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There are plenty of people that support mass surveillance, they are just in the minority and unlikely to speak up about it in a place like HN. I'm torn between

There are plenty of people that support mass surveillance, they are just in the minority and unlikely to speak up about it in a place like HN. I'm torn between the two positions. I really like the libertarian idea that the government's power should be limited and surveillance is scary and intrusive. On the other hand I think the technologies are really cool. When license plate readers first started coming out I read a bunch of stuff about them and thought they were really fascinating. Same with facial recognition or speech recognition, etc. I love the sci fi idea that we will eventually have a society with zero crime, besides crimes of passion or insane people. Anytime a crime happens, police could go back and see everything that happened. The utopia in the novel Manna had an extreme version of this. I thought it was really cool and challenged the standard cultural trope that surveillance is evil. People today are so afraid of crime that they refuse to let their kids go outside (https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/1202/1579/4m/i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/06_02/playgraphicDM1406_468x518.jpg https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/1202/1579/4m/i.dailymail.co.uk/i...). People lock their doors and buy guns and live in fear. You can argue that it's not rational but that's not relevant. I'd really love to see the fear of crime disappear and this is a practical way to achieve that. It should of course be a local issue. Some cities would have surveillance drones and others wouldn't. People could then vote with their feet to some extent and raise families where they felt the safest, and I think that's a desirable thing. I think there should be balance. What most people fear is someone constantly watching them or listening to them. I think the cameras should only be reviewed after the fact when there is a crime, and the data deleted when they it's no longer relevant. But I've never posted about my opinion on this before and I'm not likely to again. I'd just get shouted at and voted down as I've seen happen to others. People don't want to have a rational debate about this. They don't have a reason to be against surveillance, they just feel it's wrong and creepy and intrusive and mistrust the government. Or are scared they might not be able to get away with a crime if they needed to. And I feel all of those things too, which is why I said I'm torn.

WalterBright 12y ago
Be careful about desiring zero crime. Some professor did a study and found that on average every citizen commits 3 felonies a day. Enforce all laws 100% and society would cease to function. (And this is ignoring the problems with vague and contradictory laws.)
- Houshalter 12y ago
  Almost all of which are victimless crimes. I'm not saying the police should search everybody's house or monitor everything they do on the internet. Merely recording what happens in public like this is should be sufficient.
bigiain 12y ago
> There are plenty of people that support mass surveillance, they are just in the minority and unlikely to speak up about it in a place like HN. Except for when you use phrases like "big data", "targeted marketing", "ad retargeting", "data science", "marketing optimization" or "marketing analytics" - in place of "mass surveillance". Then there'll be lots of people talking about and working on the problem.
grrowl 12y ago
It would be moral and fair for them to use their practically-unlimited budget and power on slurping up public data — licence plate readers, regular cameras on planes (without the power to see into private domiciles), public twitter feeds, public facebook feeds — and fight crime based on that. There is no moral and fair reason for the government to secretly break their own laws, eavesdrop on private and privileged communications of their own citizens, and peer into areas previously designated as off-limits without a warrant. So mass surveillance itself isn't a huge problem, but the current implementation and the way it was put into place is.
- Houshalter 12y ago
  Right. Thats the difference between Orwells London with cameras in every house, and modern London with cameras in public places.

WalterBright 12y ago

Be careful about desiring zero crime. Some professor did a study and found that on average every citizen commits 3 felonies a day. Enforce all laws 100% and society would cease to function. (And this is ignoring the problems with vague and contradictory laws.)

Houshalter 12y ago
Almost all of which are victimless crimes. I'm not saying the police should search everybody's house or monitor everything they do on the internet. Merely recording what happens in public like this is should be sufficient.

bigiain 12y ago

> There are plenty of people that support mass surveillance, they are just in the minority and unlikely to speak up about it in a place like HN. Except for when you use phrases like "big data", "targeted marketing", "ad retargeting", "data science", "marketing optimization" or "marketing analytics" - in place of "mass surveillance". Then there'll be lots of people talking about and working on the problem.

grrowl 12y ago

It would be moral and fair for them to use their practically-unlimited budget and power on slurping up public data — licence plate readers, regular cameras on planes (without the power to see into private domiciles), public twitter feeds, public facebook feeds — and fight crime based on that. There is no moral and fair reason for the government to secretly break their own laws, eavesdrop on private and privileged communications of their own citizens, and peer into areas previously designated as off-limits without a warrant. So mass surveillance itself isn't a huge problem, but the current implementation and the way it was put into place is.

Houshalter 12y ago
Right. Thats the difference between Orwells London with cameras in every house, and modern London with cameras in public places.