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Well, there is also the fact that in a lot of cities, you will be filmed, often by multiple cameras, most of the time, without you being aware of it. By law enf

by bborud 1y ago

Well, there is also the fact that in a lot of cities, you will be filmed, often by multiple cameras, most of the time, without you being aware of it. By law enforcement, security cameras (private and otherwise), cars etc. on top of that you carry around a phone that streams intimate information about your location, behavior, preferences to a bunch of data aggregators. And then there are the signal surveillance networks that are peppered around your environment as your phone shouts traceable signals to your surroundings. (Heck, you can set up a a RPi with a few ESP32s hooked up to dump wifi probe frames, cross reference the networks phones scan for and create a map of where people come from by cross referencing wardriving data. Lots of ISPs make it easy by giving people wireless routers with unique network names. And from there you can figure out things like «someone living at address X is at location Y. People who live at X work for Z and location Y is the office of a competitor». And that’s just by collecting one kind of wifi frame and correlating a bunch of publicly available information) Privacy is dead. Someone taking pictures hardly even registers.

rkomorn 1y ago
I agree we're already in a bad place but I don't find the "ship has sailed" take particularly engaging. Addressing nothing because everything can't be addressed isn't a great strategy for change.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  > Addressing nothing because everything can't be addressed isn't a great strategy for change. Presupposing that some strategies for change are less suitable than others is no argument against the status quo, either. Sometimes the way things are is just the way folks in a given time and place do things, and is simply contingent as much as it’s worthwhile. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. If you don’t like the way things are done here, you either care to make a change, including hearts and minds, or you don’t. If you aren’t from here, that might be an uphill battle, perhaps even both ways: coming and going. It’s a kind of double standard to judge folks for their customs without wanting to do the work to disabuse them of their notions, lest they warn you not to let the door hit you on your way out, especially after it was opened unto you in the first place. Wanting to have it both ways is a sort of special pleading.
- bborud 1y ago
  I wasn't trying to make a "ship has sailed"-argument, but rather the argument that going after photography is odd given how little we care about surveillance and data collection that is far more invasive, complete and dangerous. If this were an optimization problem (optimizing for privacy and reducing criminal behavior), going after people who take pictures in public wouldn't even be on the radar. It isn't even a rounding error. Sure, I understand that most people are barely aware of the insane amounts of data various data brokers aggregate, curate and sell of ordinary people's highly sensitive data. But most of us are. Or should be. And many of us are also part of the problem. I do think this should be addressed. Especially since it is hard to address and it is not going to get any easier. In a well functioning legal system, every single one of the large data brokers that trade in sensitive personal information should be in existential peril. And people associated with them should be at very real risk of ending up in prison. It seems ... peculiar to argue about taking away rights that private citizens have had for more than a century and at the same time not do anything about, for instance, private parties raiding sensitive government data and essentially nobody caring or showing any willingness to do anything about it. You are right in that we do have a "the ship has sailed" attitude. But rather than focus on fixing what is most important we'd rather risk infringing on the rights of private citizens further because that is "being seen as doing something". (I'm not accusing you of thinking this -- I am just finishing that line of reasoning to show what absurd conclusions this might lead us to)
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    I don't think we have anything close to diametrically opposed views, for the most part. When it comes to following lines of reasoning to absurd conclusions though, in the other direction, don't we end up in a world where it is everyone's right (private or public for that matter) to surveil everyone at all times the moment they step outside? Isn't that something you have an issue with? An extension of the existing problem with data brokers, including ones that record data from interactions on their private space (eg our access to their products in their stores, etc)? You're definitely right that there are worse offenders out there than "randos taking pictures", but it doesn't have to be an either-or thing. Plus, I'd suspect that almost anyone who thinks it's not great that every other person on the street can now record them and post it on social media for engagement also doesn't like the other bits of tracking and surveillance you bring up, so if anything, they are probably your overzealous allies.

by bborud 1y ago

rkomorn 1y ago

I agree we're already in a bad place but I don't find the "ship has sailed" take particularly engaging. Addressing nothing because everything can't be addressed isn't a great strategy for change.

aspenmayer 1y ago
> Addressing nothing because everything can't be addressed isn't a great strategy for change. Presupposing that some strategies for change are less suitable than others is no argument against the status quo, either. Sometimes the way things are is just the way folks in a given time and place do things, and is simply contingent as much as it’s worthwhile. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. If you don’t like the way things are done here, you either care to make a change, including hearts and minds, or you don’t. If you aren’t from here, that might be an uphill battle, perhaps even both ways: coming and going. It’s a kind of double standard to judge folks for their customs without wanting to do the work to disabuse them of their notions, lest they warn you not to let the door hit you on your way out, especially after it was opened unto you in the first place. Wanting to have it both ways is a sort of special pleading.
bborud 1y ago
I wasn't trying to make a "ship has sailed"-argument, but rather the argument that going after photography is odd given how little we care about surveillance and data collection that is far more invasive, complete and dangerous. If this were an optimization problem (optimizing for privacy and reducing criminal behavior), going after people who take pictures in public wouldn't even be on the radar. It isn't even a rounding error. Sure, I understand that most people are barely aware of the insane amounts of data various data brokers aggregate, curate and sell of ordinary people's highly sensitive data. But most of us are. Or should be. And many of us are also part of the problem. I do think this should be addressed. Especially since it is hard to address and it is not going to get any easier. In a well functioning legal system, every single one of the large data brokers that trade in sensitive personal information should be in existential peril. And people associated with them should be at very real risk of ending up in prison. It seems ... peculiar to argue about taking away rights that private citizens have had for more than a century and at the same time not do anything about, for instance, private parties raiding sensitive government data and essentially nobody caring or showing any willingness to do anything about it. You are right in that we do have a "the ship has sailed" attitude. But rather than focus on fixing what is most important we'd rather risk infringing on the rights of private citizens further because that is "being seen as doing something". (I'm not accusing you of thinking this -- I am just finishing that line of reasoning to show what absurd conclusions this might lead us to)
- rkomorn 1y ago
  I don't think we have anything close to diametrically opposed views, for the most part. When it comes to following lines of reasoning to absurd conclusions though, in the other direction, don't we end up in a world where it is everyone's right (private or public for that matter) to surveil everyone at all times the moment they step outside? Isn't that something you have an issue with? An extension of the existing problem with data brokers, including ones that record data from interactions on their private space (eg our access to their products in their stores, etc)? You're definitely right that there are worse offenders out there than "randos taking pictures", but it doesn't have to be an either-or thing. Plus, I'd suspect that almost anyone who thinks it's not great that every other person on the street can now record them and post it on social media for engagement also doesn't like the other bits of tracking and surveillance you bring up, so if anything, they are probably your overzealous allies.