7 ms·

I keep wanting to see the "Rainbows End" style experiment. The common reaction to surveillance seems to be similar to how we diet. We allow/validate a little b

I keep wanting to see the "Rainbows End" style experiment. The common reaction to surveillance seems to be similar to how we diet. We allow/validate a little bit of the negative agent, but try to limit it and then discuss endlessly how to keep the amount tamped down. One aspect explored/hypothesized in Rainbows End, is what happens when surveillance becomes so ubiquitous that it's not a privilege of the "haves". I wonder if rather than "deflocking", the counter point is to surround every civic building with a raft of flock cameras that are in the public domain. Just thinking the contrarian thoughts.

buellerbueller 10mo ago
Surround the homes of the politicians and billionaires, and you're onto something. Better yet, make them publicly viewable webcams.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
jkestner 10mo ago
A friend of mine in school had a similar thought - make body cams so cheap that everyone has one. Watch the watchmen. I’ve considered making this a commercial reality, but we’ve seen that ubiquitous cameras don’t necessarily stop cops or authoritarians from kneeling on your neck, if they don’t feel shame.
- MangoToupe 10mo ago
  I specifically have considered this in terms of protecting workers from (otherwise private or hidden) workplace abuse.
  - elevation 10mo ago
    Two thoughts: 1. Amazon blink is an interesting hardware platform. With a power-optimized SoC, they achieve several years of intermittent 1080P video on a single AA battery. A similar approach and price point for body cam / dash cam would free users from having to constantly charge. 2. If you're designing cameras to protect human rights, you'll have to carefully consider the storage backend. Users must not lose access to a local copy of their own video because a central video service will be a choke point for censorship where critical evidence can disappear.
- koolala 10mo ago
  AR / AI glasses will be this.
  - jkestner 10mo ago
    I don't know. Is it better that it's obvious or not? I was thinking a buttonhole camera linked to your phone with an LED indicator when recording.
    - stephenhumphrey 10mo ago
      I’m embarrassed to admit how readily I overlooked the “on” in “buttonhole”, and even more embarrassed how afraid I became when your post still made sense. Well, for certain fringe definitions of “sense”.
- 15155 10mo ago
  Facial recognition databases of public sector employees will be the straw that breaks this camel's back.
kortex 10mo ago
It seems inevitable that cameras will proliferate, and edge compute will do more and more inference at the hardware level, turning heavy video data into lightweight tags that are easy to cross-correlate. The last thing I want is only a few individuals having that data, whether it be governments, corporations, or billionaires and their meme-theme goon squads. Make it all accessible. Maybe if the public knows everyone (including their stalker/ex/rival) can track anyone, we'd be more hesitant to put all this tracking tech out there.
- rootusrootus 10mo ago
  Indeed, I already see this in the consumer space with Frigate users. Letting modern cameras handle the inference themselves makes running an NVR easier. Pretty soon all cameras will be this way, and as you say the output will be metadata that is easily collected and correlated. Sounds useful for my personal surveillance system and awful for society. I feel like at some point we need to recognize the futility of solving this issue with technology. It is unstoppable. In the past we had the balls to regulate things like credit bureaus -- would we still do that today if given the choice? We need to make blanket regulations that cover PII in all forms regardless of who is collecting it. Limits on how it can be used, transparency and control for citizens over their own PII, constitutional protections against the gov't doing an end run around the 4th amendment by using commercial data sources, etc.
  - 15155 10mo ago
    > We need to make blanket regulations that cover PII in all forms regardless of who is collecting it Cool, change the First Amendment first. Your face and name aren't private under our existing framework of laws - no standard legislation can change this.
    - kortex 10mo ago
      > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. It says nothing directly about privacy, for or against, let alone surveillance dragnets. I would contend it strongly implies in fact laws should protect and also not chill your ability to: - go to and from a place of worship - go to and from a peaceful assembly - conduct free speech activities - conduct press/journalism - petition the government If anything, the existing framework of laws implies a gap, that data should not be able to be hoovered up without prior authorization, since the existence of such a dragnet with a government possibly adversarial to certain political positions (e.g. labeling "AntiFa" terrorists) has quite the chilling effect on your movement and activity. US vs Jones (2012) ruled a GPS tracker constitutes a 4th Amendment search. If I have no phone on me, and a system is able to track my location precisely walking through a city, does it matter if the trace emitted by that black box is attached to me physically, or part of a distributed system? It's still outputting a dataframe of (timestamp, gps) over a huge area.
