4 ms·

I sometimes feel the Hacker News crowd are a bit out of touch with the rest of the population. Here in the UK most people I know feel safer with surveillance,

by JonCox 12y ago

I sometimes feel the Hacker News crowd are a bit out of touch with the rest of the population. Here in the UK most people I know feel safer with surveillance, it's used primarily to keep law and order. We don't live in some authoritarian state where it's used for nefarious means, it's used to keep the public safe. And seriously, why would you care if you're sitting on a database? What difference does it make to anything? And I want to know when this mythical time was when we all had total privacy? I don't understand what bothers people so much about a person in a CCTV monitoring station looking at them sitting on a bus, or a spook reading the emails I send to my parents. Honestly, no-one cares.

radiorental 12y ago
"it's used primarily to keep law and order." Except when it's not. No one disagrees the advantages afforded to us with access to data. However with great power comes great responsibility and our leaders, including the institutional powers behind them, invariably show a lack of the latter. "Honestly, no-one cares." That is patently untrue. People who understand the disadvantages and pitfalls of unfettered access to data care very much and fight for our rights even if we are too busy to make it a priority in our lives. The EFF have made it their job to care for example.
- JonCox 12y ago
  > "Except when it's not. No one disagrees the advantages afforded to us with access to data. However with great power comes great responsibility and our leaders, including the institutional powers behind them, invariably show a lack of the latter." It would be political suicide for a UK politician to use the data the police and security forces have for political gain (assuming they got caught of course). It just doesn't happen. > "That is patently untrue. People who understand the disadvantages and pitfalls of unfettered access to data care very much and fight for our rights even if we are too busy to make it a priority in our lives. The EFF have made it their job to care for example." It's nice there are people out there making sure things don't get too out of hand. I just question their underlying beliefs about our need for privacy. Also the "no-one cares" goes both ways. I seriously doubt the state cares about my conversations with friends, most people just aren't that interesting. Perhaps Hacker News suffers from collective delusions of grandeur ;)
  - angry_octet 12y ago
    It didn't stop the Murdoch press from bribing cops for data from their information systems. If police have it without intense scrutiny then anyone can get it, the press, corporations who you disagree with, your violent ex-husband. not to mention some yob at the council or any government agency with enforcement powers.
josephlord 12y ago
It doesn't make a difference until someone trawls the databases and can reconstruct much of your life. Also even if it doesn't matter to you don't you want journalists and lawyers free from communication (and who they contact) surveilance? I'm actually fine with a CCTV operator in a monitoring station viewing the feeds. I'm also OK with the recordings being kept a short time in case they are needed to investigate something not spotted at the time. What I'm not comfortable with is them being kept more than a month or so. CCTV footage kept long term may be linked with Face recognition for detailed and personal tracking. Likewise with the ANPR, I would be OK with it kept and accessible for a month or so (although I think a judge should approve searches both on a particular event (time and location) and for searches on a particular number plate. We may not yet live in a authoritarian state but can you rule out one occuring in the next 50 years? What if legal and reasonable things today are outlawed, gay rights roled back and they search the ANPR for people who may have frequented gay bars or the archived communications data for anyone who used Grindr. In my view the collected knowledge is more dangerous than the terrorists to a free society and oversight and limits on retention are required. You are right though that the majority of the public do not feel this way yet. That doesn't mean we shouldn't oppose the surveilance where not fully justified and try to educate them. I would also note precisely what you said "people I know feel safer with surveilance" and while I think you may be right I'm really not sure how much safer they actually are.
- JonCox 12y ago
  I guess it really comes down to who can 'reconstruct' my life. If it's the police or security services I believe that's absolutely fine, whoever you are (journalists, lawyers etc. included) The UK government don't misuse surveillance for political reasons, if they did there would be uproar. We're not slipping into an authoritarian state, that would be completely at odds with British culture and where we're really heading. I'm just tired of seeing a trend of people who post here all spouting the same anti-surveilance, privacy is everything, ideals. Without adding any caveats for the benefits and protection we gain from people watching over us. It feels like there is total disregard here for what we would lose by giving it up. I'm okay with giving up a little privacy for the greater good.
realusername 12y ago
I does not matter until you are a journalist investigating on some issues with the country, it happened multiple times.
ionised 12y ago
Don't presume to speak for people in the UK. I'm from the UK and I absolutely, utterly disagree with what you are saying, most of which is baseless. There have been abuses, there are corrupt intentions at work and there most certainly are people who do not think this level of surveillance is a good thing.
- JonCox 12y ago
  Clearly not everyone holds the same beliefs. On this occasion it's me and at least one other person https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8952794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8952794
tsenart 12y ago
"Innocent data does not exist, it is only a matter of the right time and the wrong hands to turn it into a weapon." - https://www.trilightzone.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=3190 https://www.trilightzone.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=3190
stegosaurus 12y ago
The key point is interpretation and use of the data. I don't particularly mind CCTV coverage of cities, if we still live in 1970 and technology limits it to essentially manual viewing of feeds to follow criminal suspects. In that world, ordinary citizens walking around a city centre are items of data that are discarded forever as soon as the tape reels run out. Even if they're kept, the volumes of data involved are so huge that they're effectively lost in time anyway. The world we live in today is not that world. We are not far from being able to use facial recognition to track the whereabouts of every single citizen and save it forever, indexed along with the video recording of them at the time. We already have the capability to do that using cellphones. We can save the entire life history of individuals using these records and collate them into a viewable form near-instantly. As I alluded to in my earlier post, the way we're going it's not a huge leap to imagine voice recognition allowing for phone calls to follow suit. Why is voice recognition important? Because it turns weeks and weeks of trawling through transcripts into a search query with instant results. It's a completely different ball game. It's permanent, searchable, indexable super-fast memory. 'Forgetting' becomes obsolete. In the old world of tape CCTV cameras, my neighbours knew more about me than the Government. Now, it's almost certainly the other way around, and if not, only because they've decided not to type 'stegosaurus' into the Big Database of Everything.
Squarel 12y ago
I am less worried about the government agencies as a whole having my data, I am more worried about so random person who works there taking a dislike to an individual, and making their life hell with the access they have.

