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> Are we suppose to call TechCrunch a "surveillance-powered ad powerhouse"? Or Tesla "surveillance-powered vehicles"? Yes and ignoring the fact that we're baki

by zajd 9y ago

> Are we suppose to call TechCrunch a "surveillance-powered ad powerhouse"? Or Tesla "surveillance-powered vehicles"? Yes and ignoring the fact that we're baking in surveillance to almost every aspect of our life is a problem society needs to address

duckMuppet 9y ago
An entire generation has now grown up with the idea that this level of surveillance is not only ok, it's actually odd to think differently. What's worse is the level of govt surveillance, after all i can just, not go to the creepy Amazon store.. In just a few short years, people who have never known life without the patriot act or the fear and anxiety of walking into an airport unmolested will be voting. I agree with you in principal. But I'm far less hopeful that meaningful solutions will come. After all, it's not been them that has enacted these secret courts, fisa, patriot act, ndaa, weaponizing govt ( irs, fbi, dhs, ...), that's been their role models, us. All in the name of safety.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- thinkloop 9y ago
  Part of the OP's point is that there currently are cameras in almost every store, and then you provide your identity by credit card at the end. It's not that much creepier than now.
jchw 9y ago
This is an interesting position to me. To paraphrase Lawrence Friedman, privacy is, pretty clearly, a recent invention. If anything, we're the first generations growing up with a concept of what privacy really means. I am personally a huge fan of privacy as a right. But, like free speech, it's not necessarily practical or desirable for it to be an absolute right. There's a line to be drawn in the sand, and it's purely subjective. The bottom line is, with the current way we draw the lines, there's practically no expectation of privacy in a store. You could be filmed. End of story. You can also be filmed at work, which I feel is a lot less comfortable, but still understandable. I think a lot of the problem is coming down to people's fear of what this could be used for, but we can't just stop making new things because the systems will be abused and subverted by bad actors. We need regulations that adapt faster to these problems. Regulations are already lagging hard on internet privacy, AI, etc. and it will continue to be far behind if something isn't done. There's no doubt that technology can be bad. Frankly, I don't think web browsers should execute arbitrary code for every page you visit. But for every new technology, there's usually just as many ways it could be used for evil as it is for good. Your privacy in the modern age could be dramatically improved if there was no such thing as a digital camera, but that doesn't mean a world without it would be better. Cameras were not required to have horrible corruption, bad actors, or evil corporations; all of those existed long before. Technology, on the other hand, illuminated these issues to the everyday person. If there's anything I want society to be addressing, it's how we're letting companies collect untold amounts of private information, sell it, use it in algorithms to try to manipulate society, and very often, accidentally allowing their entire databases to leak. All in the name of targeted advertising? The free lunch of unfettered, irresponsible data collection needs to end. Strictly regulating how devices can transmit and collect data could help a lot with almost every case that was mentioned, including Amazon's new stores, self-driving cars, and targeted ads.
- cjslep 9y ago
  > If anything, we're the first generations growing up with a concept of what privacy really means. This is a kind of historical revisionism that I don't like that inflates the self-importance of the now merely because we don't know how things will turn out in the future. During the founding of the United States, privacy was very much a central issue. In fact, the Third (third!) Amendment to the Constitution was to prevent the invasion of privacy by an armed soldier of the government literally being imposed on a family's residence, and Fourth Amendment protected a person's privacy against unreasonable search and seizure. Yes computers are a novel twist, but to suppose no one back then "really understood what privacy means" I find to be a form of ignorance bordering on historical condescension.
  - jchw 9y ago
    I would argue that rights against unreasonable search and seizure isn't the same thing as privacy. That being said, rights against unreasonable search and seizure is also a recent invention in the grand scheme of human history.

by zajd 9y ago

duckMuppet 9y ago

An entire generation has now grown up with the idea that this level of surveillance is not only ok, it's actually odd to think differently. What's worse is the level of govt surveillance, after all i can just, not go to the creepy Amazon store.. In just a few short years, people who have never known life without the patriot act or the fear and anxiety of walking into an airport unmolested will be voting. I agree with you in principal. But I'm far less hopeful that meaningful solutions will come. After all, it's not been them that has enacted these secret courts, fisa, patriot act, ndaa, weaponizing govt ( irs, fbi, dhs, ...), that's been their role models, us. All in the name of safety.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
thinkloop 9y ago
Part of the OP's point is that there currently are cameras in almost every store, and then you provide your identity by credit card at the end. It's not that much creepier than now.

jchw 9y ago

This is an interesting position to me. To paraphrase Lawrence Friedman, privacy is, pretty clearly, a recent invention. If anything, we're the first generations growing up with a concept of what privacy really means. I am personally a huge fan of privacy as a right. But, like free speech, it's not necessarily practical or desirable for it to be an absolute right. There's a line to be drawn in the sand, and it's purely subjective. The bottom line is, with the current way we draw the lines, there's practically no expectation of privacy in a store. You could be filmed. End of story. You can also be filmed at work, which I feel is a lot less comfortable, but still understandable. I think a lot of the problem is coming down to people's fear of what this could be used for, but we can't just stop making new things because the systems will be abused and subverted by bad actors. We need regulations that adapt faster to these problems. Regulations are already lagging hard on internet privacy, AI, etc. and it will continue to be far behind if something isn't done. There's no doubt that technology can be bad. Frankly, I don't think web browsers should execute arbitrary code for every page you visit. But for every new technology, there's usually just as many ways it could be used for evil as it is for good. Your privacy in the modern age could be dramatically improved if there was no such thing as a digital camera, but that doesn't mean a world without it would be better. Cameras were not required to have horrible corruption, bad actors, or evil corporations; all of those existed long before. Technology, on the other hand, illuminated these issues to the everyday person. If there's anything I want society to be addressing, it's how we're letting companies collect untold amounts of private information, sell it, use it in algorithms to try to manipulate society, and very often, accidentally allowing their entire databases to leak. All in the name of targeted advertising? The free lunch of unfettered, irresponsible data collection needs to end. Strictly regulating how devices can transmit and collect data could help a lot with almost every case that was mentioned, including Amazon's new stores, self-driving cars, and targeted ads.

cjslep 9y ago
> If anything, we're the first generations growing up with a concept of what privacy really means. This is a kind of historical revisionism that I don't like that inflates the self-importance of the now merely because we don't know how things will turn out in the future. During the founding of the United States, privacy was very much a central issue. In fact, the Third (third!) Amendment to the Constitution was to prevent the invasion of privacy by an armed soldier of the government literally being imposed on a family's residence, and Fourth Amendment protected a person's privacy against unreasonable search and seizure. Yes computers are a novel twist, but to suppose no one back then "really understood what privacy means" I find to be a form of ignorance bordering on historical condescension.
- jchw 9y ago
  I would argue that rights against unreasonable search and seizure isn't the same thing as privacy. That being said, rights against unreasonable search and seizure is also a recent invention in the grand scheme of human history.