plandis 10mo ago
This only works if society was okay with surveillance on private property. The wealthy can afford large tracts of private land and can afford to send people on their behalf to interact in public for many things. They can pay services to come to them as well.
- wombatpm 10mo ago
  If the wealthy want to hide away in a prison of their own choice I’m ok with that. What I don’t like are the wealthy using their wealth to take over public spaces. Like using Venice for a private wedding.
- 15155 10mo ago
  The "wealthy" can't control the FAA or obtain TFRs (look no further than the issues Elon and Taylor Swift have had with obfuscating their jet registration), so they're basically fucked when it comes to preventing aerial video observation over private property unless this "large tract of private land" exists within 14nm of Washington D.C. (these types of tracts aren't practically obtainable there) or falls within an existing flight-restricted zone (which aren't typically permanent.)
bitexploder 10mo ago
I started building ALPR and speed detection systems for my house based on RTSP feed. I kind of want to finish this with an outdoor TV that has a leaderboard of the drivers that drive the fastest and their license plate in public display on my property, but visible to the street. In part to make my neighbors aware of how powerful ALPR technology is now, but also many of my neighbors should slow the heck down. I am not sure how popular this would be, but also I kind of like starting the right kind of trouble :)
- p_ing 10mo ago
  There is a sign put up by the county on a downward hill with some nice curves in it. It _used_ to display your speed but that was removed in favor of just flashing "Slow Down" once people used it to see how fast they could navigate the bends.
  - bitexploder 10mo ago
    Unintended consequences. Maybe it can just be annoying and show each car its count of speed 10mph over the limit as they pass
- kortex 10mo ago
  Hilarious! If i didnt already have too many projects and hobbies, this is the kind of thing i'd do. Maybe not a speed leaderboard, that just seems like a challenge to choon heads. But perhaps a "violation count". Also toss in a dB meter for loud exhaust (again dont make it a contest). Edge compute with alpr/face/gait/whatever object detection at the camera is basically solved. Genie is out of the bottle. I think the most fruitful line of resistance is to regulate what can be done with that data once it leaves the device.
  - bitexploder 10mo ago
    I am the loud exhaust. Where we live the noise pollution is not a concern and I have no complaints around that. Many of my neighbors have lifted trucks and go vroom cars. Ironically the performance cars are the nicest drivers :)
EvanAnderson 10mo ago
I have similar, albeit probably more radical, views. All dragnet surveillance done by law enforcement or given to law enforcement by private entities should be public. (Targeted surveillance by law enforcement is a different thing.) We should all be able to "profit" from this data collected about us. There are likely a ton of interesting applications that could come from this data. I would much rather independently run a "track my stalker" application myself versus relying on law enforcement (who have no duty to protect the public in the US, per SCOTUS) to "protect" me, for example. It might be that such a panopticon would be unpalatable to political leaders and, ideally, we'd see some action to tamp down the use of dragnet surveillance (and maybe even make it illegal).
- psc 10mo ago
  You may want to check out David Brin's work, he covers the implications of this idea extensively in The Transparent Society: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society I found it really interesting he frames privacy, surveillance, and power through the lens of information asymmetries.
- 15155 10mo ago
  > All dragnet surveillance done by law enforcement or given to law enforcement by private entities should be public You can FOIA the cameras outside your local police station today, if you like. Private company data like Flock's is the new grey area.
  - EvanAnderson 10mo ago
    It's doesn't seem like much of a grey area to me. Presumably Flock serves the useful function of satisfying the third-party doctrine, making the surveillance they gather immune from 4th amendment protection (since I "willingly shared" my location with them by passing one of their cameras). If law enforcement has access to that data without a warrant it's de facto public to me. FOIA isn't the same thing as having the data at my fingertips like LE does. I think the public deserves the same access LE has. If they can run ad hoc searches so should the public. Personally I'd rather see all dragnet surveillance just go away.
octoberfranklin 10mo ago
Hrm, I read and loved Rainbows End but must have totally missed this. What was the experiment? FWIW, what I want is the non-IME/PSP "¡hecho en Paraguay!" chips from the book.
atomicthumbs 10mo ago
not really, because all the sousveillance in the world doesn't grant the average joe the power of a single cop