by JonCox 12y ago

radiorental 12y ago

"it's used primarily to keep law and order." Except when it's not. No one disagrees the advantages afforded to us with access to data. However with great power comes great responsibility and our leaders, including the institutional powers behind them, invariably show a lack of the latter. "Honestly, no-one cares." That is patently untrue. People who understand the disadvantages and pitfalls of unfettered access to data care very much and fight for our rights even if we are too busy to make it a priority in our lives. The EFF have made it their job to care for example.

JonCox 12y ago
> "Except when it's not. No one disagrees the advantages afforded to us with access to data. However with great power comes great responsibility and our leaders, including the institutional powers behind them, invariably show a lack of the latter." It would be political suicide for a UK politician to use the data the police and security forces have for political gain (assuming they got caught of course). It just doesn't happen. > "That is patently untrue. People who understand the disadvantages and pitfalls of unfettered access to data care very much and fight for our rights even if we are too busy to make it a priority in our lives. The EFF have made it their job to care for example." It's nice there are people out there making sure things don't get too out of hand. I just question their underlying beliefs about our need for privacy. Also the "no-one cares" goes both ways. I seriously doubt the state cares about my conversations with friends, most people just aren't that interesting. Perhaps Hacker News suffers from collective delusions of grandeur ;)
- angry_octet 12y ago
  It didn't stop the Murdoch press from bribing cops for data from their information systems. If police have it without intense scrutiny then anyone can get it, the press, corporations who you disagree with, your violent ex-husband. not to mention some yob at the council or any government agency with enforcement powers.

