IMO, there exist good arguments against surveillance. But why are supposedly rational geeks so irrationally prone to putting forward very bad arguments against it? See almost every reply in this thread to prove my point, but I will list a few:
1) If one took basic statistics, one would deem the proposition that "X is useless because [a target of X] has just slipped through" as outrageously wrong and a prime example of both selection bias and reliance on anecdotal evidence, yet somehow in the context of surveillance, this argument is taken at face value. You see otherwise smart people posting and retweeting this argument as if they thought it a valid one.
2) In almost any other context, a rational thing to do is to evaluate both sides and, if one seems beneficial but dangerous, propose laws to regulate it (aka: don't use surveillance for blackmailing political candidates since it contradicts democratic principles). Yet in the context of surveillance, a geek will talk in completely black-and-white terms, and not even consider proposing laws to regulate its impact. For an extended example, a common argument against surveillance is that places the entity wielding it "outside of law". Yet democracies have developed well-established methods for dealing with entities in power that try to place themselves outside of law. That is the reason why we have a president with a fixed term rather than a king, for example.
3) If surveillance can be used for blackmailing, then obviously it has to work quite well in the first place (be comprehensive, with ability to target specific individuals). Yet the same geek who argues that surveillance is dangerous because it can be used for blackmailing will also try argue, often in the same paragraph, that surveillance doesn't work, is not effective, or is very easily circumventable. To any impartial outside observer, the argument that "X is not effective! But X is dangerous because it is effective!" would seem like a contradiction, no?
4) Then there is the tired/insensitive argument that "more people die from furniture than from terrorism". First, this is probably only true in the West, and not in places like Nigeria or MENA (this is a good chart http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac...). Second, almost all animals (and yes, humans are primates/animals) pay a lot more attention to predators and to acts of violence between each other than to random accidents, and there is an evolutionary reason for that (which specifically is left as an exercise to the reader). I would also argue that, since this behavior is so incredibly prevalent among animals of all kinds, it's almost definitely not an example of a "maladaptive" cognitive bias. Finally, even if it were maladaptive, one can't just simply discount it (an entire country experiencing a fascist freakout against a minority group is not a good thing IMO, whether a result of a cognitive bias or not).
5) For almost every other technology, geeks will argue (often obnoxiously/pedantically) that it can be both good and bad, depending on how it is wielded (see nuclear power). But surveillance is also a technology, yet you almost never see a geek saying "surveillance can be either good or bad" -- no, to a geek, surveillance is bad, period. It's like surveillance is this one thing that technology-loving geeks can feel justified to act luddite about.
Why is that?
