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Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com

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Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#91

Post by jondubois »

awqrre wrote: post #79
jondubois wrote: post #76

Ok, so these facts are true: #1. The government is monitoring us. #2. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and many other huge corporations are also monitoring us... And they are sharing our personal data with each other. Why are so many news articles about issue #1 and so few are about issue #2. The government is a negligible threat compared to corporations. It seems like tech companies are manipulating the media to turn…

#3. Other countries are spying on us and are sharing the data with our government...

Yes, but my point is that this is done in the interest of national/international security (there is no financial incentive for the government).

Corporations do their monitoring purely for their own financial gain.

The government is like a parent watching a child to make sure that the child doesn't get hurt - The interests of the parent are aligned with those of the child. A corporation is more like a pedophile - The interests do not align.

Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#92

Post by bigiain »

dragonwriter wrote: post #61
awqrre wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why?

Because it will make hit and runs easier to get away with. It won't make liability insurance worse, but it will make coverage that pays for damages in those cases much more expensive.

I wonder what percentage of hit and runs get a license plate number, and what percentage of the ones that _do_ get an id eventually end up with the insurance company in question recovering costs from the at-fault driver? My gut feel? The number of hit and runs and the insurance company costs is likely to be a very small part of the costs of running an insurance company, and that the rate of recovery from the identified hit and runs is probably a vanishingly small amount in the big picture. Maybe I'm being classist/racist/prejudiced here, but I'd guess there's very few hit and runs done by fully insured Tesla drivers on 200k+ a year - compared to hit and runs done by some variation/combination of unlicensed drivers in uninsured vehicles by people with no assets or income to make it viable to recover from.

I'd love to see some data, but my back-of-the-envelope analysis reckons this wouldn't even budge the needle on my insurance costs.

Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#93

Post by nostrademons »

jondubois wrote: post #76

Ok, so these facts are true: #1. The government is monitoring us. #2. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and many other huge corporations are also monitoring us... And they are sharing our personal data with each other. Why are so many news articles about issue #1 and so few are about issue #2. The government is a negligible threat compared to corporations. It seems like tech companies are manipulating the media to turn…

Big corporations don't generally share data with each other. It's more like the government, Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, and numerous black hat spyware vendors are all monitoring you, and none of them trust anybody else. People inside Google were fucking pissed when the NSA spying practices were revealed, people inside Apple regularly block Google's apps for privacy concerns, people inside Google are regularly battling against spyware, people inside Facebook try to get you to share everything about you and your friends voluntarily while Google tries to provide alternatives that don't involve giving Facebook the keys to your life (but do involve giving them to Google), people inside Microsoft copy & scrape Google to try and grab whatever data Google happens to have, people inside the government are spying on all of the above.

Believing that everybody is out to get you is a sign of paranoia. Believing that people and organization act in their own self-interest is generally a pretty accurate model.

Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#94

Post by prebrov »

jrcii wrote: post #51
nxzero wrote: post #13

When will people say enough is enough?

I've become increasingly convinced that western society will accept anything so long as it's fed, housed, and safe. If that's true, as a society we have a lot of rights that we're not willing to fight for but which the government is highly intent on restricting - an equation for inevitably losing them.

Any society will trade liberty for food and safety.

Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#95

Post by askldfhjkasfhd »

woodman wrote: post #34
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pessimizer, I think you are wrong, I agree with Stanislav. Republicans don't believe in the right to privacy, they use that as the reason why Texas should be able to restrict dildo sales (among many other things :-)), for instance, and conservatives use their disbelief in privacy to argue they should be able to legislate against consensual sex practices they don't like. Dems generally do support a right to privacy in…

Conservatives have a pretty obvious hole in their logic, where they both want to legislate morality and reduce the state's ability to enforce such legislation. The modern liberal on the other hand is much more single minded in the expansion of federal responsibility, and logically granting the powers necessary to accomplish said responsibilities (firearm registration, clipper chip, etc). Pretending that it isn't a fa…

On one hand, it's isn't a false choice -- the reality is that if you want to support a political candidate in the US in 2016, you're making that exact choice.

