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> It's always a tradeoff. Nothing is ever going to have zero benefit Realizing that is the first step to having any kind of productive discourse, much less a c

by TeMPOraL 11mo ago

> It's always a tradeoff. Nothing is ever going to have zero benefit Realizing that is the first step to having any kind of productive discourse, much less a chance of influencing the outcome. It's also the step I see most commenters in discussions on this and related topics here, are unable to take. But then, the follow-up step is: > the problem is that these laws use the marginal benefit as an excuse to institute something that actually has massive downsides Are they marginal though, and are the downsides that big? Or does it only seem that way from our armchairs, as we debate computer philosophy and look at the world as a diagram of interacting systems, instead of, you know, the real world? I'm not saying these particular regulatory ideas are good - I just have a problem with this assumption (not even implicit, it's often outright spelled out here), that it's some evil elites that try to strip us off our privacy and freedom, and keep trying to push the same laws hoping to catch our vigilant protectors off-guard. Truth is, there's plenty of people who push for these things because they actually think of the children and honestly think these are good trade-offs, and they may be even more right than we are. They definitely sit closer to the real world and real people, real problems and real policing, than we do. They may be fatally misguided, too, but we won't achieve anything unless we try and see their perspective and honestly address the issues they're concerned with.

stavros 11mo ago
Eh, I don't know, I feel like "is complete population surveillance a net good?" has been answered a million times, I'm not sure we need to go into it from first principles.
- TeMPOraL 11mo ago
  "Complete population surveillance" is an ill-defined category; depending on how you slice it, it's something very undesirable, or a status quo we've been living in for the past couple decades.
  - stavros 11mo ago
    I can't see anything in the intersection of "desirable", "status quo" and "complete surveillance", can you think of some examples?
    - TeMPOraL 11mo ago
      Cellular telephony. Electronic banking. Both have been "status quo" for decades, and subject pretty much everyone in the western world to significant, continuous surveillance. We can discuss whether it's desirable, but it's been like this for a while and people very much like benefits both provide.
      - stavros 11mo ago
        I'm fairly sure I definitely don't want to be surveilled by my phone, yep.
        TeMPOraL 11mo ago
        Yet it predates smartphones, and is a fundamental aspect of how cellular networks operate. Surveillance of course got more thorough, detailed and overarching over time, still largely for engineering reasons - the network needs to know precisely where each handset is to aim the radio beam at it.
        8fingerlouie 11mo ago
        Too late. Your phone (GSM anyway) continuously reports back to the cell tower it's connected to, the strength of every other cell tower it can "see". The cell network, not the handset, decides which is the better cell tower for your handset to transfer to, which is why this information is being sent in the first place. That information, the strength of cell towers, along with the knowledge of exactly where a cell tower is placed, can be used to triangulate your position down to a few meters in crowded areas with many cell towers. It's also how your phone establishes its position without GPS. Besides that, you probably also have a handful or more apps that tracks your location within 100m constantly.
  - fsckboy 11mo ago
    complete population surveillance is the system we evolved to thrive in: there is no privacy in hunter gatherer societies. and in medieval city societies the average person had no privacy. it was only nobles who had privacy, and they were generally up to no good.
- 8fingerlouie 11mo ago
  I doubt much will change. Your location is already known to your mobile operator, to your phone OS manufacturer, to various social media services, and more, including the government/law enforcement on request (maybe, or they have permanent access, who knows). Any time you buy stuff with a debit/credit card, the details of that transaction is known to your bank, your card provider, tax authorities, including where you bought stuff, and by request, authorities Money that goes into your bank account is also known by your bank (obviously), by tax authorities, and by request, authorities. Your ISP knows who you talk to, and can easily log metadata about which sites you visit, even if you use a secure DNS, and in most countries, authorities can request (metadata) logging from your ISP, which you'll never even notice. During COVID, health authorities started analyzing sewage to estimate how much the virus had spread in various communities, and some places they were down to street level accuracy. Obviously that gets a lot more diffuse on Manhattan than some rural city with 400 people in it, but you pretty much can't fart without anyone knowing it. We are already under constant surveillance, whether we like it or not. I don't mind as much as long as it's used retroactively, but the ChatControl proposition would be proactive instead. It would scan your texts and report if it found something "suspicious", with the caveat that you as a user don't know what's suspicious today (or tomorrow). The list isn't public, and you wouldn't get notified that someone had called an adult, not until someone comes knocking on your door. Their plan is/was to use AI, and we all know that ChatGPT never gets confused about anything, so that sounds like a great and ultra consistent plan. Most things require context. I might be angry because some kids gave me hard time, and write "fuck all children" to someone, but the anger isn't evident in the message, only the literal message, which I agree might be interpreted as something else (deliberately). This would then (probably) result in a notification for human review, a task that would fall to the operator of said service, so now Meta, Google or whomever has a legal justification for reading my messages looking for context, and I can't see any way that could go wrong. The other option was for law enforcement to read the messages, and while they're probably a bit more trustworthy in terms of privacy, I doubt we want to staff up our law enforcement offices by a factor 10 to read peoples messages. The list could also be updated behind your back, so for totalitarian wannabe regimes, it could be used to pinpoint exactly who is organizing all those darned protests.
lenkite 11mo ago
The removal of out-dated privacy offers great benefits. Why not begin to invest and develop technology to scan people's brains and leverage the supreme protection advantages for the nation state by its complete elimination ? Mandate that every resident of the EU wear a certified, union-approved, scanning head-band that monitors the resident's brain for violent, racist, subversive or even "offensive" thoughts using state-of-the-art AI and supporting algorithms. Authorities are notified immediately and are granted auto-approved warrants. Judges get notifications on auto-sentences that include mandatory re-education to heal such delinquents. Obviously, the system will include the vital and necessary exemptions - politicians and friends of the party, top campaign-donors, favored minorities and cartels, etc. Every Resident will be made Safe and Happy! This will lead to the establishment of an utopian state - the ultimate paradise on Earth! "Privacy", today, is a nasty detriment that is holding back the Progress of Civilization.
- baranul 11mo ago
  Excellent! People need to think more deeply about what various laws and technologies are leading us to.

stavros 11mo ago

Eh, I don't know, I feel like "is complete population surveillance a net good?" has been answered a million times, I'm not sure we need to go into it from first principles.

