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What do you think defines a "complete" surveillance state? I.e. what would be different from now.

lb1lf 6y ago
Not OP, but presumably advances in machine learning which will make it simpler to identify patterns and gleam useful, actionable information from the vast troves of data being collected. Today, it is my impression that much data is only used to reconstruct events after the fact, rather than gaining a priori knowledge to prevent an incident in the first place. (And, to make it clear - I am not suggesting 'progress' as outlined above is desirable...)
lm28469 6y ago
Not OP but I believe most of the surveillance derives from third parties. The government doesn't directly control or monitor most of the surveillance tools (google, telecoms, geoloc, &c.), or at least not in most advanced countries. But it's getting easier and easier for them to access these data and there will probably be less and less safeguards. For example in France we're in a permanent "state of emergency" since the attacks in 2015 (and now with covid), which grants more rights to the government/police and let them bypass some legal safeguards for "the greater good" but of course it's already being abused, not against terrorists, but against protesters, people squatting land to protest against projects that would have a negative impact on the environment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_to_Defend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_to_Defend), &c.
- the_other 6y ago
  It cannot be for “the greater good”, or the law would not have been written that way before the “emergency”.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    Any government action that relies on emergency powers is an admission from that government that they have failed to govern using their prescribed legislative mandate. Any government that uses such power should be held to account for their failure to govern, because it’s almost never necessary, and is always abused.
  - subaquamille 6y ago
    The tools necessary to achieve this good light not be the same in all corconstancies and you only want to extend the law when strictly necessary, not always. See food ratio in war times.
redis_mlc 6y ago
The CCP already has that: - QR code required to board public transit - facial surveillance when you use a traffic light which monitors your appearance and expression - moving towards digital-only currency to track purchases.
fuzzy2 6y ago
We don’t have mandatory in-home surveillance, for the moment.
- switch007 6y ago
  I get that. But I'm wondering if that really is what needs to occur before we consider a a state to be a complete surveillance state, if, for example, almost every home has some kind of device that can be exploited for surveillance, e.g landline, mobile phone, television, smart devices, laptops/desktops/tablets, internet routers/modems, smart meters, smart heating, rubbish collectoin etc? I.e. have we opted in to in-home surveillance to a sufficient level to make mandatory surveillance almost of no use.
dmos62 6y ago
Compare surveillance in US and China. Both have a lot of it, but one has orders of magnitude more of it. Also China is more open about it. In US there's attempts to be sneaky about it, not so in China, though that's probably just the dictatorial aspect.
tyingq 6y ago
"What do you think defines a "complete" surveillance state?" Ratcheting up automation is what would make it different to me. While there are exceptions, for the most part, police look at all this data after they know about a crime. They have most of what they need to use the info to discover crime and automatically cite people. As a simple example, ANPR in two places could issue a speeding ticket if the time elasped between two scans is low enough. I'm sure it's happening somewhere, maybe a toll road. The difference would be when it's widespread.

Not OP, but presumably advances in machine learning which will make it simpler to identify patterns and gleam useful, actionable information from the vast troves of data being collected. Today, it is my impression that much data is only used to reconstruct events after the fact, rather than gaining a priori knowledge to prevent an incident in the first place. (And, to make it clear - I am not suggesting 'progress' as outlined above is desirable...)

lm28469 6y ago

Not OP but I believe most of the surveillance derives from third parties. The government doesn't directly control or monitor most of the surveillance tools (google, telecoms, geoloc, &c.), or at least not in most advanced countries. But it's getting easier and easier for them to access these data and there will probably be less and less safeguards. For example in France we're in a permanent "state of emergency" since the attacks in 2015 (and now with covid), which grants more rights to the government/police and let them bypass some legal safeguards for "the greater good" but of course it's already being abused, not against terrorists, but against protesters, people squatting land to protest against projects that would have a negative impact on the environment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_to_Defend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_to_Defend), &c.

the_other 6y ago
It cannot be for “the greater good”, or the law would not have been written that way before the “emergency”.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  Any government action that relies on emergency powers is an admission from that government that they have failed to govern using their prescribed legislative mandate. Any government that uses such power should be held to account for their failure to govern, because it’s almost never necessary, and is always abused.
- subaquamille 6y ago
  The tools necessary to achieve this good light not be the same in all corconstancies and you only want to extend the law when strictly necessary, not always. See food ratio in war times.

redis_mlc 6y ago

The CCP already has that: - QR code required to board public transit - facial surveillance when you use a traffic light which monitors your appearance and expression - moving towards digital-only currency to track purchases.

fuzzy2 6y ago

We don’t have mandatory in-home surveillance, for the moment.

switch007 6y ago
I get that. But I'm wondering if that really is what needs to occur before we consider a a state to be a complete surveillance state, if, for example, almost every home has some kind of device that can be exploited for surveillance, e.g landline, mobile phone, television, smart devices, laptops/desktops/tablets, internet routers/modems, smart meters, smart heating, rubbish collectoin etc? I.e. have we opted in to in-home surveillance to a sufficient level to make mandatory surveillance almost of no use.

dmos62 6y ago

Compare surveillance in US and China. Both have a lot of it, but one has orders of magnitude more of it. Also China is more open about it. In US there's attempts to be sneaky about it, not so in China, though that's probably just the dictatorial aspect.

tyingq 6y ago

"What do you think defines a "complete" surveillance state?" Ratcheting up automation is what would make it different to me. While there are exceptions, for the most part, police look at all this data after they know about a crime. They have most of what they need to use the info to discover crime and automatically cite people. As a simple example, ANPR in two places could issue a speeding ticket if the time elasped between two scans is low enough. I'm sure it's happening somewhere, maybe a toll road. The difference would be when it's widespread.