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This legality deserves reconsideration in today's technology: To an individual taking pictures, the public is no great resource and can not be significantly us

This legality deserves reconsideration in today's technology: To an individual taking pictures, the public is no great resource and can not be significantly used as a source of asymmetric power. An individual's "public" is a small sphere around them as far as an affordable camera can see. To nation-states and large corporations, the "public" becomes virtually all of the spheres around every individual. It can be combined into a database which is no longer accessible to the individuals in the database, making it no longer public. It can then be used asymmetrically by the organizations against individuals. For example, mass-gathered public real estate information can be pitted against individual buyers and sellers of their homes. It biases the market toward those who can collect the most information using capital an individual with a single camera could never collect. In the case of google streetview, a monopoly has been formed. When our country was formed, such asymmetric power was scarcely imaginable. We need to reconsider whether mass gathering of information should be allowed.

user_0x 6y ago
I agree with that wholeheartedly. I find it interesting that governments don't see Google as direct competitor for power at this point. It's also fairly weird that such data gathering corps are considered individuals in the same way one person with a camera is.
- jrockway 6y ago
  I think you guys are kind of overestimating how useful pictures of people's houses taken once every couple years are. I guess you can see what years I did a good job of watering my plants and what years I didn't. That's about it. We should be wary of surveillance from tech companies, but the messages you send your friends from your phone are a lot more useful than a picture of your house.
  - chillingeffect 6y ago
    I agree it's worthwhile estimating the power having this imagery gives. it tells much more than whether you watered your plants well. For example, it can be used to estimate wealth at a distance. This means, for example, if I'm trying to make any kind of transaction, someone can look at my house and cars and make the price vary with their perception of my wealth. This is a form of prejudice. It can also be used to look up interviewees. It can be used to give them the lowest possible salary based on where they live and what their perceived life circumstances are like. It's already been demonstrated that resumes with ethnic names are taken less seriously. And what's more, this power can't be checked. Since google has a monopoly, no one else can challenge it. If it's used e.g. in a court case, no one can oppose it, because their is no corroborating or countering imagery. And what's more, the way this information is consumed has asymmetry. For example, yes, while any individual can zip around google maps and learn information, wealthy individuals and corporations can access large amounts of public information and process it, turning it again into private information. This private information can then be used to enhance wealth, e.g. by estimating areas to develop real estate, mine resources, etc., in a way that individuals simply can not. This all means that while individuals retain the power to observe their immediate surroundings, powerful groups, including foreign nations, are able to exert a power several orders of magnitude larger. They are in effect exploiting our individual right to observe and turning it against us.
    - chillingeffect 6y ago
      wow, I wonder what part of this is controversial or disagreeable? Anyone care to elaborate?
      - yters 6y ago
        Sometimes downvotes mean you are right.
  - sitkack 6y ago
    You a Heinlein fan?
shadowgovt 6y ago
Mass-gathering and privatization, I think. If you try to outlaw mass-gathering alone, you're gonna have a bad time. "The Transparent Society" gives a good argument for why that's trying to put a genie back in a bottle (i.e. it would trade out the power asymmetry you're describing for the same power asymmetry exploited by different groups). Better to kill the real estate data asymmetry advantage by having the government collate and publish that data on everyone's behalf than by trying to make it illegal.

user_0x 6y ago

I agree with that wholeheartedly. I find it interesting that governments don't see Google as direct competitor for power at this point. It's also fairly weird that such data gathering corps are considered individuals in the same way one person with a camera is.

jrockway 6y ago
I think you guys are kind of overestimating how useful pictures of people's houses taken once every couple years are. I guess you can see what years I did a good job of watering my plants and what years I didn't. That's about it. We should be wary of surveillance from tech companies, but the messages you send your friends from your phone are a lot more useful than a picture of your house.
- chillingeffect 6y ago
  I agree it's worthwhile estimating the power having this imagery gives. it tells much more than whether you watered your plants well. For example, it can be used to estimate wealth at a distance. This means, for example, if I'm trying to make any kind of transaction, someone can look at my house and cars and make the price vary with their perception of my wealth. This is a form of prejudice. It can also be used to look up interviewees. It can be used to give them the lowest possible salary based on where they live and what their perceived life circumstances are like. It's already been demonstrated that resumes with ethnic names are taken less seriously. And what's more, this power can't be checked. Since google has a monopoly, no one else can challenge it. If it's used e.g. in a court case, no one can oppose it, because their is no corroborating or countering imagery. And what's more, the way this information is consumed has asymmetry. For example, yes, while any individual can zip around google maps and learn information, wealthy individuals and corporations can access large amounts of public information and process it, turning it again into private information. This private information can then be used to enhance wealth, e.g. by estimating areas to develop real estate, mine resources, etc., in a way that individuals simply can not. This all means that while individuals retain the power to observe their immediate surroundings, powerful groups, including foreign nations, are able to exert a power several orders of magnitude larger. They are in effect exploiting our individual right to observe and turning it against us.
  - chillingeffect 6y ago
    wow, I wonder what part of this is controversial or disagreeable? Anyone care to elaborate?
    - yters 6y ago
      Sometimes downvotes mean you are right.
- sitkack 6y ago
  You a Heinlein fan?

shadowgovt 6y ago

Mass-gathering and privatization, I think. If you try to outlaw mass-gathering alone, you're gonna have a bad time. "The Transparent Society" gives a good argument for why that's trying to put a genie back in a bottle (i.e. it would trade out the power asymmetry you're describing for the same power asymmetry exploited by different groups). Better to kill the real estate data asymmetry advantage by having the government collate and publish that data on everyone's behalf than by trying to make it illegal.