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A variation of this was used in "The Dark Knight", and you'll recall that Morgan Freeman quit (ok or maybe threatened to quit per the comment below, we know he

A variation of this was used in "The Dark Knight", and you'll recall that Morgan Freeman quit (ok or maybe threatened to quit per the comment below, we know he was back in The Dark Knight Rises) over the ethical implications.

karlzt 4y ago
*Knight
- version_five 4y ago
  Haha right I don't know if that was autocorrect or just me zoning out. Probably the ladder
  - dogcomplex 4y ago
    *Latter
dinobones 4y ago
“It’s sonar… Like a,” “Like a submarine, Mr. Wayne.”
capableweb 4y ago
I've never seen the movie, but was curious about it regardless. This is what I found about it, maybe others are as clueless about it as me: > Fox [Lucius Fox, played by Morgan Freeman] eventually learned that Bruce [Batman] had expanded on sonar technology and developed an advanced surveillance system that could listen in and track the movement of any of the thousands of cell phones in Gotham, but, to ensure that the system was not misused, Bruce designed it so that only Fox could control it. Since that essentially contradicted everything that Bruce believed in, Fox agreed to help but said that he would resign if the machine was not destroyed after The Joker was defeated and captured. After the Joker was apprehended, Fox entered a code (his own name) as instructed by Bruce, which activated a self-destruct function for the system, and Fox continued to work under Bruce. From https://batman.fandom.com/wiki/Lucius_Fox_(Nolanverse)#The_Dark_Knight https://batman.fandom.com/wiki/Lucius_Fox_(Nolanverse)#The_D... Seems he never actually quit, but was fine pushing his own ethical concerns aside for a little while, and continued working with Batman afterwards.
- nashashmi 4y ago
  > his own ethical concerns aside for a little while everyone does this. In fact, surveillance is not an "ethical" concern. It is just a concern from the standpoint of potential misuse. And no one thinks they themselves are going to misuse the powers they have. Everyone else is concerned that their powers will be one day misused. And misuse means the powers being used against people who everyone else associates with. No one cares if the powers are misused against "bad" people like pedophiles or terrorists or the person who murdered someone's sister.
  - nextaccountic 4y ago
    > In fact, surveillance is not an "ethical" concern. > It is just a concern from the standpoint of potential misuse. No, those are two separate concerns. The trouble is, there are other things that concern people (in the movie, catching the Joker) and when you have two conflicting concerns you need to choose between them.
XorNot 4y ago
That movie is the definition of a Broken Aesop though: "what are the ethical implications" and then it proceeds to immediately use the technology to prevent a major mass terror attack. In a world where Lucious's concerns were taken seriously, the Joker would've blown up both barges and probably not been caught. So the lesson is....mass surveillance is okay sometimes when the threat is great enough?
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  I think of it the way I think of torture, in the stereotypical scenario where a nuclear bomb has been hidden somewhere in the city and you're 99.9% sure the suspect you've got locked in your basement knows where it is. Go ahead and torture him if you feel like that's the utilitarian optimum... but if you're wrong (and if you survive the blast) then you deserve the harshest punishment available under law. The problem I have is when agencies like the CIA employ torture, accomplish nothing, save no one, and get away with it scot-free. That's monstrous. I'd apply the same reasoning to the use and misuse of mass surveillance. (BTW, if you enjoy contemplating scenarios like this, check out the movie Big Bad Wolves. It's one of those obscure sleepers that will stick with you for a while.)
  - XorNot 4y ago
    The problem with your example is it's the situation in which torture (in fact interrogation in general) isn't going to work no matter what you do: it's an example of what I like to call "the car keys fallacy". Most people contemplating torture think in terms of "how long would I let bad things happen to me before I handed over my car keys?". Not literally, of course, but nothing in their life is that important. If someone points a gun at you, handing over your car keys just makes sense. What they should be thinking is "how long would I let bad things to happen to me, if I told the people doing them where my children are so they can go kill them?" The guy with information on where the nuclear bomb is knows how long he has to hold out to make the information useless. Otherwise, why didn't he give it up the moment you arrested him and said "yeah you'll be in jail forever?". Or when you threatened to have him executed if it goes off? If none of these things are actually compelling to him, then why would any level of torture be effective when he already is accepting his life being over anyway? People think torture is prohibited because it's a bad thing to do, and that would be a good reason to prohibit it. But it's not just that's it's bad, it's that it's ineffective. And it is a dangerous lie that allows ideas like CIA torture programs to exist that it is: that torture actually works, and is just taboo. Because it advances the idea that the man with the will to torture will have an advantage over the one who doesn't - or that not doing it is some type of luxury. It's an argument in favor of it, despite that the fact that CIA program never found a god damn thing - and that should be an optimum torture scenario, because there's no fixed timelines, no ticking clocks, just a promise of eternal torture.