buellerbueller 10mo ago

Surround the homes of the politicians and billionaires, and you're onto something. Better yet, make them publicly viewable webcams.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

jkestner 10mo ago

A friend of mine in school had a similar thought - make body cams so cheap that everyone has one. Watch the watchmen. I’ve considered making this a commercial reality, but we’ve seen that ubiquitous cameras don’t necessarily stop cops or authoritarians from kneeling on your neck, if they don’t feel shame.

MangoToupe 10mo ago
I specifically have considered this in terms of protecting workers from (otherwise private or hidden) workplace abuse.
- elevation 10mo ago
  Two thoughts: 1. Amazon blink is an interesting hardware platform. With a power-optimized SoC, they achieve several years of intermittent 1080P video on a single AA battery. A similar approach and price point for body cam / dash cam would free users from having to constantly charge. 2. If you're designing cameras to protect human rights, you'll have to carefully consider the storage backend. Users must not lose access to a local copy of their own video because a central video service will be a choke point for censorship where critical evidence can disappear.
koolala 10mo ago
AR / AI glasses will be this.
- jkestner 10mo ago
  I don't know. Is it better that it's obvious or not? I was thinking a buttonhole camera linked to your phone with an LED indicator when recording.
  - stephenhumphrey 10mo ago
    I’m embarrassed to admit how readily I overlooked the “on” in “buttonhole”, and even more embarrassed how afraid I became when your post still made sense. Well, for certain fringe definitions of “sense”.
15155 10mo ago
Facial recognition databases of public sector employees will be the straw that breaks this camel's back.

kortex 10mo ago

It seems inevitable that cameras will proliferate, and edge compute will do more and more inference at the hardware level, turning heavy video data into lightweight tags that are easy to cross-correlate. The last thing I want is only a few individuals having that data, whether it be governments, corporations, or billionaires and their meme-theme goon squads. Make it all accessible. Maybe if the public knows everyone (including their stalker/ex/rival) can track anyone, we'd be more hesitant to put all this tracking tech out there.

rootusrootus 10mo ago
Indeed, I already see this in the consumer space with Frigate users. Letting modern cameras handle the inference themselves makes running an NVR easier. Pretty soon all cameras will be this way, and as you say the output will be metadata that is easily collected and correlated. Sounds useful for my personal surveillance system and awful for society. I feel like at some point we need to recognize the futility of solving this issue with technology. It is unstoppable. In the past we had the balls to regulate things like credit bureaus -- would we still do that today if given the choice? We need to make blanket regulations that cover PII in all forms regardless of who is collecting it. Limits on how it can be used, transparency and control for citizens over their own PII, constitutional protections against the gov't doing an end run around the 4th amendment by using commercial data sources, etc.
- 15155 10mo ago
  > We need to make blanket regulations that cover PII in all forms regardless of who is collecting it Cool, change the First Amendment first. Your face and name aren't private under our existing framework of laws - no standard legislation can change this.
  - kortex 10mo ago
    > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. It says nothing directly about privacy, for or against, let alone surveillance dragnets. I would contend it strongly implies in fact laws should protect and also not chill your ability to: - go to and from a place of worship - go to and from a peaceful assembly - conduct free speech activities - conduct press/journalism - petition the government If anything, the existing framework of laws implies a gap, that data should not be able to be hoovered up without prior authorization, since the existence of such a dragnet with a government possibly adversarial to certain political positions (e.g. labeling "AntiFa" terrorists) has quite the chilling effect on your movement and activity. US vs Jones (2012) ruled a GPS tracker constitutes a 4th Amendment search. If I have no phone on me, and a system is able to track my location precisely walking through a city, does it matter if the trace emitted by that black box is attached to me physically, or part of a distributed system? It's still outputting a dataframe of (timestamp, gps) over a huge area.

