There’s a lot of local US candidates running this year on pushing back on the federal government. Realistically there’s not a ton that can be done at the level of a mayor or even state senator. However removing local passive surveillance is something that can make a genuine impact. I’d love to see people running on banning red light/license plate cameras and other passive surveillance tools. If the data is never collected it can’t be abused.
I must shamefully admit that after vaguely watching American tv shows like CSI for last twenty years I was convinced this is already a thing for a long time.
Does it mean you can't see a perfect reflection on a slightly rusted screw?
Wait, but I was told that my local police department owned the Flock data, and that Flock doesn't own it and cannot share it? Was I lied to, to further expand the surveillance state?
The "15 minute city conspiracy" (anti bike lane, anti mass transit, car = liberty) people sure seem to gloss over inconvenient facts like this.
Frankly I don't see a way out from this. Since you must register and insure your vehicle and have a government license to drive it and it hauls two tons at 80mph, it seems like natural creep for the government to know where it is, and the tech to infer it without explicitly scanning plates is only getting better and better.
Maybe having just one euro/asian-style dense city with bike lanes in the US wouldn't be such a bad thing to try out?
This is a personal opinion, so please be careful, but technology enables new forms of behaviour and opportunity that we can’t always predict.
And so ….
We will live in a almost totally transparent world - our daily interactions, voice, text and visual are likely recorded by someone at some point - how bosses interact with their employees, how nurses talk to patients and cashiers to customers, how parents talk to children - all of this will be recorded
And that can be a Good Thing. Imagine your boss getting real time feedback on coaching style, or you getting pointers on how not to argue with your wife.
The challenge is fairly simple - if we lose all secrets, the privacy is just the politeness of our neighbours. And while we can and should have strong laws on this, we need a social chnage to make serving someone ads based on their observable behaviour about the same level of social acceptability as crapping on their doorstep and then pouring petrol on and lighting it.
But we could see a world where privacy is protected but epidemiologists can pick apart the most thorny problems, human beings will be raised to be the very best they can be, and society become more communal and robust.
It’s possible - tech is neutral
And those societies and countries that embrace it will probably have that boost everyone thinks is coming from AI
David Brin advanced the Transparent Society argument in 1996. It's fair to say that it has failed empirical tests. His so-called "sousveillance" (observation from below) is possible, yes, but at every step empowered elites, in both liberal and illiberal states, or more lately, in formerly-liberal states, have obstructed such measures.
Technology is largely not neutral and is instead a power-multiplier.
We really should build an open source ALPR system of cameras that gives real time information on the position of every law enforcement vehicle. Including the cars driven by the officers to and from work. That would have been helpful in finding license violations in California by ICE officers.
We should. And not just cars related to law enforcement, nor also the cars of public officials who give cops their marching orders and enact laws, nor also the judges who enforce these laws.
Instead, let's just be indiscriminate and document everyone's cars and make that raw data available.
---
Why everyone? That's easy: It allows organizational roles to be divided up, and dividing these roles promotes operational safety.
Having 4 roles seems like it might be the right number right now (but I haven't had my coffee yet):
Role 1. The camera operators. This is role sees the highest direct risk because these cameras will be associated with real homes and other buildings that the operators control. It is also the most important group because it requires the highest number of participants, and none of this can happen without a large number of them. By recording everyone, they gain some operational safety through plausible deniability. "Yeah, I've got some cameras that see cars on the road and send what they see to a cloud service. So what? I'm allowed to pay attention to the cars in my neighborhood. I'm even allowed to get help with doing that. Everyone else with a fancy doorbell or a Chinese web cam is doing the same thing; I'm not doing anything weirder than what anyone else is doing."
Role 2. The data-mungers. This back-end role collects the data of where cars have been seen. It's also an indiscriminate task; it just collects and sorts data by license plate number. This is less-risky both because it is unfocused and it can happen anywhere on the globe. "Yeah, so these blokes send me a stream of alphanumeric numbers, timestamps, and locations, and I just organize that data for other people to use."
Role 3. The filtermakers. Another back-end role, this one just keeps track of which plates are associated with which government people. This is riskier: It is tightly focused and its role is obvious and undeniable. "I keep a list of license plates numbers and names for others to use. Lots of organizations do that; so what?"
