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The reality is that the current AI boom is just supercharging a longstanding trend of massive surveillance. Governments and the monied classes distrust everyon

The reality is that the current AI boom is just supercharging a longstanding trend of massive surveillance. Governments and the monied classes distrust everyone else by default, and continue instituting surveillance to protect their interests at the expense of everyone else. It’s also everywhere: * Academia has seen a glut of sensors and tech to surveil labs, classrooms, students, and faculty * Retail and service workers are tracked via camera or phone and yelled at remotely by the boss if they’re not appropriately productive in any given moment * Small businesses often leave telemetry and default data collection policies in place, letting private companies monitor their staff and business The only tools available to us at this point are sabotage, awareness, and resistance. We need to build a society where people trust each other by default again, instead of assuming harm until proven otherwise. We also need governance and regulations at every level stating that surveillance of any sort must be as narrowly scoped as possible, that data retention is limited to as little as practicable, and that sharing of surveillance data with any party other than those compelled by law and warrant is illegal. We’re in an era of peak productivity and flat wages, with the largest wealth pumps in human history funneling more money into fewer hands. This kind of surveillance isn’t just offensive or unacceptable, it’s grotesque in its treatment of our fellow humans.

rangestransform 1y ago
For us to build a high trust society again, we must enforce the law uniformly and consistently through unscalable and “legacy” means like police walking the beat and doing actual human investigative police work. Though murder is down, there is an uptick in property crime, and especially an uptick in people believing that property crime should not be prosecuted at all if the perpetrator is any less wealthy than a billionaire.
- stego-tech 1y ago
  I don’t think most folks - even us ACAB folks - are opposed to the law being evenly enforced and applied. Nor are we opposed to law enforcement building stronger community ties and doing investigative policing instead of militarized response. The latter half of your statement does reflect a sort of ignorance of reality: when we push for lowered persecution of, say, shoplifting under a given amount or of necessities, it’s because we understand those are often crimes of desperation better solved through social programs, food banks, or job guarantees. I’d love to see cops get off their ass and go after the actual shoplifting gangs and train raiders instead of tasering someone to the ground for stealing a couple bucks of food, but they won’t unless prosecutors are given public mandates of what they should be prioritizing (say, home invasions and vehicle break-ins instead of speeding tickets). Start with the big items and work down, as opposed to the disproven “broken windows” policing style of the NYPD.
- CSMastermind 1y ago
  We should absoultely and aggressively enforce property crime. With that said, I'm leery of mass surveillance. It might seem egalitarian but there is something to be said for a police officer having the discretion to not enforce a law. I think I prefer that even if it means some will abuse that power.
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  [flagged]
- chairmansteve 1y ago
  "an uptick in people believing that property crime should not be prosecuted at all". Really? Do you have evidence??
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  > especially an uptick in people believing that property crime should not be prosecuted at all if the perpetrator is any less wealthy than a billionaire. ... and a probably-equal uptick in people who advocate for extrajudicial murder of people accused of (or just suspected of) property crime (look at the way people on the right talk about homeless folks, immigrants etc). the loudest online are not representative of the majority opinion.
- Karrot_Kream 1y ago
  Rest Of World, where this article is from, is a site about news outside of the West. Your talking point about high trust societies seems to be related to the West and is both orthogonal to this article and the start of its own passionate discussion that can probably derail this thread.
  - rangestransform 1y ago
    The parent comment also seems to be discussing the west, in many of the countries described in the article, a high trust society has never really existed at scale until fairly recently
tiahura 1y ago
The surveillance proliferation reflects a fundamental workplace cultural transformation driven by counterculture influence on professional norms. Traditional workplace governance relied upon internalized behavioral standards eg duty, shame, professional integrity, functioning as self-regulating mechanisms. The systematic erosion of these cultural guardrails necessitated external monitoring systems substituting for previously internalized accountability. The “trust but verify” approach emerged from practical necessity of maintaining organizational functionality within a workforce increasingly disconnected from traditional concepts of professional duty and self-accountability.
- stego-tech 1y ago
  > The “trust but verify” approach emerged from practical necessity of maintaining organizational functionality within a workforce increasingly disconnected from traditional concepts of professional duty and self-accountability. This sticks out in my head as completely divorced from the practical reality of the modern workplace circa the past fifty years. Every single KPI has gone up: productivity, imports, exports, revenues, share price, deliverables, margins, you name it. The counter-culture cited to justify these sorts of highly invasive spyware deployments is merely the reaction of a workforce to stagnant wages and deteriorating standards of living in the face of an economy that has left them behind, a monied class that loathes their existence, and governments who can’t be bothered to listen to their grievances over the sound of a $25k-per-plate fundraising dinner. Workers aren’t the problem, here, and surveillance does nothing to actually improve things for the majority of society. To suggest “counter-culture” is the issue is akin to suggesting queer people are responsible for military overspending as opposed to unaccountable defense contractors and PMCs, or that the National Debt is the fault of immigrants as opposed to a government apparatus that fails elementary school maths. There is no “counter-culture” causing a problem in the workplace requiring surveillance, it’s a handful of people at the top of the organization trying to keep as much for themselves as possible demanding said surveillance to protect their own positions and interests - which conveniently happen to be directly opposed to the needs and demands of their workers.
  - tiahura 1y ago
lwo32k 1y ago
Don't worry. Just monitor the rate at which data breaches are happening.
- fuzztester 1y ago
  And the rate of the rate. And trade in the derivatives.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
cmrdporcupine 1y ago
It's just the continuation of the same cycle of creating insecurity, dependency on more powerful economic interests, and insuring exploitation starting with the Acts of Enclosure in the 17th and 18th centuries. It sucked being a feudal peasant, but at least you could eat turnips.

