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Although it is interesting how inconsistently this principle of is applied to other areas. For example, if you come to HN and advocate against encryption or AI

by slg 1y ago

Although it is interesting how inconsistently this principle of is applied to other areas. For example, if you come to HN and advocate against encryption or AI because they can amplify the dangers of bad actors, you are going to be met by fierce opposition. So why do these hypothetical bad actors only become valid concerns in certain conversations?

prophesi 1y ago
When it comes to encryption, it helps save actual lives. If you mandate getting rid of encryption, bad actors will still break the law and use encryption to carry on business as normal. Regular citizens lose, oppressive governments & criminals win.
- slg 1y ago
  >When it comes to encryption, it helps save actual lives. So does the license plate data. It is used to find and bring justice to criminals. Does that not make us all safer? > If you mandate getting rid of encryption, bad actors will still break the law and use encryption to carry on business as normal. Laws are pointless because the criminals will just break them is a silly argument that can be used against most laws. Why should we have any laws about gun control, money laundering, or drugs if the criminals will just do whatever they want anyway. And the flip side of this argument should also be considered. Do we think the Nazis would have given up on their genocide if they didn't find this data?
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    > Does that not make us all safer? Is there evidence in that direction?
    - slg 1y ago
      Thank you, this is a perfect example of the type of inconsistencies I’m talking about when discussing these issues. The prior comment says encryption saves lives and that is accepted without question, but the idea that empowering law enforcement saves lives is met with a request for evidence. Why did you not reply to both claims the same way? And if you truly believe that finding and arresting criminals does not make us safer, that is an indictment of our entire justice system. It would also make license plate cameras a rather silly place to draw the line.
      - prophesi 1y ago
        I think it's because you don't have to look too hard to find examples of authoritarian regimes leveraging information technologies for surveillance, censorship, and propaganda. Or how US government agencies use loopholes to get around the 4th amendment and buy sensitive civilian data from private data brokers. Or how data breaches are becoming larger and more frequent each year.
      - ceejayoz 1y ago
        Encryption seems highly likely to have saved many people from, say, losing their life savings by having their banking credentials hijacked. I am less certain about license plate cameras. Hence, the ask. I will leave the questioning of encryption up to someone who actually questions its utility.
        slg 1y ago
        Can you genuinely not think of situations in which law enforcement being able to pin a specific vehicle to a time and place might help them catch dangerous criminals or be used as evidence in a trial to help get them convicted?
        ceejayoz 1y ago
        In any significant capacity? No. Because we'd see it in crime stats; the widespread successful use of license plate scanners should show up in a chart. The world before and the world after their introduction appears very similar from a crime rate standpoint; it stands to reason getting rid of them would be similarly low-impact. I really don't think that'd be the same if we got rid of encryption tomorrow.
        slg 1y ago
        >In any significant capacity? Notice the subtle shifting of the goalposts. Who said anything about "significant capacity"? The original argument was "it helps save actual lives". Now we need to see "widespread successful use" in the "crime stats"? How would that even be possible? These systems can't be implemented in a vacuum and crime stats are constantly fluctuating for countless reasons, so how could the specific cause ever be isolated? Yet crime has generally been on a downward trend for decades, can we be sure these type of systems aren't responsible for some piece of that? >I really don't think that'd be the same if we got rid of encryption tomorrow. Once again, why aren't you asking "Is there evidence in that direction?" You are demanding evidence for one and the other is just a hypothetical based of what you "think" might happen. But what is that thought based on? Do crime stats show that identity theft has gone done since the popularization of online banking You are not treating these issues with the same rigor. Can't you recognize that?