plandis 10mo ago

This only works if society was okay with surveillance on private property. The wealthy can afford large tracts of private land and can afford to send people on their behalf to interact in public for many things. They can pay services to come to them as well.

wombatpm 10mo ago
If the wealthy want to hide away in a prison of their own choice I’m ok with that. What I don’t like are the wealthy using their wealth to take over public spaces. Like using Venice for a private wedding.
15155 10mo ago
The "wealthy" can't control the FAA or obtain TFRs (look no further than the issues Elon and Taylor Swift have had with obfuscating their jet registration), so they're basically fucked when it comes to preventing aerial video observation over private property unless this "large tract of private land" exists within 14nm of Washington D.C. (these types of tracts aren't practically obtainable there) or falls within an existing flight-restricted zone (which aren't typically permanent.)

bitexploder 10mo ago

I started building ALPR and speed detection systems for my house based on RTSP feed. I kind of want to finish this with an outdoor TV that has a leaderboard of the drivers that drive the fastest and their license plate in public display on my property, but visible to the street. In part to make my neighbors aware of how powerful ALPR technology is now, but also many of my neighbors should slow the heck down. I am not sure how popular this would be, but also I kind of like starting the right kind of trouble :)

p_ing 10mo ago
There is a sign put up by the county on a downward hill with some nice curves in it. It _used_ to display your speed but that was removed in favor of just flashing "Slow Down" once people used it to see how fast they could navigate the bends.
- bitexploder 10mo ago
  Unintended consequences. Maybe it can just be annoying and show each car its count of speed 10mph over the limit as they pass
kortex 10mo ago
Hilarious! If i didnt already have too many projects and hobbies, this is the kind of thing i'd do. Maybe not a speed leaderboard, that just seems like a challenge to choon heads. But perhaps a "violation count". Also toss in a dB meter for loud exhaust (again dont make it a contest). Edge compute with alpr/face/gait/whatever object detection at the camera is basically solved. Genie is out of the bottle. I think the most fruitful line of resistance is to regulate what can be done with that data once it leaves the device.
- bitexploder 10mo ago
  I am the loud exhaust. Where we live the noise pollution is not a concern and I have no complaints around that. Many of my neighbors have lifted trucks and go vroom cars. Ironically the performance cars are the nicest drivers :)

EvanAnderson 10mo ago

I have similar, albeit probably more radical, views. All dragnet surveillance done by law enforcement or given to law enforcement by private entities should be public. (Targeted surveillance by law enforcement is a different thing.) We should all be able to "profit" from this data collected about us. There are likely a ton of interesting applications that could come from this data. I would much rather independently run a "track my stalker" application myself versus relying on law enforcement (who have no duty to protect the public in the US, per SCOTUS) to "protect" me, for example. It might be that such a panopticon would be unpalatable to political leaders and, ideally, we'd see some action to tamp down the use of dragnet surveillance (and maybe even make it illegal).

psc 10mo ago
You may want to check out David Brin's work, he covers the implications of this idea extensively in The Transparent Society: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society I found it really interesting he frames privacy, surveillance, and power through the lens of information asymmetries.
15155 10mo ago
> All dragnet surveillance done by law enforcement or given to law enforcement by private entities should be public You can FOIA the cameras outside your local police station today, if you like. Private company data like Flock's is the new grey area.
- EvanAnderson 10mo ago
  It's doesn't seem like much of a grey area to me. Presumably Flock serves the useful function of satisfying the third-party doctrine, making the surveillance they gather immune from 4th amendment protection (since I "willingly shared" my location with them by passing one of their cameras). If law enforcement has access to that data without a warrant it's de facto public to me. FOIA isn't the same thing as having the data at my fingertips like LE does. I think the public deserves the same access LE has. If they can run ad hoc searches so should the public. Personally I'd rather see all dragnet surveillance just go away.

octoberfranklin 10mo ago

Hrm, I read and loved Rainbows End but must have totally missed this. What was the experiment? FWIW, what I want is the non-IME/PSP "¡hecho en Paraguay!" chips from the book.

atomicthumbs 10mo ago

not really, because all the sousveillance in the world doesn't grant the average joe the power of a single cop