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The surveilled society: Who is watching you and how
- walterbell 2y agoDo we need public "digital twins" of watcher supply chains, as they construct digital twins of watchees?
- tithe 2y agoWe could add taxis to that list that use the Curb ride hailing system, with their "passenger information monitors" located in the rear of the taxi. https://www.gocurb.com/terms https://www.gocurb.com/terms
- mdp2021 2y agoYou should be aware that with "connected cars", some contracts were extended with a duty of warning from the vehicle owner to any guest: "I need to inform you that if you enter my car, you accept to be profiled by the manufacturer and its partners" (see 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... ). So, which "taxis"? Taxis are getting extinct - with cars. (You did not expect by entering a taxi to subscribe a sinister contract with unclear entities - and some will plainly refuse it. The "unlivable society" proceeds.)
- tithe 2y agoThis was in New York City. There absolutely should be some kind of notice, or at least an opting-in (where the "opt-in" is not the act of simply getting into a cab). It's irritating a vital service like this becomes an "all or nothing" deal, where I can't selectively opt-out of some shady practice and still use the fundamental service.
- hammock 2y agoAdd the credit card readers/POS tablets at stores, Starbucks, etc to that list, which mostly have tiny cell phone cameras built into them now (whether you knew it or not)
- curiousthought 2y agoI think people would be alarmed if they knew the amount of detail that credit card readers can collect (Level 3 data).
- mdp2021 2y ago> the amount of detail that credit card readers can collect (Level 3 data) Please expand.
- mnahkies 2y agoAFAIK level 3 data is essentially receipt line item level data. I'd actually find it pretty cool to get access to my own level 3 data for smarter budgeting/analysis (eg: automatic tracking of food stocks, separation of spend on luxury foods from basics etc), but I've not found a way to get access as an individual yet
- com 2y agoMerchants seldom submit L3 data with transactions for stupid legacy tech reasons. The card schemes encourage them to do so with bips off scheme fees for doing so, but it’s a minority of transactions I think with even L2 data.
- hammock 2y agoThe merchants usually don’t (to the data brokers at least), that is correct. But backdoored firmware on the POS could send it anywhere, no?
- curiousthought 2y ago
- Terr_ 2y agoIMO the problem isn't so much cameras everywhere per se, but rather how the data may be shared or centralized or otherwise enable abuse.
- loa_in_ 2y agoAnd that it's profitable to collect and trade such data for whatever reason
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoOne alarming method of surveillance I learned about this year was cars. Many cars come with built in surveillance and privacy violations. Several manufacturers allegedly sold the location data of car owners, tracked by their GPS systems (https://fortune.com/2024/07/26/general-motors-honda-and-hyundai-are-accused-of-inappropriately-selling-customer-data/ https://fortune.com/2024/07/26/general-motors-honda-and-hyun...). Some manufacturers revised their policies based on outrage, like GM (https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/gm-killed-program-that-sold-driving-data-to-insurance-companies.html https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/gm-killed-program-that-sold...), but my recollection is others like Subaru did not. Many cars also have options for opting out of having your personal data resolve to data brokers and insurers but they opt you in by default.
- mdp2021 2y agoOne step backwards, it is greatly imprudent to match a tracking device (such as a GPS receiver) and one's name. This would have worked in trustworthy societies - not these ones. (If a trustworthy society is still known in these times, please inform.)
- nonrandomstring 2y agoA society cannot be "trustworthy", but it can embody "high trust". (Not wishing to be pedantic for its own sake, there's an important distinction) High-trust is the average trust metric between any two randomly chosen individuals from the set at some time. Trustworthiness (in one regard) is the historically accumulated record of positive performance against promises made. But a society is not a single entity. Maybe society's representatives might be trustworthy.
- mdp2021 2y agoWhat I meant in the post was "In using some service, one trusts it will not be abused"; consistent abuse of service is societal - hence, said societies "are not trustworthy".
- 2y ago
- mu53 2y agoIts really easy to point out that these systems exist. The cameras are often only slightly hidden. The problem is knowing what is being done with the data. Where the data goes and how it is used. You don't know who has pictures of your face, your current location, or a list of people with your religious beliefs/habits/likes/dislikes/political beliefs. The combination of those items give people a motive and opportunity, and the only thing that is lacking is a choice of weapon. People have been mass murdering others over their political beliefs since forever. Poisons are a covert weapons, and car accidents can be created. It is conspiratorial to think this way, but it is naive to look through the history until even recent years to dismiss these concerns.
- StanislavPetrov 2y agoIn retrospect I'm glad I spent the last 20 years wearing a hat and sunglasses virtually everywhere.
- soulofmischief 2y agoI quite enjoyed being able to mask up with sunglasses and a ballcap during the pandemic. Felt nice to be a little less concerned with corporate surveillance for a while.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y agoYou can keep doing it if you want.
- soulofmischief 2y agoI do, but before the pandemic, many establishments in my area banned masks.
- xrd 2y agoIs there really anything to do? Everyone is constantly uploading photos of my kids to Instagram and that's generating the same surveillance dragnet all these other things are building. I don't see a way to opt-out without plastic surgery.
- Gigachad 2y agoIndividual action will never do anything on this. It has to come from privacy laws, the GDPR was a good step, but we need to go further. Make storing personal data like storing hazardous material. Something you absolutely avoid if possible, and treat with extreme care when you absolutely must store it. Unfortunately the users of this site would rather tell you to move to the woods, go off grid, and paint dazzle camouflage on your face before admitting that a solution has to come from society rather than the individual.
