent.
alexashka 9y ago
I don't know that there's anyone out there twisting an evil moustache, counting the profits from keeping anyone fearful. News do fear mongering for the same reasons people write click-bait article titles - it works. It works because humans are not that far removed from our ancestors - the primal buttons are the easiest to push and they work on the largest number of people. Anyone whose job it is to compete for people's attention, knows this very well. To pretend there's people far above who are 'bad', or 'good' is a coping mechanism to avoid seeings people and life for what it is :)
- coldtea 9y ago
  >I don't know that there's anyone out there twisting an evil moustache, counting the profits from keeping anyone fearful. Doesn't have to be some actual singular person. Businesses, media etc work as collective entities, alone and together, towards their goals, that is optimizing their environment for maximum profit -- similar to how our cells, which are living things in themselves, do. If profit is the basic measure of success for an organization, it will reward those individuals behaviors that help it grow -- to the point that a perfectly normal company, like WV, from seemingly decent people, will create execs that lie about their pollution emissions, bribe politicians, etc., and -- among tons of similar examples. Similarly, it would try to expunge those in the organization that do moral or consumer friendly stuff that costs the organization money. >Anyone whose job it is to compete for people's attention, knows this very well. To pretend there's people far above who are 'bad', or 'good' is a coping mechanism to avoid seeings people and life for what it is People that do "what works" because it brings money in, other considerations be damned, are bad, end of story. Everything else is a coping mechanism to avoid seeings people and life for what it is (and for them to rationalize to themselves that they "just do their job").
  - alexashka 9y ago
    You're perfectly describing capitalism's essence, with a cherry on top, labelling it 'bad'. The point I was aiming for, is that people like what's easy, what's natural. You're saying 'they're bad'. That's actually the Christian axiom from what I understand, that people are inherently sinful and bad. I'd like to suggest that feeling that way is a dead end. In other words - I actually agree with everything you're saying, minus the 'bad' label. I label it 'I'd do it differently' which's subtle but very important. Labelling what most people around you are good with, bad, is simply going to make you a misanthrone [0] and that'll prevent you from leading the life you want :) The point regarding coping - labelling people bad and good is an extreme simplification used for children. Once you're an adult, it's much more helpful to understand that what another does, you do in other ways, maybe much more subtle, and let go of harsh judgements. Judgements separate people into us vs them, which's what leads to most of the behaviour you're labelling bad in the first place. It's a very subtle point, that most people endlessly miss. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misanthropy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misanthropy

Pulcinella 9y ago

Yes! Imagine some sort of AI camera surgery assistant that can help keep track of things like surgical spouges. Imagine a set of eyes watching your back at hour 6 of a long operation that never gets tired or frustrated. It does create a different sort of "machines replacing humans" scenario. Instead of AI destroying us or replacing human workers because they are more effecient, machines replace us because they are just nicer people. They never get tired, hangry, frustrated. Superhuman levels of patience and empathy. I myself am a teacher, but I think I might prefer my children taught by TeachingUnit7000 who is just as excited about the lesson for the last class of the day as for teh first.

cprayingmantis 9y ago
Ah you just reminded me of an idea I had when I was pursuing my bachelor's. Basically I wanted to use Google Glass to create surgeon accountability software. It would record a surgeries and store the video then use CV to look at shaking hands, technique, tools, and process. I figured it would allow us to correlate processes to recovery time and outcomes. Could you imagine the data we could have gotten? It would've been astounding. However I went to the head of surgery in the med school at my University and was told that in no uncertain terms would any surgeon wear that or submit the recording that in fact it would turn into a malpractice liability. He just couldn't get past the harm that it would cause him.
- stephencanon 9y ago
  I don't want to dismiss your idea, but it's also worth noting that the majority of surgical errors are decision-making errors, not technical errors. Most mistakes aren't anything you'll see on video; they occured before the case started when the surgeon decided to perform operation X when Y was more appropriate.
  - amrrs 9y ago
    Yes, I remember watching Atul Gawande talking about reducing Surgical Deaths by some 30ish % after creating a checklist for surgeons to do x after y after z!

TaylorAlexander 9y ago

I also am tired of "Terrorism" as a life concern (we should be worried about more realistic concerns). I will say however that the Apple Watch is now being (or soon will be?) used to detect heart problems and notify the wearer. So this kind of thing is happening. Similarly crime watch apps do exist and could use the Apple Watch for notifications and safe navigation. But if we had a crime detecting surveillance system there's no way to only use it to help good people stay safe. It would also be abused in ways that cause innocent people to suffer. I'd just like to see a society that doesn't throw people in to jail (ruining their life) for trivial things. I mean, such societies exist - I'd like the USA to be one of them.