On the other, I totally agree -- they both want to legislate morality.

On the gripping hand, I'm forced to wonder if there was a situation where conservatives started burning their garbage in their home, would liberals be OK with it? Or is the "gay sex in the home" thing only relevant because it happens to be the Republicans big fear?

assuming it were known but not spread, e.g. people proudly announced burn pits, but captured and buried their exhaust. That's the only way to torture this analogy into shape.

Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#96

Post by yuhong »

jflatow wrote: post #87
darpa_escapee wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total surveillance is sold under guise of preventing terrorism, but the main effect is simple: it allows the status quo to become entrenched and permanent. You are rendered economically exploitable and politically neutered. There is a reason the state and intelligencies, from the Pinkertons to the FBI, have had a historical obsession with extensive spying on political movements and economic assembly. Both have real p…

Yes. We are told these measures are taken to protect our national security, but in reality they are meant to protect the government. Take the ongoing incident with Hillary Clinton's email server, for example. Clinton was quick to support scrapping 4th amendment rights (Patriot Act) in the name of security, but when it came to state secrets, she played it fast and loose (at best). It took 15 years and a scandal before…

The war where government agencies compete for more resources probably don't help either.

Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#97

Post by bitL »

imaginenore wrote: post #46
maxxxxx wrote: post #2

If that's true we are moving into a scary world pretty much like 1984 where everything you do is monitored all the time. Add voice, face recognition, surveillance drones, cheap data storage and AI to the mix it seems pretty soon everything you do in a public place will be recorded and analyzed. And all this can be done fully automated. I hope people will recognize that some laws need to change. Surveillance makes sen…

You can't have an expectation of privacy in public places. Facial recognition can be beat by a hat + sunglasses (which is the hugest plot hole in Person of Interest, the characters never even attempt to disguise themselves).

Your walking style identifies you better than face. Are you going to walk differently once you put a hat and sunglasses on?

Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#98

Post by bigiain »

alva wrote: post #31

The frequency response of most microphones (before DSP filtering) does not perfectly cut-off above 20 khz. I suppose if you were really paranoid you could walk around blasting exceptionally loud noise around and above this freq for privacy ;). Although your local dogs might not be too happy

Heh! Finally a profitable pivot idea for uBeam! Get their ultrasound transmitters mounted in hats or sunglasses, instant "privacy shield"! ;-)

(Bug report #0000001: "I charged my iPhone up by carefully holding it within 8 inches of my uBean transducer all night then when I went to make a call in the morning with my uBeam Privacy Sunglasses(tm) on, the other party couldn't hear anything I said." Response: "Closed WONTFIX. You're holding it wrong.")

Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#99

Post by [deleted] »

mike_hock wrote: post #4

> If you're going to conduct criminal activity, do it in the privacy of your own home. > That was the original intention of the 4th amendment. Wat. The intention of the 4th amendment was to enable criminal activity, but confine it to private property? Not to protect citizens' privacy from government snooping without probable cause? The intent was to prevent the executive branch from indiscriminately "searching" (and…

[deleted]

Re: Hidden Microphones Part of Government Surveillance Program in the Bay Area

#100

Post by jondubois »

nostrademons wrote: post #93
jondubois wrote: post #76

Ok, so these facts are true: #1. The government is monitoring us. #2. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and many other huge corporations are also monitoring us... And they are sharing our personal data with each other. Why are so many news articles about issue #1 and so few are about issue #2. The government is a negligible threat compared to corporations. It seems like tech companies are manipulating the media to turn…

Big corporations don't generally share data with each other. It's more like the government, Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, and numerous black hat spyware vendors are all monitoring you, and none of them trust anybody else. People inside Google were fucking pissed when the NSA spying practices were revealed, people inside Apple regularly block Google's apps for privacy concerns, people inside Goo…

I don't think everybody is out to get everybody else in a homogeneous manner. There is obviously a higher degree of collaboration between similar entities.

I think it's pretty obvious that we have the government on one side and corporations on the other.

We need to make sure that a healthy equilibrium stays in place between the two. Right now I just feel that corporations are winning.

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