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    >So does the license plate data. It is used to find and bring justice to criminals. Does that not make us all safer? Yes, but only in the most ignorant "this quarter the state dug through the DB fined the shit out a bunch of people for papers violations and therefor I am safer" line of reasoning. In all the cases where there's a "real criminal" they're after the database provides very little information that isn't redundant to the old fashioned police work they'd do to begin with (like getting a warrant and looking up the person's phone and transaction records) >Laws are pointless because the criminals will just break them is a silly argument that can be used against most laws. Why should we have any laws about gun control, money laundering, or drugs if the criminals will just do whatever they want anyway. There's a special kind of irony in picking examples that all have large swaths of the populations that think we could wholly do without that category of laws.
    - slg 1y ago
      >In all the cases where there's a "real criminal" they're after the database provides very little information that isn't redundant to the old fashioned police work they'd do to begin with (like getting a warrant and looking up the person's phone and transaction records) This is a rather authoritative and specific claim. How did you reach this conclusion? >There's a special kind of irony in picking examples that all have large swaths of the populations that think we could wholly do without that category of laws. If we are playing this game, sharing this information with ICE is also something large swaths of the population support. Let's stop pretending that an idea is valid just because lots of people believe it. If you are still arguing against any form of gun control with the frequency of gun deaths in this country compared to all our peer nations with stricter gun laws, than I frankly don't dare about your opinion anymore as you are clearly living in some libertarian fantasy land.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
rented_mule 1y ago
Something that seems inherently different between GP's comment and encryption is that encryption is an algorithm / tool, not a dataset. Not creating literal tools because they might have bad use cases is clearly a bad idea (e.g., fire, knives, hammers, etc.). I'd say that one thing inherently different about datasets is that they are continually used badly, including by well-meaning actors. Data is frequently misinterpreted, with good intent, to draw bad conclusions. You might hit your thumb with a hammer. That hurts! People would be a lot more careful if misinterpreting data had such clear, immediate effects on them. Also, there are many different groups with different passionate opinions in any community as large as this one.
- slg 1y ago
  What is the distinction you are making between a "dataset" and a "tool"? To use this specific example of the license plate dataset, this is a tool used to find and bring justice to criminals. How is it any different from any other tool at the disposal of law enforcement? Isn't this system just a scaled up version of a cop with a camera?
  - davrosthedalek 1y ago
    Isn't an atomic bomb just a scaled up version of a firecracker? Nobody denies that collection of datasets can have upsides. But the downsides are often not seen/evaluated accurately. And negative effects don't necessarily scale with the same power as positive effects.
    - slg 1y ago
      >Isn't an atomic bomb just a scaled up version of a firecracker? Yes and no. I think radiation is a big differentiator, but absent that, I don't think it is better morally or ethically to level a city with conventual bombs than it would be to do it with a nuclear bomb. >Nobody denies that collection of datasets can have upsides. But the downsides are often not seen/evaluated accurately. And negative effects don't necessarily scale with the same power as positive effects. I'm not disagreeing with this. I'm asking why this same logic is not applied elsewhere.
mindslight 1y ago
Encryption is this same exact topic, and the prevailing technical viewpoint is the direct application of the principle of minimizing collected datasets.
jrflowers 1y ago
>advocate against encryption This is a good point. If people are willing to push back against giving law enforcement everybody’s data why would they also oppose giving law enforcement everybody’s data? It is inconsistent because if you think about it “giving law enforcement everybody’s data” and “not giving law enforcement everybody’s data” are basically the same th

