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Yes, (Duh, wouldn't you?) I've said this before so I apologize in advance for repeating myself. Whether we like it or not ubiquitous surveillance is the new o

Yes, (Duh, wouldn't you?) I've said this before so I apologize in advance for repeating myself. Whether we like it or not ubiquitous surveillance is the new order of the day. You cannot put the technological genie back in the bottle. You can't enforce rules against using it without using it. We're stuck with what I call the "Tyranny of Mrs. Grundy"[1]. The primary result is that we should all work to make a humane tyranny (if such a thing is even possible; it sure sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it?) Yes, your privacy is a social fiction, but in return, we can stop almost all crime. Here's a not-entirely-hypothetical thought experiment for you: would you allow your life to be recorded and made public if it would prevent a child from being abducted? I'm not a particularly good person (I do my best) and I like my privacy, but I think I would have to take that bargain. If it would prevent a kid from getting kidnapped, or someone getting raped, or murdered, or even just getting hit by a hit-and-run driver, that I would agree to have my life JenniCam'd[2]. The fact is, it's already happening. E.g. your smart phone uploads your location data which is then sold off. Your smart TV sends pictures of the screen to the cloud. Your smart router listens to your conversations. Your smart electricity meter sends telemetry. Smart streetlights know where the cars are, smart cars know where the people are (a fleet of networked self-driving cars (auto-autos) is a ubiquitous surveillance system.) Etc. Imagine all the criminals who, when Snowden dropped his bombshell, only just then realized that the NSA already had all their dirty laundry. [1] "Mrs Grundy is a figurative name for an extremely conventional or priggish person, a personification of the tyranny of conventional propriety. A tendency to be overly fearful of what others might think is sometimes referred to as grundyism." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Grundy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Grundy ("Grundiocracy"? Ew.) [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JenniCam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JenniCam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifecasting_(video_stream) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifecasting_(video_stream)

