6 ms·

This sort of defeatism isn't helpful. Surveillance technology doesn't sprout up from nothingness; it's built on a culture and a political/economic environment

by panic 8y ago

This sort of defeatism isn't helpful. Surveillance technology doesn't sprout up from nothingness; it's built on a culture and a political/economic environment which can be changed.

maxxxxx 8y ago
This isn't defeatism. I just think there is a wave coming that's really hard to stop and I don't see anything in the current political structure that's willing to stop it.
- nosuchthing 8y ago
  Just because you're not interested or motivated in changing something, doesn't mean it can't be changed. City and state level political change is very malleable.
  - 50656E6973 8y ago
    Federal power trumps state and local
    - nosuchthing 8y ago
      Marijuana legalization is proof of the contrary
      - 50656E6973 8y ago
        Any examples with regard to "national security" i.e. mass surveillance, perpetual war, besides Kennedy?
      - enraged_camel 8y ago
        It is not. The federal government has simply chosen not to challenge the states on this issue... so far.
        godelski 8y ago
        Frankly because it would be extremely unpopular. Even in the right wing places, where there is a correlation to less favorable views of marijuana, there's a high correlation to belief that states rights should trump federal rights. Really they believe that the fed should be minimal and things mostly run by the states.
  - username223 8y ago
    > City and state level political change is very malleable. Corporations have already figured this out, e.g. ALEC [1] writes laws, then gets sympathetic minions to enact them, but city politics still operate on a human scale in many places. I'd bet that a motivated campaign could reverse this move in San Diego, or at least figure out who pushed for it. I don't think there was massive popular support for cameras in streetlights. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_...
- gumby 8y ago
  More articles like this to raise awareness and importance of issues. Getting younger people who give a shit to vote, and to become immune to the bogus fear mongering. Hope the baby boomers die off of old age before the panopticon is built.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    "Hope the baby boomers die off of old age before the panopticon is built." The current builders of the panopticon are very young and work for Google, Facebook and others. This has nothing to do with age.
    - bronco21016 8y ago
      The ‘builders’ are better described as ‘profiteers’. The panopticon is being requested and purchased by municipalities, which are predominantly governed by those from the baby boomer generation. Start-up 101. Build what the Users want.
      - hectip 8y ago
        Young blindly build Facebook like apps, old build a CCTV network. Everything feels scary, try walking around at 2 a.m. and not feeling it. People are tired of it. I don't think that all the surveillance will work. You always find the most amount of sketchy people around police stations. The cameras will make things worse. Good people will flee to other neighborhoods, were they are not being watched. Fundamentally, why arn't things safe?
        CarlSchmitt 8y ago
        > Fundamentally, why aren't things safe? My guess..a lack to tight-knit communities, very large cities with millions of strangers, increased cultural/ethnic/religious diversity within a community, increased portrayal of political/racial/gender conflict in our 24x7 media, etc...these things might lead to a sense of less social cohesion and distrust of out-groups in general...add to this multicultural "mixing pot" (at least in the U.S.) an increased surveillance state and militarized police force and your "society" will seem very "unsafe"
- trophycase 8y ago
  People need to band together and vandalize and destroy these things, basically the only way currently.
Mikeb85 8y ago
> which can be changed. But won't be. GWB expanded the state's powers with the Patriot Act, Obama signed an extension and then a new version of the act when parts expired. When both sides are pro-surveillance and Americans refuse to change the system or support 3rd parties, what change can there be?
- rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
  Why call them the "two sides" if there are the same? You need actual change.
  - Mikeb85 8y ago
    Both parties then.
  - nosuchthing 8y ago
    The two-party system is a direct result of FPTP election forms. First past the post receives a lot of criticism for restricting options to vote for due to the idea of vote splitting and strategic voting. This leads elections to run into the commonly referred to "Lesser of two evils" dilemma and ends with a 2-party system in place. With 42% of Americans saying they identify as independent and 60% of Americans saying the need for a new party is apparent, it would suggest that the FPTP voting system is failing democracy, failing Americans, and failing America. https://old.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/ https://old.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Comparison_table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Comparison_tabl...
    - ams6110 8y ago
      Downvoted for indented text. Sorry I don't know how else to put an end to this.
      - harshreality 8y ago
        HN has this dogma where they won't add any more markup even if it's reasonable. I guess they don't want every comment turning into a fancy formatted mess with different font sizes and lists, but blockquotes are a necessity. > is used a lot, and it always looks bad, particularly for multi-line quotes. HN won't add proper blockquote rendering for ">", so people try to mimic it, badly, using indented <pre>/unflowed text (which HN bizarrely implemented even though they didn't implement indented flowed text). Don't blame people, blame HN.
HashThis 8y ago
US Congress doesn't represent US citizens. 84% of the time, the congress person that wins in that district raised the most money. Corporations and the wealthy provide that money to get congress people who represent THEM, not US citizens. US Congress doesn't represent US citizens. So nothing changes if moneyed interests want US citizens to live under surveillance.
- drawnwren 8y ago
  Your logic doesn't leave room for the possibility that there is a correlation between electability and ability to raise funds. I.e. the candidate most likely to win raises more funds and not vice versa.
  - dontbenebby 8y ago
    >Your logic doesn't leave room for the possibility that there is a correlation between electability and ability to raise funds. I.e. the candidate most likely to win raises more funds and not vice versa. That's circular logic. "They must be the most qualified, because they raised the most money and the person who gets elected is the one who raised the most money". In a functioning democracy there should be a cliff where, no matter how much you spent, you cannot simply buy the election.
  - mach5 8y ago
    the whole notion of 'electability' is a ruse created by democrats to push voters towards politicians that agree more with the corporate wing of the party than any issues people care about. if electability was actually a thing, trump would not have won. https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-67-the-gate-keeping-power-serving-tautology-of-electability https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-67-the-gate-keepi...
- starik36 8y ago
  Except when this correlation is wrong. Such as when Trump won with less than 60% of the money spent by Hillary Clinton. https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential-campaign-fundraising/ https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidentia...
gscott 8y ago
There are already cameras at every intersection in California that feed into the Department of Homeland Security. https://www.cu-citizenaccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/202_Traffic-1170x654.jpg https://www.cu-citizenaccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/...