- talldayo 2y agoYour comment makes it sound like everyone's PII just spontaneously generates itself on platforms. The problem is that it's not how it works; individual action is what puts your information on adversarial platforms. Personal privacy is the sum of your actions, and the steps you take individually to not share your details with hundreds of people goes a long ways stopping that. If you want to scare businesses, ban arbitration clauses and other self-absolving Terms of Service. It won't stop Pornhub from getting hacked but it will make their lawyers piss themselves imagining the consequences. Trying to enforce SOC2 on the entire internet is an exercise in futility that will end with Russian hackers selling your credit card to teenagers.
- matheusmoreira 2y ago> ban arbitration clauses and other self-absolving Terms of Service Society really needs to do this as soon as possible. These businesses give themselves the right to do anything they want by putting some clause in some document nobody reads.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
- Rooc 2y ago[flagged]
- DaoVeles 2y agoThis is one of those situations where government enforced limits would be the only viable long term solution. Personal choices can only go so far. The question is if governments benefit from this surveillance as well, if so they don't have much incentive to change unless pressured by the people.
- moltar 2y agoIn some countries this is already starting to happen. For example, in Spain, cameras and camcorders installed in private spaces cannot capture images of public spaces unless it is indispensable for the intended surveillance purpose or unavoidable due to their placement. Which means you can’t even have a doorbell cam if it accidentally captures public space.
- Nextgrid 2y agoThis is an AI spambot.
- fsndz 2y agoExcellent article. Reminds me of an essay I read recently about surveillance capitalism: https://medium.com/discourse/defending-freedom-in-the-era-of-surveillance-capitalism-99d1fc2946f9 https://medium.com/discourse/defending-freedom-in-the-era-of...
- kkfx 2y agoThe surveillance problem is a matter of balance problem: if we are all able to surveil all others or none is able to surveil essentially anyone else forces are balanced there are only marginal issues. If someone can surveil nearly all but nearly all can't surveil the small cohort who surveil them than forces are not balanced. Surveillance per se might be useful, let's say you want to know how much live traffic is there in your planned trip, alerts for incidents, natural phenomenon and so on. The issue is just the balance of forces and what can be done in case of unbalanced forces those who hold the knife from the handle side.
- mylastattempt 2y agoBalance is definately not _the_ problem. I am not willing to exchange my information for access to someone else's information. Both should be private.
- thro1 2y agoI would just have access (control) to my information which I don't have (at all or anymore) but others do (often wrong).
- kkfx 2y agoIt's not enough: let's say you have signed XML transactions from your bank, so you own your accounts because you have a provable balance and transactions in your own hand, but... You still know just you. The bank knows the finance of anyone, so it can makes informed decisions you can't make. Let's say you downloads all news articles you read in an accessible, searchable etc format, let's say a feed reader storing posts, and them are full articles in the feed, plus you have historical archives downloadable like old usenet exports. You still get only certain news, others have access to much more news so might know things you do not know and decide to not publish them to take advantage other all the others... In finance there is insider and outsider training defined and forbidden for a reason, but nothing exists for information. Alphabet or Apple have an immense knowledge from iOS and Android users any of their user have not. How easy for them could be find talents in schools thanks to their education penetration and an ads at a time convince them to take a certain path they like, not necessarily the child like, than hire them while pushing others let's say uni students of some humanities with ideas they dislike in bad roles? What if the owner of an insurance company is also the owner of an insurance comparison service? We can't rule nature, we can't design a forever perfect society, but as much fairness there is as much positive evolution for all we might elicit. As much as we came back to feudal like society as less positive evolution we might hope. Of course owning our information, like our home, car, .... is MANDATORY but far from being sufficient. And actually if you see trends... The 2030 Agenda where "you'll own nothing" it's already there in the IT world, it's already there in modern connected cars and so on, it will be there soon in the whole society and that's the topmost asymmetry of information and ownership we can imaging.
- netsharc 2y ago> Billboards - The latest can watch you as you go by and tailor their ads to suit. The country had at least 1400 high-tech billboards last year; it had at least 49 that also have number-plate recognition cameras to count cars (not identify their owners, the operators insist). Some malls have smartscreens that can gauge your mood. Hah, Minority Report is here. Digital signage around me tailoring ads to my preferences is a freaky idea though, will they start showing me "Hot singles want to date you"? I suppose they'll be able to scan the crowd and see who's the richest^W who's the easiest to pry money from and then show an ad targeted to them. And a network of these cameras can conceivably even identify where I live and work ("We see this face shopping at this supermarket most weeks", "most mornings we spot him at this coffee place"), and by doing so guess my income and spending levels. And scanning cars is an interesting idea. "It's a Cybertruck, show the ad for the penis-enlarging pill!".
- hammock 2y agoI worked with a vendor who has installed cameras at the doors of hundreds of bars that use facial rec to count the number of people entering and exiting, and their approximate age and gender It was all sent to a real-time dashboard, and pretty interesting
- euroderf 2y agoDoes it also pull up their social credit scores ?
- hammock 2y agoAt sports venues and in Vegas it does. They use facial rec to find people that have been previously banned. Not to mention the airport
- moffkalast 2y agoEU: Yep, straight to jail.
- walkabilitee 2y ago
- PlunderBunny 2y agoI've noticed that whenever the subject of cameras in public places comes up on traditional media platforms, there's always talk about the 'debate as to whether we want these things/should allow them'. I suspect this is a planted misdirection (†) - the government and corporations that profit from this information would love you to waste your time talking about whether we should have this kind of surveillance, because it's already here. It would be far better if we could have a debate about who should be able to access this data. For example, there's a difference between a sworn police officer accessing public camera footage, and the same footage being send to a 3rd party by the police, being analysed in a foreign country by foreign workers. † I'm not alleging a giant conspiracy theory about direct corporate control of the media, but it is well known that businesses 'seed' articles by sending unsolicited 'fact sheets' and talking points to reporters.
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