karlzt 4y ago

*Knight

version_five 4y ago
Haha right I don't know if that was autocorrect or just me zoning out. Probably the ladder
- dogcomplex 4y ago
  *Latter

dinobones 4y ago

“It’s sonar… Like a,” “Like a submarine, Mr. Wayne.”

capableweb 4y ago

I've never seen the movie, but was curious about it regardless. This is what I found about it, maybe others are as clueless about it as me: > Fox [Lucius Fox, played by Morgan Freeman] eventually learned that Bruce [Batman] had expanded on sonar technology and developed an advanced surveillance system that could listen in and track the movement of any of the thousands of cell phones in Gotham, but, to ensure that the system was not misused, Bruce designed it so that only Fox could control it. Since that essentially contradicted everything that Bruce believed in, Fox agreed to help but said that he would resign if the machine was not destroyed after The Joker was defeated and captured. After the Joker was apprehended, Fox entered a code (his own name) as instructed by Bruce, which activated a self-destruct function for the system, and Fox continued to work under Bruce. From https://batman.fandom.com/wiki/Lucius_Fox_(Nolanverse)#The_Dark_Knight https://batman.fandom.com/wiki/Lucius_Fox_(Nolanverse)#The_D... Seems he never actually quit, but was fine pushing his own ethical concerns aside for a little while, and continued working with Batman afterwards.

nashashmi 4y ago
> his own ethical concerns aside for a little while everyone does this. In fact, surveillance is not an "ethical" concern. It is just a concern from the standpoint of potential misuse. And no one thinks they themselves are going to misuse the powers they have. Everyone else is concerned that their powers will be one day misused. And misuse means the powers being used against people who everyone else associates with. No one cares if the powers are misused against "bad" people like pedophiles or terrorists or the person who murdered someone's sister.
- nextaccountic 4y ago
  > In fact, surveillance is not an "ethical" concern. > It is just a concern from the standpoint of potential misuse. No, those are two separate concerns. The trouble is, there are other things that concern people (in the movie, catching the Joker) and when you have two conflicting concerns you need to choose between them.

XorNot 4y ago

That movie is the definition of a Broken Aesop though: "what are the ethical implications" and then it proceeds to immediately use the technology to prevent a major mass terror attack. In a world where Lucious's concerns were taken seriously, the Joker would've blown up both barges and probably not been caught. So the lesson is....mass surveillance is okay sometimes when the threat is great enough?

CamperBob2 4y ago
I think of it the way I think of torture, in the stereotypical scenario where a nuclear bomb has been hidden somewhere in the city and you're 99.9% sure the suspect you've got locked in your basement knows where it is. Go ahead and torture him if you feel like that's the utilitarian optimum... but if you're wrong (and if you survive the blast) then you deserve the harshest punishment available under law. The problem I have is when agencies like the CIA employ torture, accomplish nothing, save no one, and get away with it scot-free. That's monstrous. I'd apply the same reasoning to the use and misuse of mass surveillance. (BTW, if you enjoy contemplating scenarios like this, check out the movie Big Bad Wolves. It's one of those obscure sleepers that will stick with you for a while.)
- XorNot 4y ago
  The problem with your example is it's the situation in which torture (in fact interrogation in general) isn't going to work no matter what you do: it's an example of what I like to call "the car keys fallacy". Most people contemplating torture think in terms of "how long would I let bad things happen to me before I handed over my car keys?". Not literally, of course, but nothing in their life is that important. If someone points a gun at you, handing over your car keys just makes sense. What they should be thinking is "how long would I let bad things to happen to me, if I told the people doing them where my children are so they can go kill them?" The guy with information on where the nuclear bomb is knows how long he has to hold out to make the information useless. Otherwise, why didn't he give it up the moment you arrested him and said "yeah you'll be in jail forever?". Or when you threatened to have him executed if it goes off? If none of these things are actually compelling to him, then why would any level of torture be effective when he already is accepting his life being over anyway? People think torture is prohibited because it's a bad thing to do, and that would be a good reason to prohibit it. But it's not just that's it's bad, it's that it's ineffective. And it is a dangerous lie that allows ideas like CIA torture programs to exist that it is: that torture actually works, and is just taboo. Because it advances the idea that the man with the will to torture will have an advantage over the one who doesn't - or that not doing it is some type of luxury. It's an argument in favor of it, despite that the fact that CIA program never found a god damn thing - and that should be an optimum torture scenario, because there's no fixed timelines, no ticking clocks, just a promise of eternal torture.