5 ms·

The technology isn't quite there, and Chinese law enforcement clearly exaggerates in order to maximize the current impact. However, we are very close to the po

by Tenoke 8y ago

The technology isn't quite there, and Chinese law enforcement clearly exaggerates in order to maximize the current impact. However, we are very close to the point where everything could be tracked, and recorded in a usable way - including the exact location of most citizens at all times, discrepancies in utility bills, shopping, internet activity (except possibly for those few with impeccable OpSec, and even that for only a bit longer), visited places, communication with new and old contacts, etc. Some like to think semi-romantically that we are in/near the Cyberpunk future Sci-Fi promised. We are not - if a government truly goes all out (as the CCP has shown willingness to do), it will at some point simply be impossible to evade the law. The cool greyhat who hides in the shadows, hacks government systems, and operates outside mainstream society is a pipe dream. When all is said and implemented escape could only come from above - another nation, intergovernmental organization or at minimum people high up in the system. Dissidents and revolutionaries would hardly be able to do much.

jknz 8y ago
> Dissidents and revolutionaries would hardly be able to do much. Hence the scary question: Once the technology is available (now) and complete surveillance is implemented (soon), is there a going back?
- mc32 8y ago
  This is a good question. I think the answer is "yes" with proviso that it would most likely come from the top. The CCP, is not exactly a monolith. It has factions, some get suppressed, some come to prominence. One that saw the negative aspects as being too negative would have to come to prominence to undo the overreach.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Isn't it far more likely, given all we know, that western governments and elites will follow lead? They are already heavy surveillance, and have a long history of suppressing dissidents (from labor massacres to McCarthyism, and from the '68 Democratic Convention and Kent State, to black rights demonstrations, OWS, and such -- to name but a few). If they have such tools at their hands, they'll use them. It's not a love for freedom that doesn't let them, but that without full enforcement, they risk having such measure come against them. But once full enforcement is feasible...
  - 21 8y ago
    I think you are wrong. It will be hard to roll back any system which abolishes violent crime. The people will accept it as long as it not abused that much.
    - myopicgoat 8y ago
      This is a tricky line of thinking. Once surveillance is there you can always hide behind the “now we’re safer”, the issue is that you can always survey more and always claim that going back would be less safe and so on and so forth. A good example for this is airport security. As far as I’m aware it’s quite unclear how effective all the security apparatus is yet it piled up over the years since 9/11, full body scans are now the norm etc. The question left to ask is: when is it too much? How much intrusion are we ready to bear for how much marginal safety gains?
      - macintux 8y ago
        It ultimately doesn’t matter much what we’re willing to bear. Those in power do not easily surrender tools that can keep them there.
- beebmam 8y ago
  I don't think so. There's no going back to the world that existed before nuclear weapons. Similarly, AI and surveillance tool advances are too useful and efficient for maintaining order, and there won't be going back to the world before them. They fundamentally change the way that law enforcement interacts with citizens at a high level.
- hnzix 8y ago
  "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
- ymse 8y ago
  A friend of mine speculated that total surveillance (and thus control) of society will eventually make the world consistent in logical terms. Which necessarily makes it incomplete following Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Here completeness refers to diversity: to maximize completeness is to encourage genetic (and memetic) variation. If society is consistent, such a proposition becomes absurd. It's an interesting thought experiment, and I don't think the consistent state is reversible. Luckily it requires that all of the world (intelligentsia) agree on the same set of rules, so there's still time. Taking this argument to the extreme: perhaps the reason we haven't met civilisations from other worlds is simply that they all made the same logical error once the tech was available.
  - rsync 8y ago
    "Taking this argument to the extreme: perhaps the reason we haven't met civilisations from other worlds is simply that they all made the same logical error once the tech was available." In the book _A Deepness in the Sky_, it is remarked that civilizations/governments that attempt to implement "ubiquitous law enforcement" are making a terrible mistake that always ends very poorly. It is, in the book, a marker of a society that is about to die. I recommend the book.
api 8y ago
I've wondered for a while if what you describe might be the next dark age. The last one was built on the use of religion in tandem with feudal power. The new dark age replaces religion with surveillance and scientific propaganda and feudalism with corporatism.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  There has been a war-on-science going on for quite a while now, if there is a dark age coming I would fully expect that to be the real origin.
  - api 8y ago
    During the last dark age there was a war on religion, and precisely because control of religion was a major cornerstone of power. Being into Pagan, occult, non-mainstream Christian (e.g. Catharism, early Protestantism), or Judaism could get you jailed or killed in gruesome ways. The "war on science" is not about stamping out science any more than the inquisition was about making people atheists. It's about eliminating lines of scientific inquiry that can be used to challenge power.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Perhaps this "war on science", however naive and inarticulate its proponents, is actually a war on the abuses of technology, such as the parent describes. In which case, not only it's not the real origin of some upcoming dark age, but the last voice of freedom before it.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      > Perhaps this "war on science", however naive and inarticulate its proponents, is actually a war on the abuses of technology, such as the parent describes. No, it definitely isn't. It's the willful and deceitful spreading of lies and portraying of scientists as bogeyman rather than the bringers of bad news. It's the purposeful act of dumbing down citizens and putting lies instead of facts in their heads to use 15 years down the line when those in school today become tomorrows voters. That has absolutely nothing to do with abuses of technology (of which there are plenty, no argument there). The biggest abusers of tech tend to be those in power, closely followed by corporations, but the second is happy as long as they make bank, the first as long as they can use it to cement their position in power. Look no further than what has happened at the EPA to get an idea of how incredible this whole story is.
hungerstrike 8y ago
How hard is it to destroy things? If people wanted to they could start breaking shit and then there would be no cameras watching them. Can you manufacture devices faster than people can break them? I think some sort of mass uprising could still work.
- cf498 8y ago
  Can you break a camera without being identified in a completely surveilled area? This goes to a core why many believe a totalitarian surveillance system might not have a way back out. Once the first guy or girl breaks the first camera the cops will know immediately and they will end up in jail before they can say "revolt". Former revolts and revolutions always needed the incremental creation of critical mass. Without the possibility of prior planing and coordination all that leaves you with is being a hopeless martyr who will be locked away in a heartbeat with the faint hope of at least motivating a few others to resist.
GW150914 8y ago
“The goal is algorithmic governance,” he added. Given that the tech isn’t there, maybe the idea is just to say “the algorithm did it” on a national scale. The technology might not be worth much at doing more than providing much wanted pretext for arbitrary action.
make3 8y ago
the technology for face tracking/identification an action identification is definitely there?
pvg 8y ago
Dissidents and revolutionaries would hardly be able to do much. The main weapon of a dissident is public dissent. Mass surveillance doesn't directly prevent that.
duxup 8y ago
Accuracy hasn't been a big deal for authoritarian governments and oppression anyway. I don't think they care. Outside of identifying risks associated with people who are close to people in power.... most authoritarian governments haven't seemed to worry about how much indiscriminate or inaccurate social punishment occurs, including China.

