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This sure sounds scary, but it's just a gish gallop of scary phrases. It's a shade away from "there are microchips in the vaccines!" A bare sliver of the crimes

This sure sounds scary, but it's just a gish gallop of scary phrases. It's a shade away from "there are microchips in the vaccines!" A bare sliver of the crimes committed online are ever even investigated (and that's crimes, not politically subversive speech). You'd think that if there was some functioning, pervasive state surveillance apparatus there would be swift punishment of the plethora of incompetent criminal schemes that people perpetrate online, but there just isn't. > Contact tracing If only that was even happening. South Korea did it, and they made people who were exposed to covid stay home and check in regularly with an app. If we'd had the sense to do that here we probably would've saved tens of thousands of lives.

harperlee 5y ago
It is an interesting argument, and indeed the pandemic has shown a lot of weak points in policy enforcement and government’s effectiveness, but all this could be selectively enforced upon you, and these are things that are quite easier to enable than to disable, so I think that prudency is warranted.
lamontcg 5y ago
It is still a highly human resource intensive process to investigate and punish crimes using that surveillance. It doesn't get used to identify who broke into your car and stole stuff out of it, because they just don't really care about that. They do care about everyone who was at the demonstrations, which affects the police directly and which threatens the role that the police have in protecting private capital. If you understand what their role and focus is then the lack of enforcement on petty crimes isn't a counterexample at all.
- mullingitover 5y ago
  > They do care about everyone who was at the demonstrations, which affects the police directly and which threatens the role that the police have in protecting private capital. Who are the regular people asserting their first amendment rights who are being hunted down? I haven't seen that. I have seen a bunch of insurrectionists having these tools used on them, and that's frankly a laudable use of these surveillance tools. If you're using a peaceful protest as a cover for looting, honestly I enthusiastically encourage that 'they' hunt you down, because you're just a vanilla criminal at that point. That's an ideal outcome for the justice system.
the8472 5y ago
In bavaria the police abused contact-tracing guest books (a paper process!) for criminal investigations. Even well-intentioned surveillance can be turned against citizens.
Nbox9 5y ago
> If we'd had the sense to do that here we probably would've saved tens of thousands of lives. Hundreds of thousands. The US is currently at >628,000 COVID deaths. US citizens traveling abroad, or people traveling inside the US probably account for a significant number of COVID deaths outside of the US, but those are much harder to count.

harperlee 5y ago

It is an interesting argument, and indeed the pandemic has shown a lot of weak points in policy enforcement and government’s effectiveness, but all this could be selectively enforced upon you, and these are things that are quite easier to enable than to disable, so I think that prudency is warranted.

lamontcg 5y ago

It is still a highly human resource intensive process to investigate and punish crimes using that surveillance. It doesn't get used to identify who broke into your car and stole stuff out of it, because they just don't really care about that. They do care about everyone who was at the demonstrations, which affects the police directly and which threatens the role that the police have in protecting private capital. If you understand what their role and focus is then the lack of enforcement on petty crimes isn't a counterexample at all.

mullingitover 5y ago
> They do care about everyone who was at the demonstrations, which affects the police directly and which threatens the role that the police have in protecting private capital. Who are the regular people asserting their first amendment rights who are being hunted down? I haven't seen that. I have seen a bunch of insurrectionists having these tools used on them, and that's frankly a laudable use of these surveillance tools. If you're using a peaceful protest as a cover for looting, honestly I enthusiastically encourage that 'they' hunt you down, because you're just a vanilla criminal at that point. That's an ideal outcome for the justice system.

the8472 5y ago

In bavaria the police abused contact-tracing guest books (a paper process!) for criminal investigations. Even well-intentioned surveillance can be turned against citizens.

Nbox9 5y ago

> If we'd had the sense to do that here we probably would've saved tens of thousands of lives. Hundreds of thousands. The US is currently at >628,000 COVID deaths. US citizens traveling abroad, or people traveling inside the US probably account for a significant number of COVID deaths outside of the US, but those are much harder to count.