josephlord 12y ago

It doesn't make a difference until someone trawls the databases and can reconstruct much of your life. Also even if it doesn't matter to you don't you want journalists and lawyers free from communication (and who they contact) surveilance? I'm actually fine with a CCTV operator in a monitoring station viewing the feeds. I'm also OK with the recordings being kept a short time in case they are needed to investigate something not spotted at the time. What I'm not comfortable with is them being kept more than a month or so. CCTV footage kept long term may be linked with Face recognition for detailed and personal tracking. Likewise with the ANPR, I would be OK with it kept and accessible for a month or so (although I think a judge should approve searches both on a particular event (time and location) and for searches on a particular number plate. We may not yet live in a authoritarian state but can you rule out one occuring in the next 50 years? What if legal and reasonable things today are outlawed, gay rights roled back and they search the ANPR for people who may have frequented gay bars or the archived communications data for anyone who used Grindr. In my view the collected knowledge is more dangerous than the terrorists to a free society and oversight and limits on retention are required. You are right though that the majority of the public do not feel this way yet. That doesn't mean we shouldn't oppose the surveilance where not fully justified and try to educate them. I would also note precisely what you said "people I know feel safer with surveilance" and while I think you may be right I'm really not sure how much safer they actually are.

JonCox 12y ago
I guess it really comes down to who can 'reconstruct' my life. If it's the police or security services I believe that's absolutely fine, whoever you are (journalists, lawyers etc. included) The UK government don't misuse surveillance for political reasons, if they did there would be uproar. We're not slipping into an authoritarian state, that would be completely at odds with British culture and where we're really heading. I'm just tired of seeing a trend of people who post here all spouting the same anti-surveilance, privacy is everything, ideals. Without adding any caveats for the benefits and protection we gain from people watching over us. It feels like there is total disregard here for what we would lose by giving it up. I'm okay with giving up a little privacy for the greater good.

realusername 12y ago

I does not matter until you are a journalist investigating on some issues with the country, it happened multiple times.

ionised 12y ago

Don't presume to speak for people in the UK. I'm from the UK and I absolutely, utterly disagree with what you are saying, most of which is baseless. There have been abuses, there are corrupt intentions at work and there most certainly are people who do not think this level of surveillance is a good thing.

JonCox 12y ago
Clearly not everyone holds the same beliefs. On this occasion it's me and at least one other person https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8952794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8952794

tsenart 12y ago

"Innocent data does not exist, it is only a matter of the right time and the wrong hands to turn it into a weapon." - https://www.trilightzone.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=3190 https://www.trilightzone.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=3190

stegosaurus 12y ago

The key point is interpretation and use of the data. I don't particularly mind CCTV coverage of cities, if we still live in 1970 and technology limits it to essentially manual viewing of feeds to follow criminal suspects. In that world, ordinary citizens walking around a city centre are items of data that are discarded forever as soon as the tape reels run out. Even if they're kept, the volumes of data involved are so huge that they're effectively lost in time anyway. The world we live in today is not that world. We are not far from being able to use facial recognition to track the whereabouts of every single citizen and save it forever, indexed along with the video recording of them at the time. We already have the capability to do that using cellphones. We can save the entire life history of individuals using these records and collate them into a viewable form near-instantly. As I alluded to in my earlier post, the way we're going it's not a huge leap to imagine voice recognition allowing for phone calls to follow suit. Why is voice recognition important? Because it turns weeks and weeks of trawling through transcripts into a search query with instant results. It's a completely different ball game. It's permanent, searchable, indexable super-fast memory. 'Forgetting' becomes obsolete. In the old world of tape CCTV cameras, my neighbours knew more about me than the Government. Now, it's almost certainly the other way around, and if not, only because they've decided not to type 'stegosaurus' into the Big Database of Everything.

Squarel 12y ago

I am less worried about the government agencies as a whole having my data, I am more worried about so random person who works there taking a dislike to an individual, and making their life hell with the access they have.