t-writescode 6y ago
> Imagine all the criminals who, when Snowden dropped his bombshell, only just then realized that the NSA already had all their dirty laundry. As a country, the United States has decided that the Bill of Rights was important enough to write down, even if some bad people get to go free. As a country, the United States also decided that wiretapping is illegal except when permitted in a specific instance, with approval from a judge. You may think it's okay, but our Founding Fathers and our predecessors decided that these things weren't okay, likely do to immediate dangers they had just been experiencing. Arguably, the software and practices that Snowden exposedallow after-the-fact wiretapping, where everything was recorded, but not looked at prior to the fact. I argue that is against the spirit of the wiretapping laws, myself.
- carapace 6y ago
  I don't think these things are okay. I don't see a realistic way to prevent them.
danShumway 6y ago
> The primary result is that we should all work to make a humane tyranny (if such a thing is even possible; it sure sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it?) It's not possible, governments need checks and balances, things get bad really fast when they have absolute power. > Yes, your privacy is a social fiction, but in return, we can stop almost all crime. No we can't, and (longer conversation) it wouldn't be desirable to in any case. There is a strong school of thought that we don't want perfect enforcement of all laws, at least not ones based around nonviolent crimes. > Here's a not-entirely-hypothetical thought experiment for you: would you allow your life to be recorded and made public if it would prevent a child from being abducted? To me, it is hypothetical, because we still had a Capital riot even with increased surveillance. After the riot, it didn't take ubiquitous surveillance to catch those people, they bragged about it in livestreams on social media. We can do better with the capabilities we have. It seems intuitively correct to say that the NSA surveillance is improving security, but (surprisingly) I don't see strong evidence that the programs are actually helping to catch terrorists. We're giving additional capabilities to people who aren't leveraging or making good use of the capabilities that they already have. > I'm not a particularly good person (I do my best) and I like my privacy, but I think I would have to take that bargain. I wouldn't. To me, it sounds like a nonsensical comparison, it's like asking whether or not I'd switch to eating only bugs to stop a kidnapping. I don't believe that it would help, I don't believe the bargain you're proposing makes sense on an individual level. And as a widescale solution to crime on the macro level, the consequences of constant surveillance for everyone are worse than a kidnapping. It's not a good trade. I do agree with you in one way, which is that regulation of this tech is not a perfect long-term solution. We need to figure out how to enforce regulations, and outside of the regulatory world we need adversarial research into the technology itself as well. Banning facial recognition will not be enough, on its own, to solve the problem -- solving the problem will require a combination of multiple solutions. But it is a problem we should try to solve. Whether that's by normalizing mask wearing, researching how to combat systems like gait detection, making it easier to detect cameras -- we should be thinking about how to give people tools to hide from omnipresent facial recognition.
- carapace 6y ago
  > > The primary result is that we should all work to make a humane tyranny (if such a thing is even possible; it sure sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it?) > It's not possible, governments need checks and balances, things get bad really fast when they have absolute power. If it's not possible then I think we're destined for a very nasty future. I don't think a technologically sophisticated government can afford to be non-totalitarian (in the narrow sense I'm using here: making "total" use of available information technology. Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness ). I think if it tried it would be undermined by other governments. In re: this point, I find it discouraging that the Communists won in their imperialistic effort to subdue the people of HK. I was hoping that technology would give the masses the edge over the central government but it doesn't seem to have played out that way. > > Yes, your privacy is a social fiction, but in return, we can stop almost all crime. > No we can't, What would prevent it? > and (longer conversation) it wouldn't be desirable to in any case. There is a strong school of thought that we don't want perfect enforcement of all laws, at least not ones based around nonviolent crimes. I don't agree. I feel strongly that laws should be legitimate or repealed. We can't have perfect enforcement, but technological advancement is exponentially reducing the cost of enforcement, eh? Is the answer selective enforcement? That doesn't sound right does it? If there are laws that we believe should be imperfectly enforced then that should be written into the law. For example, if you smoke pot, is it better for that to be legal, or illegal but most of the time cops won't bust you for smoking a joint? > To me, it is hypothetical, because we still had a Capital riot even with increased surveillance. After the riot, it didn't take ubiquitous surveillance to catch those people, they bragged about it in livestreams on social media. We can do better with the capabilities we have. Well, I'll say this: the Capital riot is unprecedented in USA history and I think it will be a while before we can draw reliable conclusions from it. It does seem to me that the problems with the response to it that day did not stem from insufficient information. > It seems intuitively correct to say that the NSA surveillance is improving security, but (surprisingly) I don't see strong evidence that the programs are actually helping to catch terrorists. We're giving additional capabilities to people who aren't leveraging or making good use of the capabilities that they already have. That's kind of my point: rather than trying to sequester the technology (which I believe is impossible) we have to use it well, or we'll fall into some sort of dystopian system. > > I'm not a particularly good person (I do my best) and I like my privacy, but I think I would have to take that bargain. > I wouldn't. To me, it sounds like a nonsensical comparison, it's like asking whether or not I'd switch to eating only bugs to stop a kidnapping. I don't believe that it would help, I don't believe the bargain you're proposing makes sense on an individual level. And as a widescale solution to crime on the macro level, the consequences of constant surveillance for everyone are worse than a kidnapping. It's not a good trade. I wasn't clear. It's not a trade. You're going to be livestreaming anyway, whether you like it or not, so do we also stop the kidnapping? That's the question. I can't find the news article now, but I was reading a few months ago about this exact scenario: A young child in China was kidnapped and the authorities used the system there to locate and rescue the kid within a few hours. We in the West could do that too but if we don't because we value our personal privacy over the occasional kidnapped kid, well, I'm no fan of the CCP but that doesn't seem like a defensible moral position to me. > I do agree with you in one way, which is that regulation of this tech is not a perfect long-term solution. We need to figure out how to enforce regulations, and outside of the regulatory world we need adversarial research into the technology itself as well. Banning facial recognition will not be enough, on its own, to solve the problem -- solving the problem will require a combination of multiple solutions. But it is a problem we should try to solve. Whether that's by normalizing mask wearing, researching how to combat systems like gait detection, making it easier to detect cameras -- we should be thinking about how to give people tools to hide from omnipresent facial recognition. To me that just sounds like closing the barn door after the horse already bolted. The technology is already deployed and more and more gets deployed every day. We should be talking about a universal highest-common-denominator of laws for the planet so that the decreasing cost of asymptotically-prefect enforcement becomes a solution rather than a problem! That makes more sense to me than fighting it because the laws are crap and unevenly enforced.

t-writescode 6y ago

> Imagine all the criminals who, when Snowden dropped his bombshell, only just then realized that the NSA already had all their dirty laundry. As a country, the United States has decided that the Bill of Rights was important enough to write down, even if some bad people get to go free. As a country, the United States also decided that wiretapping is illegal except when permitted in a specific instance, with approval from a judge. You may think it's okay, but our Founding Fathers and our predecessors decided that these things weren't okay, likely do to immediate dangers they had just been experiencing. Arguably, the software and practices that Snowden exposedallow after-the-fact wiretapping, where everything was recorded, but not looked at prior to the fact. I argue that is against the spirit of the wiretapping laws, myself.

carapace 6y ago
I don't think these things are okay. I don't see a realistic way to prevent them.