rangestransform 1y ago

For us to build a high trust society again, we must enforce the law uniformly and consistently through unscalable and “legacy” means like police walking the beat and doing actual human investigative police work. Though murder is down, there is an uptick in property crime, and especially an uptick in people believing that property crime should not be prosecuted at all if the perpetrator is any less wealthy than a billionaire.

stego-tech 1y ago
I don’t think most folks - even us ACAB folks - are opposed to the law being evenly enforced and applied. Nor are we opposed to law enforcement building stronger community ties and doing investigative policing instead of militarized response. The latter half of your statement does reflect a sort of ignorance of reality: when we push for lowered persecution of, say, shoplifting under a given amount or of necessities, it’s because we understand those are often crimes of desperation better solved through social programs, food banks, or job guarantees. I’d love to see cops get off their ass and go after the actual shoplifting gangs and train raiders instead of tasering someone to the ground for stealing a couple bucks of food, but they won’t unless prosecutors are given public mandates of what they should be prioritizing (say, home invasions and vehicle break-ins instead of speeding tickets). Start with the big items and work down, as opposed to the disproven “broken windows” policing style of the NYPD.
CSMastermind 1y ago
We should absoultely and aggressively enforce property crime. With that said, I'm leery of mass surveillance. It might seem egalitarian but there is something to be said for a police officer having the discretion to not enforce a law. I think I prefer that even if it means some will abuse that power.
MangoToupe 1y ago
[flagged]
chairmansteve 1y ago
"an uptick in people believing that property crime should not be prosecuted at all". Really? Do you have evidence??
GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
> especially an uptick in people believing that property crime should not be prosecuted at all if the perpetrator is any less wealthy than a billionaire. ... and a probably-equal uptick in people who advocate for extrajudicial murder of people accused of (or just suspected of) property crime (look at the way people on the right talk about homeless folks, immigrants etc). the loudest online are not representative of the majority opinion.
Karrot_Kream 1y ago
Rest Of World, where this article is from, is a site about news outside of the West. Your talking point about high trust societies seems to be related to the West and is both orthogonal to this article and the start of its own passionate discussion that can probably derail this thread.
- rangestransform 1y ago
  The parent comment also seems to be discussing the west, in many of the countries described in the article, a high trust society has never really existed at scale until fairly recently

tiahura 1y ago

The surveillance proliferation reflects a fundamental workplace cultural transformation driven by counterculture influence on professional norms. Traditional workplace governance relied upon internalized behavioral standards eg duty, shame, professional integrity, functioning as self-regulating mechanisms. The systematic erosion of these cultural guardrails necessitated external monitoring systems substituting for previously internalized accountability. The “trust but verify” approach emerged from practical necessity of maintaining organizational functionality within a workforce increasingly disconnected from traditional concepts of professional duty and self-accountability.

stego-tech 1y ago
> The “trust but verify” approach emerged from practical necessity of maintaining organizational functionality within a workforce increasingly disconnected from traditional concepts of professional duty and self-accountability. This sticks out in my head as completely divorced from the practical reality of the modern workplace circa the past fifty years. Every single KPI has gone up: productivity, imports, exports, revenues, share price, deliverables, margins, you name it. The counter-culture cited to justify these sorts of highly invasive spyware deployments is merely the reaction of a workforce to stagnant wages and deteriorating standards of living in the face of an economy that has left them behind, a monied class that loathes their existence, and governments who can’t be bothered to listen to their grievances over the sound of a $25k-per-plate fundraising dinner. Workers aren’t the problem, here, and surveillance does nothing to actually improve things for the majority of society. To suggest “counter-culture” is the issue is akin to suggesting queer people are responsible for military overspending as opposed to unaccountable defense contractors and PMCs, or that the National Debt is the fault of immigrants as opposed to a government apparatus that fails elementary school maths. There is no “counter-culture” causing a problem in the workplace requiring surveillance, it’s a handful of people at the top of the organization trying to keep as much for themselves as possible demanding said surveillance to protect their own positions and interests - which conveniently happen to be directly opposed to the needs and demands of their workers.
- tiahura 1y ago

lwo32k 1y ago

Don't worry. Just monitor the rate at which data breaches are happening.

fuzztester 1y ago
And the rate of the rate. And trade in the derivatives.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

cmrdporcupine 1y ago

It's just the continuation of the same cycle of creating insecurity, dependency on more powerful economic interests, and insuring exploitation starting with the Acts of Enclosure in the 17th and 18th centuries. It sucked being a feudal peasant, but at least you could eat turnips.