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Until our way of governing ourselves doesn't change, everything scientists and engineers do can and will be converted into a weapon or tool of oppression. We sh

Until our way of governing ourselves doesn't change, everything scientists and engineers do can and will be converted into a weapon or tool of oppression. We should be more vigilant and we should demand better from our elected officials.

pstuart 7y ago
We should always demand this, yet not count on it happening. It would be nice to find ways to take these weapons and use them for self-defense as well. I wish I had a clue of what that would look like.
- leggomylibro 7y ago
  It would probably look like someone publishing the realtime location and browsing histories of powerful public figures. But good luck with that; there's a reason why that sort of information isn't sold on a per-person basis.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Frost1x 7y ago
  Well, the one edge of this sword is essentially being used by wealthy, businesses and those in power to gain additional information on average citizens to leverage for their own advantages and the expense of those folks happiness. Traditionally, an average person had a tremendous amount of privacy simply by the virtue of being average. It wasn't worth the time/effort/resources to collect data on them. With ubiquitous sensors, it's now far more manageable or even trivial to collect data on people and use it no matter how unimportant or insignificant you are in respect to money/power. People of great wealth and power also somewhat enjoy this privacy. Unless you're a public facing official or on the top of the wealthy list, you essentially can also disappear in crowds and enjoy a degree of anonymity. Some may recognize Gates or Bezos in a crowd but drop down to say Forbes 400 rank... #144 (picked at random) and you'll find.. (searching) Leonard Sterm. Prior to that sentence I've never heard that name and certainly wouldn't recognize him in public even though he is estimated to be worth a modest $4.8B. I might (probably not) interact with them in the future and as an average person, I'm at a disadvantage because I can't recognize his net worth and public information which I could potentially leverage to my advantage in the same fashion someone wealthy/powerful may use their resources to leverage me. Take this a step further and focus on business investors and participants promoting these technologies, pouring money into them. For example, I can't even name the people involved in Cambridge Analytica even though they were in the news and probably wouldn't recognize them either. Sure, I can dig around and find them but that wouldn't be useful in most situations. For the most part, your average person doesn't have knowledge or resources to access and leverage such data that businesses are starting to use against the average consumer and worker rapidly and in ways that significantly impact their quality of life. As such, I would propose leveraging these same identification and recognition approaches against those pulling the strings or in public government office positions who should be fighting for citizens rights and developing a targeted dataset for those folks and exposing it in a way your average citizen could use it. Perhaps as a phone app that can pass a few frames of sampled video back to a service that identifies these individuals and gives detailed public information about them. Make their anonymity suffer. Link it to public facing records of their history, etc. Develop network information for their families, friends, business associates. Obviously, this is worthless against high profile individuals (celebrities, high government officials, etc.), but a lot of wealth and power hides in the shadows of the general public's eyes yet are pulling the strings on these cultural shifts us plebes are dealing with. Turn the tables and make the technology problematic for their daily lives as well--drag them out into the light for the public--maybe then you'll see more regulation and penalties for using these technologies surface. Just a thought.
  - pstuart 7y ago
    I think you've got something there. This would likely need to leverage decentralized tech (perhaps blockchain could actually be useful for something other than crypto-currency?). Then there are the challenges of getting people to pay attention and to care about the results.

pstuart 7y ago

We should always demand this, yet not count on it happening. It would be nice to find ways to take these weapons and use them for self-defense as well. I wish I had a clue of what that would look like.

leggomylibro 7y ago
It would probably look like someone publishing the realtime location and browsing histories of powerful public figures. But good luck with that; there's a reason why that sort of information isn't sold on a per-person basis.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Frost1x 7y ago
Well, the one edge of this sword is essentially being used by wealthy, businesses and those in power to gain additional information on average citizens to leverage for their own advantages and the expense of those folks happiness. Traditionally, an average person had a tremendous amount of privacy simply by the virtue of being average. It wasn't worth the time/effort/resources to collect data on them. With ubiquitous sensors, it's now far more manageable or even trivial to collect data on people and use it no matter how unimportant or insignificant you are in respect to money/power. People of great wealth and power also somewhat enjoy this privacy. Unless you're a public facing official or on the top of the wealthy list, you essentially can also disappear in crowds and enjoy a degree of anonymity. Some may recognize Gates or Bezos in a crowd but drop down to say Forbes 400 rank... #144 (picked at random) and you'll find.. (searching) Leonard Sterm. Prior to that sentence I've never heard that name and certainly wouldn't recognize him in public even though he is estimated to be worth a modest $4.8B. I might (probably not) interact with them in the future and as an average person, I'm at a disadvantage because I can't recognize his net worth and public information which I could potentially leverage to my advantage in the same fashion someone wealthy/powerful may use their resources to leverage me. Take this a step further and focus on business investors and participants promoting these technologies, pouring money into them. For example, I can't even name the people involved in Cambridge Analytica even though they were in the news and probably wouldn't recognize them either. Sure, I can dig around and find them but that wouldn't be useful in most situations. For the most part, your average person doesn't have knowledge or resources to access and leverage such data that businesses are starting to use against the average consumer and worker rapidly and in ways that significantly impact their quality of life. As such, I would propose leveraging these same identification and recognition approaches against those pulling the strings or in public government office positions who should be fighting for citizens rights and developing a targeted dataset for those folks and exposing it in a way your average citizen could use it. Perhaps as a phone app that can pass a few frames of sampled video back to a service that identifies these individuals and gives detailed public information about them. Make their anonymity suffer. Link it to public facing records of their history, etc. Develop network information for their families, friends, business associates. Obviously, this is worthless against high profile individuals (celebrities, high government officials, etc.), but a lot of wealth and power hides in the shadows of the general public's eyes yet are pulling the strings on these cultural shifts us plebes are dealing with. Turn the tables and make the technology problematic for their daily lives as well--drag them out into the light for the public--maybe then you'll see more regulation and penalties for using these technologies surface. Just a thought.
- pstuart 7y ago
  I think you've got something there. This would likely need to leverage decentralized tech (perhaps blockchain could actually be useful for something other than crypto-currency?). Then there are the challenges of getting people to pay attention and to care about the results.