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America's Expanding Domestic Surveillance
- antibull 6mo ago[dead]
- SilverElfin 6mo agoAge verification is part of this. Submit your IDs to use AI. Now they know all about you. All done for “safety” but we know that’s an excuse. https://reclaimthenet.org/senate-panel-backs-guard-act-ai-age-verification-bill https://reclaimthenet.org/senate-panel-backs-guard-act-ai-ag...
- 2ndorderthought 6mo agoSo is AI and the push for more data centers than the country can afford or supply power too. And the ever increasing desire to break encryption. And the increase in technology companies who have metadata about us citizens becoming offense and defense contractors. And... The list is so long.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- kelseyfrog 6mo agoThey love control almost in a fetishistic way. It gets them off.
- 2ndorderthought 6mo agoPsychopathy is a serious disease. Without control it's proven to be the most destructive force human beings have ever faced. We have to keep it in check or we risk everything. These personalities by definition are never satisfied by any level of suffering. They can't feel anything.
- 2ndorderthought 6mo agoThe time to resist against these policies and technologies was 2-5 years ago. Every single person in the US's future, safety, rights and freedom is currently at stake. There is no more time left to wait and see how things play out.
- lotsofpulp 6mo agoEnemy of the State came out in 1998, and the capabilities in that movie were not far fetched, just lacking in bandwidth.
- an0malous 6mo agoFlock is a YC company. I don’t think the resistance will be organized on HN in spite of its ostensibly hacker ethos
- michaelsshaw 6mo ago[flagged]
- estimator7292 6mo agoLot of faux-intellectual buzzwords in there, bud
- michaelsshaw 6mo agoSuch as? Was it "shit" or "dickriders"? Or was it "anarcho-capitalist", a well-defined concept? Sorry if I'm not receptive to waxing poetic about mass surveillance and the fact that you can't skip a move in chess.
- adi_kurian 6mo agoAn aggressive polemic, but faux-intellectual is a tad unfair, perhaps even patronizing, I may say.
- b00ty4breakfast 6mo ago
- google234123 6mo agoHopefully this will translate into less petty crime- most theft now goes unpunished. I want to live in a society where bikes aren't stolen
- 2ndorderthought 6mo agoA better economy would help more than surveiling every single persons every moves and all of their communications. I would literally buy you a bicycle to change your mind. Or sit down and review countries where theft is minimal so we could brainstorm real solutions.
- alex43578 6mo ago[dead]
- jmcgough 6mo agoDoubtful, it's never really deemed worth LEOs time to pursue bike thieves.
- brandonmenc 6mo agoThen we need to make it work their time by bringing back broken windows policing.
- 2ndorderthought 6mo agoOr solve the problem by addressing the root causes of crime like other societies do. The American prison industrial complex is not a cure for a sick society. It's a profitable black hole that encourages recidivism at the expense of tax payers.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- brandonmenc 6mo ago
- JumpCrisscross 6mo agoWhat’s the fix? What’s a simple rule change that would, at the very least, take these data out of law enforcement’s hands outside the most-necessary situations?
- _factor 6mo agoAn open source community driven surveillance network that alerts the community when it is accessed by a select list of “trusted” governing officials. Clearly outlined access rules that are policy driven, technically controlled and auditable. Sure Flock, we buy your safety pitch. We just don’t trust you.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago> surveillance network that alerts the community when it is accessed by a select list of “trusted” governing officials This is the worst of all worlds. Actual criminal investigations get thwarted or the reporting requirement gets diluted to the point of being useless (“someone looked for something today!”). And a burden of vigilance shifted onto the public.
- _factor 6mo agoAnd it will be public and someone can be held accountable. Heck put an AI in it that scans for a list of items and reports when they see it. An actual investigation will have public pressure to access data. Lax policies will show the increased usage. Funding the police is the burden of vigilance already on tax-payers. We’re already approach the worst of worlds. Your perspective just points to human organizations being unsustainable, not this concept in particular.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago> it will be public and someone can be held accountable What would be made public? If it isn’t verbose, it’s useless for accountability. If it’s too verbose, it’s a privacy issue per se and burden to legitimate investigations. Though. Now that I think about it. Maybe a delayed notice requirement for anyone whose records are queried. That’s personally hitting in a way a public record is not.
- dw_arthur 6mo agoA surveillance state was always inevitable once wireless networking, GPS, and cameras were ubiquitous. If you say this isn't true, show me anywhere in the world with these technologies that is not headed down this path.
- notfromhere 6mo agoits inevitable if you do nothing to organize politically against it.
- bigbadfeline 6mo agoMany other reasons to do it too.
- htx80nerd 6mo ago>"if you do nothing to organize politically against it" how does one politically organize against a billion dollar industry which is friends with, and donates to, the ruling class? they do whatever they want and we just post about it online and click 'like' or post emojis.
- bigbadfeline 6mo ago> how does one politically organize against a billion dollar industry which is friends with, and donates to, the ruling class? You're mixing the places of horse and cart here - the ruling class is ruling because it's organized. Organization comes first, the presence of other organizations, be them ruling or not, has little bearing on the process. > we just post about it online and click 'like' or post emojis. That's what you do without organization. It still helps though, getting to the truth isn't easy these days.