TeMPOraL 11mo ago
"Complete population surveillance" is an ill-defined category; depending on how you slice it, it's something very undesirable, or a status quo we've been living in for the past couple decades.
- stavros 11mo ago
  I can't see anything in the intersection of "desirable", "status quo" and "complete surveillance", can you think of some examples?
  - TeMPOraL 11mo ago
    Cellular telephony. Electronic banking. Both have been "status quo" for decades, and subject pretty much everyone in the western world to significant, continuous surveillance. We can discuss whether it's desirable, but it's been like this for a while and people very much like benefits both provide.
    - stavros 11mo ago
      I'm fairly sure I definitely don't want to be surveilled by my phone, yep.
      - TeMPOraL 11mo ago
        Yet it predates smartphones, and is a fundamental aspect of how cellular networks operate. Surveillance of course got more thorough, detailed and overarching over time, still largely for engineering reasons - the network needs to know precisely where each handset is to aim the radio beam at it.
      - 8fingerlouie 11mo ago
        Too late. Your phone (GSM anyway) continuously reports back to the cell tower it's connected to, the strength of every other cell tower it can "see". The cell network, not the handset, decides which is the better cell tower for your handset to transfer to, which is why this information is being sent in the first place. That information, the strength of cell towers, along with the knowledge of exactly where a cell tower is placed, can be used to triangulate your position down to a few meters in crowded areas with many cell towers. It's also how your phone establishes its position without GPS. Besides that, you probably also have a handful or more apps that tracks your location within 100m constantly.
- fsckboy 11mo ago
  complete population surveillance is the system we evolved to thrive in: there is no privacy in hunter gatherer societies. and in medieval city societies the average person had no privacy. it was only nobles who had privacy, and they were generally up to no good.
8fingerlouie 11mo ago
I doubt much will change. Your location is already known to your mobile operator, to your phone OS manufacturer, to various social media services, and more, including the government/law enforcement on request (maybe, or they have permanent access, who knows). Any time you buy stuff with a debit/credit card, the details of that transaction is known to your bank, your card provider, tax authorities, including where you bought stuff, and by request, authorities Money that goes into your bank account is also known by your bank (obviously), by tax authorities, and by request, authorities. Your ISP knows who you talk to, and can easily log metadata about which sites you visit, even if you use a secure DNS, and in most countries, authorities can request (metadata) logging from your ISP, which you'll never even notice. During COVID, health authorities started analyzing sewage to estimate how much the virus had spread in various communities, and some places they were down to street level accuracy. Obviously that gets a lot more diffuse on Manhattan than some rural city with 400 people in it, but you pretty much can't fart without anyone knowing it. We are already under constant surveillance, whether we like it or not. I don't mind as much as long as it's used retroactively, but the ChatControl proposition would be proactive instead. It would scan your texts and report if it found something "suspicious", with the caveat that you as a user don't know what's suspicious today (or tomorrow). The list isn't public, and you wouldn't get notified that someone had called an adult, not until someone comes knocking on your door. Their plan is/was to use AI, and we all know that ChatGPT never gets confused about anything, so that sounds like a great and ultra consistent plan. Most things require context. I might be angry because some kids gave me hard time, and write "fuck all children" to someone, but the anger isn't evident in the message, only the literal message, which I agree might be interpreted as something else (deliberately). This would then (probably) result in a notification for human review, a task that would fall to the operator of said service, so now Meta, Google or whomever has a legal justification for reading my messages looking for context, and I can't see any way that could go wrong. The other option was for law enforcement to read the messages, and while they're probably a bit more trustworthy in terms of privacy, I doubt we want to staff up our law enforcement offices by a factor 10 to read peoples messages. The list could also be updated behind your back, so for totalitarian wannabe regimes, it could be used to pinpoint exactly who is organizing all those darned protests.

lenkite 11mo ago

The removal of out-dated privacy offers great benefits. Why not begin to invest and develop technology to scan people's brains and leverage the supreme protection advantages for the nation state by its complete elimination ? Mandate that every resident of the EU wear a certified, union-approved, scanning head-band that monitors the resident's brain for violent, racist, subversive or even "offensive" thoughts using state-of-the-art AI and supporting algorithms. Authorities are notified immediately and are granted auto-approved warrants. Judges get notifications on auto-sentences that include mandatory re-education to heal such delinquents. Obviously, the system will include the vital and necessary exemptions - politicians and friends of the party, top campaign-donors, favored minorities and cartels, etc. Every Resident will be made Safe and Happy! This will lead to the establishment of an utopian state - the ultimate paradise on Earth! "Privacy", today, is a nasty detriment that is holding back the Progress of Civilization.

baranul 11mo ago
Excellent! People need to think more deeply about what various laws and technologies are leading us to.