Jarwain 9y ago
It could be abused in ways that cause innocent people to suffer, if we don't have the checks in place to prevent this. It could also be used to protect the innocent from being mistakenly charged.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  cue RichardStallmanism, we need a stable open hardware effort to provide valueable technology to humans that actually need it.
jsemrau 9y ago
>I also am tired of "Terrorism" Many people are concerned. But as a matter of fact. More people die every single day in car accidents. We as a society should not give up our freedoms (the right to be forgotten, the right to remain anonymous) for the illusion of safety. As the recent London, Barcelona, or Charlottesville attacks have shown, you only need one crazy person to carry it out for whatever reason. And even with a sophisticated tracking network you won't be able to stop this effectively.
- 2bitencryption 9y ago
  think you're preaching to the choir here

throwaway049 9y ago

It might seem like an absurd threat to you, but 8 people were killed by terrorists near my office in London a few months ago, including one of my colleagues. I would also not like to see Orwell's book bought to life, but perhaps you can find a more sensitive way to express your view.

blitmap 9y ago
I will admit that terrorism does not affect me personally here - not in the direct way you have experienced. I am sorry if I seemed insensitive. I feel that largely we don't innovate for the good of society anymore - only to gain greater control over unpredictable masses that can riot over a Tweet. (((But mostly to catch terrorists & pedophiles.)))
- lygaret 9y ago
  Can you help me understand what the purpose of the "echo"[1] in your second paragraph is? 1: https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/echo https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/echo
  - blitmap 9y ago
    I was using it like an inside thought? - that's a weird reference to make. I chose an arbitrary number of balanced parenthesis to signify an inside thought.
    - lygaret 9y ago
      I don't feel it was that weird a reference to make, and the reason I asked was that I didn't want to jump to conclusions about it's use. Three parens surrounding words like "pedophile" is something that shows up a lot on Twitter, and is meant as a dogwhistle for antisemitism - just so you know and don't get caught off guard of someone assumes that's what you mean in the future.

bsder 9y ago

> I wish as technology becomes available which could be used for more Orwellian surveillance someone stood back and thought about ways it could be used for good rather than defending some absurd fear of terrorist attacks. The issue is the fact that a "binary test" has 4 outcomes. The good ones: Test says "True X" and "X is true". Test says "False X" and "X is false". The bad ones: Test says "True X" and "X is false". Test says "False X" and "X is true". Some of these can be problematic depending upon what "X" is, what the response to "X" is, what the probability of "X" is in the population, and what the probability of the "false positive" of "X" is. In medical, this can pose a real dilemma. At any individual test let's call the diagnosis rate 1%. If the false positive rate is about 1%, we are diagnosing one person who has "X" along with diagnosing one person who doesn't have it. Not too bad, right? Ummmm ... If "X" was heart disease, sure. Most of the interventions for heart disease are things like fix your diet, get some exercise, quit smoking, etc. If "X" is breast cancer, not so much. Interventions for cancer start with something like a biopsy which can have lots of complications (hematomas, secondary infections, etc.). In addition, a cancer may not spread, or something else may kill the patient before if you left it alone. So, the damage done in the response determines how low the false positive rate has to be. In addition, there is a psychological aspect to a diagnosis that a lot of people overlook. A false positive for "heart issue" on your wristband can upset certain people so badly that it causes an issue. And I haven't even started talking about the false negative rate problems. What will you do when people start saying: "Nah. I don't need to go to the doctor, my Apple watch isn't flagging anything." This is why this kind of stuff gets deployed for "terrorism" first because there isn't any consequence to the manufacturers whether they're right or wrong--so they don't care about the relative probabilities. The fact that some random schmuck gets detained and searched isn't the manufacturers problem.

leggomylibro 9y ago

We need a sort of Geneva Conventions for privacy and unwanted intrusions on attention. Creating something like a wide-scale database about individuals based on data collected without their consent or under duress could be treated, internationally, like the deployment of nuclear weapons in a first strike. Likewise, we could charge people who deploy pop-up ads with crimes on the magnitude of a mugging. Botnet operators could be hunted with the zeal we currently reserve for drug smugglers and media pirates.

Waterluvian 9y ago

I've always believed that the price of freedom is that from time to time some of us are killed. Obsessing over making that number zero is essentially handing your freedom back, saying, "no deal..."

zo1 9y ago
That is such a false-dichotomy. You can have freedom and safety at the same time, and need-not sacrifice one for the other. The reason people say that one has to lose at the expense of the other is because of weird "freedom losses" such as privacy. Lack of privacy is not a loss of "freedom". Surveillance, again does not mean a loss of "freedom". That is, unless you're doing something wrong, in which case the system is behaving exactly as it should (identifying someone that is doing something wrong). Tech-people constantly talk about old laws having to "change" for the new technological landscape we live in. But we rarely talk about changing how crime and justice gets handled in the new landscape. And it is a discussion we need to have, because we're moving into territory where automated systems can very easily detect and identify the occurrence of crime. Magically moving into "surveillance reduces our freedom" because it catches all of the commiters of that crime, which never used to be the case until technology enabled it, is a disingenuous path to take. Just look at red-light or speed-trap cameras to see how it's already been playing out. Sure, once we start going into territory such as mandatory curfews and what-not in order to combat crime then you can start saying that we're losing freedom. We're not even close to that, as much as that pains me because I think that a government that permits the existence of easy-to-stop violent crime in 2017 is a morally bankrupt one that is complicit to those crimes on some level.

dTal 9y ago

Now why on earth would I want to help come up with better justifications for people who want to spy on me, just because their current justification - fear of terrorism - is irrational? This seems like really screwy logic. How about we just don't spy on people? Or, if you think it could be used to help people, maybe start from a point of "how can we help people" rather than working backwards from "how can we come up with legitimate uses for mass surveillance".

blitmap 9y ago
I'm of the opinion surveillance will not decrease or stop, so we should find screwy ways of having it work for a societal positive - and not be a fixture in the landscape on the war on terror.