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>The sooner it will be commonly framed as a question of freedom (i.e. absence of arbitrary power of other people above you [1]), and as a question in the intere

>The sooner it will be commonly framed as a question of freedom (i.e. absence of arbitrary power of other people above you [1]), and as a question in the interest of society as a whole, the better I agree but I don't think I'd use the word "soon" There's a reason this is an opinion piece by a person who specifically cares about these issues and not an article. Things are going to have to get worse before they get better. Right now the slices of society closest to these issues (tech and academics) don't seem to care at all as long as it's not overtly being used to oppress the poors or some specific minority. Said slices of society are also mostly wealthy enough that they can comply with most laws most of the time, they're not gonna get robo-tickets for not having their car inspected. Nobody's gonna care until it hits them personally or has the potential to do so imminently.

Loughla 7y ago
>Nobody's gonna care until it hits them personally or has the potential to do so imminently. It's for this reason that I really, really want the US to implement some kind of formal, stated facial recognition across the board. I honestly don't think we'll see any mass movement on privacy issues from regular folks until something that big happens.
- mdorazio 7y ago
  I think you’re overestimating what the public response to such an event would be. The vast majority of the public doesn’t care if their privacy is utterly violated by the government as long as there’s some flimsy justification for it catching bad guys or saving children.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  Just, Devil's Advocate - but what happens if you allow such a program to go forward, and no one outside the usual suspects objects? How would you reign it back in? I believe it would be best not to allow such a program in the first place, because counting on the population to be opposed to it is, well, let's just label it "unwise".
  - swader999 7y ago
    Naive to think our entire online and physical location data isn't already indexed by name, phone, email ids. Snowden said as much. The accelerometers on your phone already give gait.
souprock 7y ago
The few privacy laws we do get are usually way off target. It used to be easy to deal with medical things. You could ask about your spouse or parent or sibling, and you would get an answer. Now a family gets treated like random strangers who lack any sort of relationship with each other. It used to be that grades were publicly posted. This was a powerful incentive to do as well as possible.

Loughla 7y ago

>Nobody's gonna care until it hits them personally or has the potential to do so imminently. It's for this reason that I really, really want the US to implement some kind of formal, stated facial recognition across the board. I honestly don't think we'll see any mass movement on privacy issues from regular folks until something that big happens.

mdorazio 7y ago
I think you’re overestimating what the public response to such an event would be. The vast majority of the public doesn’t care if their privacy is utterly violated by the government as long as there’s some flimsy justification for it catching bad guys or saving children.
bilbo0s 7y ago
Just, Devil's Advocate - but what happens if you allow such a program to go forward, and no one outside the usual suspects objects? How would you reign it back in? I believe it would be best not to allow such a program in the first place, because counting on the population to be opposed to it is, well, let's just label it "unwise".
- swader999 7y ago
  Naive to think our entire online and physical location data isn't already indexed by name, phone, email ids. Snowden said as much. The accelerometers on your phone already give gait.

souprock 7y ago

The few privacy laws we do get are usually way off target. It used to be easy to deal with medical things. You could ask about your spouse or parent or sibling, and you would get an answer. Now a family gets treated like random strangers who lack any sort of relationship with each other. It used to be that grades were publicly posted. This was a powerful incentive to do as well as possible.