by Tenoke 8y ago

jknz 8y ago

> Dissidents and revolutionaries would hardly be able to do much. Hence the scary question: Once the technology is available (now) and complete surveillance is implemented (soon), is there a going back?

mc32 8y ago
This is a good question. I think the answer is "yes" with proviso that it would most likely come from the top. The CCP, is not exactly a monolith. It has factions, some get suppressed, some come to prominence. One that saw the negative aspects as being too negative would have to come to prominence to undo the overreach.
- coldtea 8y ago
  Isn't it far more likely, given all we know, that western governments and elites will follow lead? They are already heavy surveillance, and have a long history of suppressing dissidents (from labor massacres to McCarthyism, and from the '68 Democratic Convention and Kent State, to black rights demonstrations, OWS, and such -- to name but a few). If they have such tools at their hands, they'll use them. It's not a love for freedom that doesn't let them, but that without full enforcement, they risk having such measure come against them. But once full enforcement is feasible...
- 21 8y ago
  I think you are wrong. It will be hard to roll back any system which abolishes violent crime. The people will accept it as long as it not abused that much.
  - myopicgoat 8y ago
    This is a tricky line of thinking. Once surveillance is there you can always hide behind the “now we’re safer”, the issue is that you can always survey more and always claim that going back would be less safe and so on and so forth. A good example for this is airport security. As far as I’m aware it’s quite unclear how effective all the security apparatus is yet it piled up over the years since 9/11, full body scans are now the norm etc. The question left to ask is: when is it too much? How much intrusion are we ready to bear for how much marginal safety gains?
    - macintux 8y ago
      It ultimately doesn’t matter much what we’re willing to bear. Those in power do not easily surrender tools that can keep them there.
beebmam 8y ago
I don't think so. There's no going back to the world that existed before nuclear weapons. Similarly, AI and surveillance tool advances are too useful and efficient for maintaining order, and there won't be going back to the world before them. They fundamentally change the way that law enforcement interacts with citizens at a high level.
hnzix 8y ago
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
ymse 8y ago
A friend of mine speculated that total surveillance (and thus control) of society will eventually make the world consistent in logical terms. Which necessarily makes it incomplete following Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Here completeness refers to diversity: to maximize completeness is to encourage genetic (and memetic) variation. If society is consistent, such a proposition becomes absurd. It's an interesting thought experiment, and I don't think the consistent state is reversible. Luckily it requires that all of the world (intelligentsia) agree on the same set of rules, so there's still time. Taking this argument to the extreme: perhaps the reason we haven't met civilisations from other worlds is simply that they all made the same logical error once the tech was available.
- rsync 8y ago
  "Taking this argument to the extreme: perhaps the reason we haven't met civilisations from other worlds is simply that they all made the same logical error once the tech was available." In the book _A Deepness in the Sky_, it is remarked that civilizations/governments that attempt to implement "ubiquitous law enforcement" are making a terrible mistake that always ends very poorly. It is, in the book, a marker of a society that is about to die. I recommend the book.