by panic 8y ago

This sort of defeatism isn't helpful. Surveillance technology doesn't sprout up from nothingness; it's built on a culture and a political/economic environment which can be changed.

maxxxxx 8y ago

This isn't defeatism. I just think there is a wave coming that's really hard to stop and I don't see anything in the current political structure that's willing to stop it.

nosuchthing 8y ago
Just because you're not interested or motivated in changing something, doesn't mean it can't be changed. City and state level political change is very malleable.
- 50656E6973 8y ago
  Federal power trumps state and local
  - nosuchthing 8y ago
    Marijuana legalization is proof of the contrary
    - 50656E6973 8y ago
      Any examples with regard to "national security" i.e. mass surveillance, perpetual war, besides Kennedy?
    - enraged_camel 8y ago
      It is not. The federal government has simply chosen not to challenge the states on this issue... so far.
      - godelski 8y ago
        Frankly because it would be extremely unpopular. Even in the right wing places, where there is a correlation to less favorable views of marijuana, there's a high correlation to belief that states rights should trump federal rights. Really they believe that the fed should be minimal and things mostly run by the states.
- username223 8y ago
  > City and state level political change is very malleable. Corporations have already figured this out, e.g. ALEC [1] writes laws, then gets sympathetic minions to enact them, but city politics still operate on a human scale in many places. I'd bet that a motivated campaign could reverse this move in San Diego, or at least figure out who pushed for it. I don't think there was massive popular support for cameras in streetlights. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_...
gumby 8y ago
More articles like this to raise awareness and importance of issues. Getting younger people who give a shit to vote, and to become immune to the bogus fear mongering. Hope the baby boomers die off of old age before the panopticon is built.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  "Hope the baby boomers die off of old age before the panopticon is built." The current builders of the panopticon are very young and work for Google, Facebook and others. This has nothing to do with age.
  - bronco21016 8y ago
    The ‘builders’ are better described as ‘profiteers’. The panopticon is being requested and purchased by municipalities, which are predominantly governed by those from the baby boomer generation. Start-up 101. Build what the Users want.
    - hectip 8y ago
      Young blindly build Facebook like apps, old build a CCTV network. Everything feels scary, try walking around at 2 a.m. and not feeling it. People are tired of it. I don't think that all the surveillance will work. You always find the most amount of sketchy people around police stations. The cameras will make things worse. Good people will flee to other neighborhoods, were they are not being watched. Fundamentally, why arn't things safe?
      - CarlSchmitt 8y ago
        > Fundamentally, why aren't things safe? My guess..a lack to tight-knit communities, very large cities with millions of strangers, increased cultural/ethnic/religious diversity within a community, increased portrayal of political/racial/gender conflict in our 24x7 media, etc...these things might lead to a sense of less social cohesion and distrust of out-groups in general...add to this multicultural "mixing pot" (at least in the U.S.) an increased surveillance state and militarized police force and your "society" will seem very "unsafe"
trophycase 8y ago
People need to band together and vandalize and destroy these things, basically the only way currently.