danShumway 6y ago

> The primary result is that we should all work to make a humane tyranny (if such a thing is even possible; it sure sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it?) It's not possible, governments need checks and balances, things get bad really fast when they have absolute power. > Yes, your privacy is a social fiction, but in return, we can stop almost all crime. No we can't, and (longer conversation) it wouldn't be desirable to in any case. There is a strong school of thought that we don't want perfect enforcement of all laws, at least not ones based around nonviolent crimes. > Here's a not-entirely-hypothetical thought experiment for you: would you allow your life to be recorded and made public if it would prevent a child from being abducted? To me, it is hypothetical, because we still had a Capital riot even with increased surveillance. After the riot, it didn't take ubiquitous surveillance to catch those people, they bragged about it in livestreams on social media. We can do better with the capabilities we have. It seems intuitively correct to say that the NSA surveillance is improving security, but (surprisingly) I don't see strong evidence that the programs are actually helping to catch terrorists. We're giving additional capabilities to people who aren't leveraging or making good use of the capabilities that they already have. > I'm not a particularly good person (I do my best) and I like my privacy, but I think I would have to take that bargain. I wouldn't. To me, it sounds like a nonsensical comparison, it's like asking whether or not I'd switch to eating only bugs to stop a kidnapping. I don't believe that it would help, I don't believe the bargain you're proposing makes sense on an individual level. And as a widescale solution to crime on the macro level, the consequences of constant surveillance for everyone are worse than a kidnapping. It's not a good trade. I do agree with you in one way, which is that regulation of this tech is not a perfect long-term solution. We need to figure out how to enforce regulations, and outside of the regulatory world we need adversarial research into the technology itself as well. Banning facial recognition will not be enough, on its own, to solve the problem -- solving the problem will require a combination of multiple solutions. But it is a problem we should try to solve. Whether that's by normalizing mask wearing, researching how to combat systems like gait detection, making it easier to detect cameras -- we should be thinking about how to give people tools to hide from omnipresent facial recognition.

carapace 6y ago
> > The primary result is that we should all work to make a humane tyranny (if such a thing is even possible; it sure sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it?) > It's not possible, governments need checks and balances, things get bad really fast when they have absolute power. If it's not possible then I think we're destined for a very nasty future. I don't think a technologically sophisticated government can afford to be non-totalitarian (in the narrow sense I'm using here: making "total" use of available information technology. Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness ). I think if it tried it would be undermined by other governments. In re: this point, I find it discouraging that the Communists won in their imperialistic effort to subdue the people of HK. I was hoping that technology would give the masses the edge over the central government but it doesn't seem to have played out that way. > > Yes, your privacy is a social fiction, but in return, we can stop almost all crime. > No we can't, What would prevent it? > and (longer conversation) it wouldn't be desirable to in any case. There is a strong school of thought that we don't want perfect enforcement of all laws, at least not ones based around nonviolent crimes. I don't agree. I feel strongly that laws should be legitimate or repealed. We can't have perfect enforcement, but technological advancement is exponentially reducing the cost of enforcement, eh? Is the answer selective enforcement? That doesn't sound right does it? If there are laws that we believe should be imperfectly enforced then that should be written into the law. For example, if you smoke pot, is it better for that to be legal, or illegal but most of the time cops won't bust you for smoking a joint? > To me, it is hypothetical, because we still had a Capital riot even with increased surveillance. After the riot, it didn't take ubiquitous surveillance to catch those people, they bragged about it in livestreams on social media. We can do better with the capabilities we have. Well, I'll say this: the Capital riot is unprecedented in USA history and I think it will be a while before we can draw reliable conclusions from it. It does seem to me that the problems with the response to it that day did not stem from insufficient information. > It seems intuitively correct to say that the NSA surveillance is improving security, but (surprisingly) I don't see strong evidence that the programs are actually helping to catch terrorists. We're giving additional capabilities to people who aren't leveraging or making good use of the capabilities that they already have. That's kind of my point: rather than trying to sequester the technology (which I believe is impossible) we have to use it well, or we'll fall into some sort of dystopian system. > > I'm not a particularly good person (I do my best) and I like my privacy, but I think I would have to take that bargain. > I wouldn't. To me, it sounds like a nonsensical comparison, it's like asking whether or not I'd switch to eating only bugs to stop a kidnapping. I don't believe that it would help, I don't believe the bargain you're proposing makes sense on an individual level. And as a widescale solution to crime on the macro level, the consequences of constant surveillance for everyone are worse than a kidnapping. It's not a good trade. I wasn't clear. It's not a trade. You're going to be livestreaming anyway, whether you like it or not, so do we also stop the kidnapping? That's the question. I can't find the news article now, but I was reading a few months ago about this exact scenario: A young child in China was kidnapped and the authorities used the system there to locate and rescue the kid within a few hours. We in the West could do that too but if we don't because we value our personal privacy over the occasional kidnapped kid, well, I'm no fan of the CCP but that doesn't seem like a defensible moral position to me. > I do agree with you in one way, which is that regulation of this tech is not a perfect long-term solution. We need to figure out how to enforce regulations, and outside of the regulatory world we need adversarial research into the technology itself as well. Banning facial recognition will not be enough, on its own, to solve the problem -- solving the problem will require a combination of multiple solutions. But it is a problem we should try to solve. Whether that's by normalizing mask wearing, researching how to combat systems like gait detection, making it easier to detect cameras -- we should be thinking about how to give people tools to hide from omnipresent facial recognition. To me that just sounds like closing the barn door after the horse already bolted. The technology is already deployed and more and more gets deployed every day. We should be talking about a universal highest-common-denominator of laws for the planet so that the decreasing cost of asymptotically-prefect enforcement becomes a solution rather than a problem! That makes more sense to me than fighting it because the laws are crap and unevenly enforced.