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> America's PRESENT. IS. A Chinese-style surveillance state. Maybe in cities, but my rural town just barely got stop light cameras, so I highly doubt this is t

by umvi 7y ago

> America's PRESENT. IS. A Chinese-style surveillance state. Maybe in cities, but my rural town just barely got stop light cameras, so I highly doubt this is true of rural America. Plus, use of the surveillance is more reactive than proactive. In China it is proactive. Drive around in a car with a taiwanese flag bumper sticker and the secret police will disappear you in the night. In America no one will bother looking at the footage unless a bank robbery happened and your car was the getaway car.

z3c0 7y ago
I think the "no one is looking" argument is valid, but can be damaging in the long run. The same line of reasoning was applied to the Snowden Leaks by those who wanted to spin it as a "nothingburger". The reason nobody is looking is because it requires a lot of money to build the systems that can derive facts from data while "no one is looking". As advances continue to be made in ML, then the visual data most people are currently taking for granted will become more easily parsed systematically. A system that pre-processes and stores all the recorded locations of a given list of faces is competely possible by today's standards. A database of mugshots and a continuous stream of CCTV data is all you'd really need to get started.
- mtgx 7y ago
  Nobody is looking...but our algorithms alert us whenever you might be doing anything "suspicious" and can put you on automatic blacklists. Here is just a hint of what the government might consider suspicious: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141024/14222128933/guidelines-who-might-be-suspicious-too-nervous-too-calm-blending-standing-out-its-all-suspcious.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141024/14222128933/guide... Also nobody is looking...but anyone could be looking anytime they want, and without a warrant. With the latest 6-year FISA 702 extension, the FBI is now allowed to look at all mass surveillance data before it has to go to a judge. Alerting the judge about their spying on any specific person is only required when they decide to build a case against that person. You can imagine the thousand ways in which this can and will be abused over the years. I mean, even NSA agents were running a "LOVEINT" program - who knows what kind of self-interest programs the FBI agents are running. And even in the face of that Obama was shameless enough to say "there have been no abuses" - just like he did when he pardoned Bush's torturers from the CIA, but that's a whole other topic for another day.
- leggomylibro 7y ago
  "no one is looking" quickly becomes "no one was looking" when an individual or group becomes problematic in the eyes of an authority. Recording everything allows a government's executive branch to selectively and successfully prosecute more or less anyone at will, which defeats the purpose of having an independent judiciary. Ideally the legislative process would step in and curb back the excessively restrictive laws and surveillance, but it don't seem to have much incentive to do so. Plus, legislators are subject to the same onerous regulations which everyone breaks all of the time because "no one is looking".
chachachoney 7y ago
>> Maybe in cities, but my rural town just barely got stop light cameras, so I highly doubt this is true of rural America. Do you think rural towns in China are any different? >> In America no one will bother looking at the footage unless a bank robbery happened and your car was the getaway car. That might have been true ten years ago, but certainly not today. https://qz.com/1458475/the-dea-and-ice-are-hiding-surveillance-cameras-in-streetlights/ https://qz.com/1458475/the-dea-and-ice-are-hiding-surveillan...
einpoklum 7y ago
So, your point is that the US government has not bothered to put up cameras in small towns? Doesn't matter, they still track your location using your mobile and make a copy of all of your phone calls, text messages, emails, corporate-managed voice calls (Skype etc.) and so on. Small town or not.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

by umvi 7y ago

z3c0 7y ago

I think the "no one is looking" argument is valid, but can be damaging in the long run. The same line of reasoning was applied to the Snowden Leaks by those who wanted to spin it as a "nothingburger". The reason nobody is looking is because it requires a lot of money to build the systems that can derive facts from data while "no one is looking". As advances continue to be made in ML, then the visual data most people are currently taking for granted will become more easily parsed systematically. A system that pre-processes and stores all the recorded locations of a given list of faces is competely possible by today's standards. A database of mugshots and a continuous stream of CCTV data is all you'd really need to get started.

mtgx 7y ago
Nobody is looking...but our algorithms alert us whenever you might be doing anything "suspicious" and can put you on automatic blacklists. Here is just a hint of what the government might consider suspicious: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141024/14222128933/guidelines-who-might-be-suspicious-too-nervous-too-calm-blending-standing-out-its-all-suspcious.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141024/14222128933/guide... Also nobody is looking...but anyone could be looking anytime they want, and without a warrant. With the latest 6-year FISA 702 extension, the FBI is now allowed to look at all mass surveillance data before it has to go to a judge. Alerting the judge about their spying on any specific person is only required when they decide to build a case against that person. You can imagine the thousand ways in which this can and will be abused over the years. I mean, even NSA agents were running a "LOVEINT" program - who knows what kind of self-interest programs the FBI agents are running. And even in the face of that Obama was shameless enough to say "there have been no abuses" - just like he did when he pardoned Bush's torturers from the CIA, but that's a whole other topic for another day.
leggomylibro 7y ago
"no one is looking" quickly becomes "no one was looking" when an individual or group becomes problematic in the eyes of an authority. Recording everything allows a government's executive branch to selectively and successfully prosecute more or less anyone at will, which defeats the purpose of having an independent judiciary. Ideally the legislative process would step in and curb back the excessively restrictive laws and surveillance, but it don't seem to have much incentive to do so. Plus, legislators are subject to the same onerous regulations which everyone breaks all of the time because "no one is looking".

chachachoney 7y ago

>> Maybe in cities, but my rural town just barely got stop light cameras, so I highly doubt this is true of rural America. Do you think rural towns in China are any different? >> In America no one will bother looking at the footage unless a bank robbery happened and your car was the getaway car. That might have been true ten years ago, but certainly not today. https://qz.com/1458475/the-dea-and-ice-are-hiding-surveillance-cameras-in-streetlights/ https://qz.com/1458475/the-dea-and-ice-are-hiding-surveillan...

einpoklum 7y ago

So, your point is that the US government has not bothered to put up cameras in small towns? Doesn't matter, they still track your location using your mobile and make a copy of all of your phone calls, text messages, emails, corporate-managed voice calls (Skype etc.) and so on. Small town or not.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]