by slg 1y ago

prophesi 1y ago

When it comes to encryption, it helps save actual lives. If you mandate getting rid of encryption, bad actors will still break the law and use encryption to carry on business as normal. Regular citizens lose, oppressive governments & criminals win.

slg 1y ago
>When it comes to encryption, it helps save actual lives. So does the license plate data. It is used to find and bring justice to criminals. Does that not make us all safer? > If you mandate getting rid of encryption, bad actors will still break the law and use encryption to carry on business as normal. Laws are pointless because the criminals will just break them is a silly argument that can be used against most laws. Why should we have any laws about gun control, money laundering, or drugs if the criminals will just do whatever they want anyway. And the flip side of this argument should also be considered. Do we think the Nazis would have given up on their genocide if they didn't find this data?
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  > Does that not make us all safer? Is there evidence in that direction?
  - slg 1y ago
    Thank you, this is a perfect example of the type of inconsistencies I’m talking about when discussing these issues. The prior comment says encryption saves lives and that is accepted without question, but the idea that empowering law enforcement saves lives is met with a request for evidence. Why did you not reply to both claims the same way? And if you truly believe that finding and arresting criminals does not make us safer, that is an indictment of our entire justice system. It would also make license plate cameras a rather silly place to draw the line.
    - prophesi 1y ago
      I think it's because you don't have to look too hard to find examples of authoritarian regimes leveraging information technologies for surveillance, censorship, and propaganda. Or how US government agencies use loopholes to get around the 4th amendment and buy sensitive civilian data from private data brokers. Or how data breaches are becoming larger and more frequent each year.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      Encryption seems highly likely to have saved many people from, say, losing their life savings by having their banking credentials hijacked. I am less certain about license plate cameras. Hence, the ask. I will leave the questioning of encryption up to someone who actually questions its utility.
      - slg 1y ago
        Can you genuinely not think of situations in which law enforcement being able to pin a specific vehicle to a time and place might help them catch dangerous criminals or be used as evidence in a trial to help get them convicted?
        ceejayoz 1y ago
        In any significant capacity? No. Because we'd see it in crime stats; the widespread successful use of license plate scanners should show up in a chart. The world before and the world after their introduction appears very similar from a crime rate standpoint; it stands to reason getting rid of them would be similarly low-impact. I really don't think that'd be the same if we got rid of encryption tomorrow.
        slg 1y ago
        >In any significant capacity? Notice the subtle shifting of the goalposts. Who said anything about "significant capacity"? The original argument was "it helps save actual lives". Now we need to see "widespread successful use" in the "crime stats"? How would that even be possible? These systems can't be implemented in a vacuum and crime stats are constantly fluctuating for countless reasons, so how could the specific cause ever be isolated? Yet crime has generally been on a downward trend for decades, can we be sure these type of systems aren't responsible for some piece of that? >I really don't think that'd be the same if we got rid of encryption tomorrow. Once again, why aren't you asking "Is there evidence in that direction?" You are demanding evidence for one and the other is just a hypothetical based of what you "think" might happen. But what is that thought based on? Do crime stats show that identity theft has gone done since the popularization of online banking You are not treating these issues with the same rigor. Can't you recognize that?
- potato3732842 1y ago
  >So does the license plate data. It is used to find and bring justice to criminals. Does that not make us all safer? Yes, but only in the most ignorant "this quarter the state dug through the DB fined the shit out a bunch of people for papers violations and therefor I am safer" line of reasoning. In all the cases where there's a "real criminal" they're after the database provides very little information that isn't redundant to the old fashioned police work they'd do to begin with (like getting a warrant and looking up the person's phone and transaction records) >Laws are pointless because the criminals will just break them is a silly argument that can be used against most laws. Why should we have any laws about gun control, money laundering, or drugs if the criminals will just do whatever they want anyway. There's a special kind of irony in picking examples that all have large swaths of the populations that think we could wholly do without that category of laws.
  - slg 1y ago
    >In all the cases where there's a "real criminal" they're after the database provides very little information that isn't redundant to the old fashioned police work they'd do to begin with (like getting a warrant and looking up the person's phone and transaction records) This is a rather authoritative and specific claim. How did you reach this conclusion? >There's a special kind of irony in picking examples that all have large swaths of the populations that think we could wholly do without that category of laws. If we are playing this game, sharing this information with ICE is also something large swaths of the population support. Let's stop pretending that an idea is valid just because lots of people believe it. If you are still arguing against any form of gun control with the frequency of gun deaths in this country compared to all our peer nations with stricter gun laws, than I frankly don't dare about your opinion anymore as you are clearly living in some libertarian fantasy land.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

rented_mule 1y ago

Something that seems inherently different between GP's comment and encryption is that encryption is an algorithm / tool, not a dataset. Not creating literal tools because they might have bad use cases is clearly a bad idea (e.g., fire, knives, hammers, etc.). I'd say that one thing inherently different about datasets is that they are continually used badly, including by well-meaning actors. Data is frequently misinterpreted, with good intent, to draw bad conclusions. You might hit your thumb with a hammer. That hurts! People would be a lot more careful if misinterpreting data had such clear, immediate effects on them. Also, there are many different groups with different passionate opinions in any community as large as this one.

slg 1y ago
What is the distinction you are making between a "dataset" and a "tool"? To use this specific example of the license plate dataset, this is a tool used to find and bring justice to criminals. How is it any different from any other tool at the disposal of law enforcement? Isn't this system just a scaled up version of a cop with a camera?
- davrosthedalek 1y ago
  Isn't an atomic bomb just a scaled up version of a firecracker? Nobody denies that collection of datasets can have upsides. But the downsides are often not seen/evaluated accurately. And negative effects don't necessarily scale with the same power as positive effects.
  - slg 1y ago
    >Isn't an atomic bomb just a scaled up version of a firecracker? Yes and no. I think radiation is a big differentiator, but absent that, I don't think it is better morally or ethically to level a city with conventual bombs than it would be to do it with a nuclear bomb. >Nobody denies that collection of datasets can have upsides. But the downsides are often not seen/evaluated accurately. And negative effects don't necessarily scale with the same power as positive effects. I'm not disagreeing with this. I'm asking why this same logic is not applied elsewhere.

mindslight 1y ago

Encryption is this same exact topic, and the prevailing technical viewpoint is the direct application of the principle of minimizing collected datasets.

jrflowers 1y ago

>advocate against encryption This is a good point. If people are willing to push back against giving law enforcement everybody’s data why would they also oppose giving law enforcement everybody’s data? It is inconsistent because if you think about it “giving law enforcement everybody’s data” and “not giving law enforcement everybody’s data” are basically the same th