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A lot of people around me roll their eyes at the things I do to actively avoid surveillance. If I walk into a relative's house and they have a fscking camera po
by steelframe 3y ago
A lot of people around me roll their eyes at the things I do to actively avoid surveillance. If I walk into a relative's house and they have a fscking camera pointed at me, which believe it or not is usually the case, I will complain about it, turn around, and walk back out of the house. If they have a device under the control of a third party that has a microphone on it, I will shut down any conversation that I wouldn't want said third party listening to.
This is beyond what I do with my own personal devices.
I know this must make me seem rude or anti-social in many cases, but I really don't know how to get the message across about what's happened along with its very real impact.
Not long ago the partner of a relative of mine decided to get drunk when the relative was visiting me. Because they were drunk they weren't answering their phone, my relative got themself all worked up about it. They called the alarm company and talked to what sounded like some 19 year old kid who said, "I see a naked person walking around in the living room on your video feed." Somehow my relative was actually okay with this. It didn't occur to them that maybe they probably didn't want random kids staring at them naked in their own living rooms, which is exactly what was happening at that very moment.
I gave an ultimatum that I would never visit their house again so long as they had those cameras installed. Only then did my relative remove them. I couldn't believe that they actually seemed okay with the fact that this kid was looking at their naked partner in their own living room.
Now I guess I have to have a new rule: Do not get in vehicles that spy on you. The trouble at this point is that it may become more and more difficult to tell for sure which vehicles do that and which don't. There is an increasingly lengthening list of reasons why I would never want to be in a Tesla specifically, so that's an easy one to avoid, but many other car manufacturers at the very least track your location all the time. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them also uploaded video and audio feeds from surveillance devices integrated in the vehicle, right along with your location telemetry.
- latentcall 3y agoThe trick to the car dilemma is to buy an older vehicle without any cameras or network connectivity. I have a 98 Subaru and an 04 Chevy Truck and I can guarantee you they do not have the capacity to spy on me or anyone else.
- astronads 3y agoThe downside, other than the obvious maintenance/reliability concerns of an aging vehicle is safety. Modern cars are much safer in crashes than 20+ year old cars. [0] What sucks though is that basically every modern vehicle egregiously violates our privacy [1] [0]https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812528/ https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... [1]https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/article...
- voakbasda 3y agoIf it’s a choice between safety and privacy, I will always choose privacy. Because without it, you are not safe.
- generic92034 3y agoA motor block going through your head might concern you more than an image of yourself going through someone else's head. ;)
- kragen 3y agoin the 20th century governments killed about a quarter billion of their subjects (see https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE5.HTM https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE5.HTM) plus another couple hundred million foreigners (see https://www.clingendael.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/20060800_cdsp_occ_leitenberg.pdf https://www.clingendael.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/2006080...) which brings the total to about five million per year car accidents kill less than that, though by a factor of less than four, about 1.3 million per year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...) so probably you should re-evaluate your risk assessment: even if you're only concerned with pieces of metal traversing people's bodies, rather than people being maimed, enslaved, raped, and kept in poverty, ignorance, and disease, you should weight the denial of fundamental human rights as a much larger threat than unintentional automotive injury
- crote 3y ago"Fun" fact: cars having the capability to relay your conversations and location are increasingly becoming mandatory. In Europe "eCall" functionality has been mandatory since 2018. This means your car will automatically call 112 (911) when it detects it has been in an accident, relaying realtime audio and location data. You're only a software update away from it also being sent to The Cloud for "theft prevention" or some other bullshit.
- WhackyIdeas 3y agoI like your perspective. I wish I had friends with your exact same perspective.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cj 3y agoAlternatively, you could ask your relative to respectfully turn off their wifi router while you're visiting. Then when they ask why you want them to unplug their router, you can have a friendly chat about the risks of using cloud IoT devices. Although that might not disable a camera-enabled alarm system which sometimes have a cellular backupy.
- standardUser 3y agoI imagine you are incapable of entering the city of London with these requirements, but even US cities like New York and Atlanta and SF have increasing numbers of cameras in public places. Not to mention all of China and, increasingly, India.