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"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
by 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 agoI can't see anything in the intersection of "desirable", "status quo" and "complete surveillance", can you think of some examples?
- TeMPOraL 11mo agoCellular 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 agoI'm fairly sure I definitely don't want to be surveilled by my phone, yep.
- TeMPOraL 11mo agoYet 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 agoToo 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.
- stavros 11mo agoThat's not the point of this thread. The original point is whether there's any desirable mass surveillance. I think we've pretty much shown there isn't.
- fsckboy 11mo agocomplete 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.