Role 4. The mapmakers. This role operates the presentation layer. It ingests someone else's collected data, filters and labels it based on someone else's filters and labels, and puts it all on a beautiful map for public consumption. This isn't necessarily structurally the most important role, but it's the most public-facing role and likely to be demonized in media. This role will get heat. "Yeah, you're right. Mapping the locations of people in public in the US is exactly the point of what I'm doing; see the FAQ on the website. Anyway, the weather is beautiful here today in Belize; maybe y'all should get to work on your public surveillance legislation."
The FBI is a good analogy for the political choices Americans have between Democrats and Republicans. They are completely non-ideological. It's just about power and control over the population. We need to get our rights back somehow.
This is IMO the only legitimate use case of a montana-LLC vehicle registration. The corporate veil acts as a privacy protection mechanism from government outreach. IMO we hear a lot of Straw Mans of "Tax evasion!!" here yet the legitimate use remains.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 45.9 ms ] threadDoes it mean you can't see a perfect reflection on a slightly rusted screw?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States
Frankly I don't see a way out from this. Since you must register and insure your vehicle and have a government license to drive it and it hauls two tons at 80mph, it seems like natural creep for the government to know where it is, and the tech to infer it without explicitly scanning plates is only getting better and better.
Maybe having just one euro/asian-style dense city with bike lanes in the US wouldn't be such a bad thing to try out?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48184350
And so ….
We will live in a almost totally transparent world - our daily interactions, voice, text and visual are likely recorded by someone at some point - how bosses interact with their employees, how nurses talk to patients and cashiers to customers, how parents talk to children - all of this will be recorded
And that can be a Good Thing. Imagine your boss getting real time feedback on coaching style, or you getting pointers on how not to argue with your wife.
The challenge is fairly simple - if we lose all secrets, the privacy is just the politeness of our neighbours. And while we can and should have strong laws on this, we need a social chnage to make serving someone ads based on their observable behaviour about the same level of social acceptability as crapping on their doorstep and then pouring petrol on and lighting it.
But we could see a world where privacy is protected but epidemiologists can pick apart the most thorny problems, human beings will be raised to be the very best they can be, and society become more communal and robust.
It’s possible - tech is neutral
And those societies and countries that embrace it will probably have that boost everyone thinks is coming from AI
Technology is largely not neutral and is instead a power-multiplier.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society>
<https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/fftransparent.html>
<https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/03/the_myth_of...>
EDIT: We could call it "CopAware" :-)
Instead, let's just be indiscriminate and document everyone's cars and make that raw data available.
---
Why everyone? That's easy: It allows organizational roles to be divided up, and dividing these roles promotes operational safety.
Having 4 roles seems like it might be the right number right now (but I haven't had my coffee yet):
Role 1. The camera operators. This is role sees the highest direct risk because these cameras will be associated with real homes and other buildings that the operators control. It is also the most important group because it requires the highest number of participants, and none of this can happen without a large number of them. By recording everyone, they gain some operational safety through plausible deniability. "Yeah, I've got some cameras that see cars on the road and send what they see to a cloud service. So what? I'm allowed to pay attention to the cars in my neighborhood. I'm even allowed to get help with doing that. Everyone else with a fancy doorbell or a Chinese web cam is doing the same thing; I'm not doing anything weirder than what anyone else is doing."
Role 2. The data-mungers. This back-end role collects the data of where cars have been seen. It's also an indiscriminate task; it just collects and sorts data by license plate number. This is less-risky both because it is unfocused and it can happen anywhere on the globe. "Yeah, so these blokes send me a stream of alphanumeric numbers, timestamps, and locations, and I just organize that data for other people to use."
Role 3. The filtermakers. Another back-end role, this one just keeps track of which plates are associated with which government people. This is riskier: It is tightly focused and its role is obvious and undeniable. "I keep a list of license plates numbers and names for others to use. Lots of organizations do that; so what?"
Role 4. The mapmakers. This role operates the presentation layer. It ingests someone else's collected data, filters and labels it based on someone else's filters and labels, and puts it all on a beautiful map for public consumption. This isn't necessarily structurally the most important role, but it's the most public-facing role and likely to be demonized in media. This role will get heat. "Yeah, you're right. Mapping the locations of people in public in the US is exactly the point of what I'm doing; see the FAQ on the website. Anyway, the weather is beautiful here today in Belize; maybe y'all should get to work on your public surveillance legislation."
/ I assumed this had long been the case
I feel safer already.