4 ms·
I was just thinking today - we're about to start using "smart light-bulbs" in a few years. Lightbulbs with Internet connections, that can potentially record eve
by salient 13y ago
I was just thinking today - we're about to start using "smart light-bulbs" in a few years. Lightbulbs with Internet connections, that can potentially record everything we say anywhere, even in real world (unless they are doing that already with idle cellphones).
If we don't stop this now, and don't make it explicitly illegal, and actually punish the people involved (otherwise they's no downside to continuing it), then it will get a lot worse in the future.
Also, how can US law be so asymmetrical? It's illegal to look into someone's mail, which just includes one single conversation, but it's not to look at someone's real-time conversations for a long time, which can include all sorts of topics, and then multiply that by millions of people.
If looking into just one mail conversation is illegal, how come mass surveillance isn't immediately seen as massively illegal?
- pwnna 13y agoBecause these laws are made a very long time ago and it takes time for them to catch up with reality.
- pyre 13y agoThe government's position is that collecting the data isn't surveillance until a government employee actually looks at the data. E.g. the idea is that you collect a huge pool of data, and then get individual warrants to go spelunking in it.
- daenz 13y ago> and then get individual warrants to go spelunking in it. And that warrant is obtained whenever, in the future, that that person opposes the national interests. Then it's like you've been spying on them all along. Retroactive wiretapping!
- rhizome 13y agoMcCarthy and Hoover's wildest dreams realized.
- pyre 13y agoDon't knock McCarthy. If it wasn't for him then China wouldn't be on the Moon!
- bayesianhorse 13y agoHow do you know China actually landed on the moon? (Just kidding...)
- ihsw 13y agoIf hundreds of thousands of letters stream in and out of the US every second then you bet your ASCIIs the government wouldn't waste time "modernizing" the law to be more "aligned with international norms."