- senexes 6mo agoThis makes for nice political slogans but Hank Asher had the entire state of Florida DMV records in the early 90s and we did nothing. Then we did nothing after 9/11 and the patriot act. We did nothing between 9/11 and Snowden. We did nothing after Snowden. We have literally done nothing in 35 years but now is the time to start? Snowden is probably in political office in a society that had the will to do something about this. At a deeper level, I think people would need to care more about the outcomes and higher order effects of political decisions and not just the emotional weight of political slogans. The fundamental problem is that is not the society we live in.
- vostrocity 6mo agoOne idea I haven't seen much discussion on is "provably beneficial surveillance" [1], which builds off of Nick Bostrom's vulnerable world hypothesis. It seems like the best path forward. >We can turn that conventional wisdom on its head, by reframing it as a question: is it possible to do surveillance and consequent policing in a way that is (a) compatible with or enhances liberal values, i.e., improving the welfare of all, except those undermining the common good; and also (b) sufficient to prevent catastrophic threats to society? I call this possibility Provably Beneficial Surveillance. It's a concept expanding on an old tradition of ideas, including search warrants, due process, habeas corpus, and Madisonian separation of powers, all of which help improve the balance of power between institutions and individuals. In particular, all those ideas help enable surveillance in service of safety, while also taking steps to prevent abuses of that power. 1. https://michaelnotebook.com/optimism/index.html https://michaelnotebook.com/optimism/index.html
- adrian_b 6mo agoAll the known history of humans is evidence against the possibility of existence of "beneficial surveillance". This is a utopian idea of the same kind as the idea of theoretical communism. The communist theory argued that because the owners of assets can use their power in nefarious ways against the others this can be easily solved by dispossessing them of their assets and transforming all such private assets into assets that belong to the common property owned by all people. Then all assets will be used for the welfare of the entire society. The fallacy of this theory was that when something belongs to all people it is impossible for all people to manage it directly. So there must be a layer of relatively few middlemen who manage the assets directly. In all the communist societies, instead of managing the assets for the common good, those middlemen have succeeded to become the de facto owners of the assets, despite not being de jure their owners. And then they managed the assets according to their personal interests, like any capitalist billionaire. The only difference was that the communist elite was much less secure in their positions than rich capitalists, because not being the legal owners of a company or of other such valuable assets meant that they could lose their privileges at any time if their boss in the communist party hierarchy no longer liked them and sent them to an inferior position. This hierarchical dependence ensured that the communist elite had to obey more or less whatever the supreme leader ordered. Except for this obedience, there was no real difference between a communist economy and the extreme stage of monopolistic capitalism, despite what the naive theory of communism hoped to achieve by nationalizing everything of value. Similarly, I see no hope for a theory of "beneficial surveillance". Such beneficial surveillance could exist only if it were controlled by good-willing people. But this will never happen, like in practical communism, some of the worst people will be those who would succeed to control it.
- dsign 6mo agoOh but it will get worse. Legislation to force companies to install survtech in their devices/apps is already being pushed left and right. We are still screaming a little about it, but I think it's a matter of time before it gets normalized and the state goes for the next level, which will be to prosecute individuals who try to evade the surveillance net. The recent case with GrapheneOS[^1], while still far from being an example of it, it is sufficient to inspire some legislators... [^1] https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-organized-crime-preferred-phone-3573578/ https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-organized-crim...
- microtonal 6mo agoThat's why we need to get as many people on surveillance-free devices as quickly as possible. 400K users [1] may be easy to ignore or make suspect, 4M is a little harder, 40M is a serious blip on the radar, 400M is a major force (one can dream). If you do not like surveillance capitalism (which enables government surveillance), get a compatible phone and install GrapheneOS now. Help family and friends get set up tomorrow. Make it a force too large to reckon with before the legislation is there (legislation is somewhat slow, so there is a window of opportunity). [1] https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2047321144601071673 https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2047321144601071673
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- coldtea 6mo agoPeople have been bending over for policies and changes with way more impact to their everyday lives and livelihoods, and they'll rise up for this? That's daydreaming.
- microtonal 6mo agoMaybe not, but I have seen a quick rise in interest in GrapheneOS and other AOSP-based alternatives among tech people. I think the current state of the US has done a lot to make people more motivated.
- cmrx64 6mo agoand soon from space? radio engineering breakdown of starlink radar capabilities, it’s a pretty impressive bird if you were designing it only for that: https://youtu.be/jbp3kdJZ1_A https://youtu.be/jbp3kdJZ1_A
- givemeethekeys 6mo agoFear sells. Everyone is afraid of getting sued and being denied insurance. The answer is cameras! Dividing people to vilify each other over race, religion, gender, ethnicity and even politics is incredibly profitable. Once they're afraid of their neighbors, they'll happily pay someone to protect them at every turn.
- metalman 6mo agoLand of the fee.
- luotuoshangdui 6mo agoNow you are beginning to feel the pain?
- juliusceasar 6mo agoSomehow they seems to miss the criminals at the top...
- mannanj 6mo agoI know someone who claims they were experimented on by an agency. Who do you reach out to for help if that was you? Most people don't take you seriously or think you need mental help.
- caycep 6mo agoyou know it's bad when even ol' Rupert is worried
- redanddead 6mo agoThis is a global phenomenon, not just the US. It's also accelerating, because precedent in one Commonwealth or EU country spreads very quickly. It feels like lawmaking in general, legislation, regulation is accelerating globally.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6mo agoText-only, no Javascript, HTTPS optional: https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA22egkH/ https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA22egkH...
- triage8004 6mo agoLet's just stop with the illegal data mining of Americans, okay?
- glass1122 6mo ago[dead]