Mikeb85 8y ago

> which can be changed. But won't be. GWB expanded the state's powers with the Patriot Act, Obama signed an extension and then a new version of the act when parts expired. When both sides are pro-surveillance and Americans refuse to change the system or support 3rd parties, what change can there be?

rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
Why call them the "two sides" if there are the same? You need actual change.
- Mikeb85 8y ago
  Both parties then.
- nosuchthing 8y ago
  The two-party system is a direct result of FPTP election forms. First past the post receives a lot of criticism for restricting options to vote for due to the idea of vote splitting and strategic voting. This leads elections to run into the commonly referred to "Lesser of two evils" dilemma and ends with a 2-party system in place. With 42% of Americans saying they identify as independent and 60% of Americans saying the need for a new party is apparent, it would suggest that the FPTP voting system is failing democracy, failing Americans, and failing America. https://old.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/ https://old.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Comparison_table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Comparison_tabl...
  - ams6110 8y ago
    Downvoted for indented text. Sorry I don't know how else to put an end to this.
    - harshreality 8y ago
      HN has this dogma where they won't add any more markup even if it's reasonable. I guess they don't want every comment turning into a fancy formatted mess with different font sizes and lists, but blockquotes are a necessity. > is used a lot, and it always looks bad, particularly for multi-line quotes. HN won't add proper blockquote rendering for ">", so people try to mimic it, badly, using indented <pre>/unflowed text (which HN bizarrely implemented even though they didn't implement indented flowed text). Don't blame people, blame HN.

HashThis 8y ago

US Congress doesn't represent US citizens. 84% of the time, the congress person that wins in that district raised the most money. Corporations and the wealthy provide that money to get congress people who represent THEM, not US citizens. US Congress doesn't represent US citizens. So nothing changes if moneyed interests want US citizens to live under surveillance.

drawnwren 8y ago
Your logic doesn't leave room for the possibility that there is a correlation between electability and ability to raise funds. I.e. the candidate most likely to win raises more funds and not vice versa.
- dontbenebby 8y ago
  >Your logic doesn't leave room for the possibility that there is a correlation between electability and ability to raise funds. I.e. the candidate most likely to win raises more funds and not vice versa. That's circular logic. "They must be the most qualified, because they raised the most money and the person who gets elected is the one who raised the most money". In a functioning democracy there should be a cliff where, no matter how much you spent, you cannot simply buy the election.
- mach5 8y ago
  the whole notion of 'electability' is a ruse created by democrats to push voters towards politicians that agree more with the corporate wing of the party than any issues people care about. if electability was actually a thing, trump would not have won. https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-67-the-gate-keeping-power-serving-tautology-of-electability https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-67-the-gate-keepi...
starik36 8y ago
Except when this correlation is wrong. Such as when Trump won with less than 60% of the money spent by Hillary Clinton. https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential-campaign-fundraising/ https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidentia...

gscott 8y ago

There are already cameras at every intersection in California that feed into the Department of Homeland Security. https://www.cu-citizenaccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/202_Traffic-1170x654.jpg https://www.cu-citizenaccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/...