api 8y ago

I've wondered for a while if what you describe might be the next dark age. The last one was built on the use of religion in tandem with feudal power. The new dark age replaces religion with surveillance and scientific propaganda and feudalism with corporatism.

jacquesm 8y ago
There has been a war-on-science going on for quite a while now, if there is a dark age coming I would fully expect that to be the real origin.
- api 8y ago
  During the last dark age there was a war on religion, and precisely because control of religion was a major cornerstone of power. Being into Pagan, occult, non-mainstream Christian (e.g. Catharism, early Protestantism), or Judaism could get you jailed or killed in gruesome ways. The "war on science" is not about stamping out science any more than the inquisition was about making people atheists. It's about eliminating lines of scientific inquiry that can be used to challenge power.
- coldtea 8y ago
  Perhaps this "war on science", however naive and inarticulate its proponents, is actually a war on the abuses of technology, such as the parent describes. In which case, not only it's not the real origin of some upcoming dark age, but the last voice of freedom before it.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    > Perhaps this "war on science", however naive and inarticulate its proponents, is actually a war on the abuses of technology, such as the parent describes. No, it definitely isn't. It's the willful and deceitful spreading of lies and portraying of scientists as bogeyman rather than the bringers of bad news. It's the purposeful act of dumbing down citizens and putting lies instead of facts in their heads to use 15 years down the line when those in school today become tomorrows voters. That has absolutely nothing to do with abuses of technology (of which there are plenty, no argument there). The biggest abusers of tech tend to be those in power, closely followed by corporations, but the second is happy as long as they make bank, the first as long as they can use it to cement their position in power. Look no further than what has happened at the EPA to get an idea of how incredible this whole story is.

hungerstrike 8y ago

How hard is it to destroy things? If people wanted to they could start breaking shit and then there would be no cameras watching them. Can you manufacture devices faster than people can break them? I think some sort of mass uprising could still work.

cf498 8y ago
Can you break a camera without being identified in a completely surveilled area? This goes to a core why many believe a totalitarian surveillance system might not have a way back out. Once the first guy or girl breaks the first camera the cops will know immediately and they will end up in jail before they can say "revolt". Former revolts and revolutions always needed the incremental creation of critical mass. Without the possibility of prior planing and coordination all that leaves you with is being a hopeless martyr who will be locked away in a heartbeat with the faint hope of at least motivating a few others to resist.

GW150914 8y ago

“The goal is algorithmic governance,” he added. Given that the tech isn’t there, maybe the idea is just to say “the algorithm did it” on a national scale. The technology might not be worth much at doing more than providing much wanted pretext for arbitrary action.

make3 8y ago

the technology for face tracking/identification an action identification is definitely there?

pvg 8y ago

Dissidents and revolutionaries would hardly be able to do much. The main weapon of a dissident is public dissent. Mass surveillance doesn't directly prevent that.

duxup 8y ago

Accuracy hasn't been a big deal for authoritarian governments and oppression anyway. I don't think they care. Outside of identifying risks associated with people who are close to people in power.... most authoritarian governments haven't seemed to worry about how much indiscriminate or inaccurate social punishment occurs, including China.