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Sousveillance

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Re: Sousveillance

#51

Post by jacobolus »

throwaway675309 wrote: post #46
sneak wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you perhaps considered that recording people unobtrusively without their consent may be unethical or, at the minimum, rude?

It kind of ticks me off that people lose their collective "sh##" when things like Google Glass and Narrative help to give power to the civilian to record things in an unobtrusive manner but that people are totally fine with the ubiquitous billions of eye-in-the-sky surveillance cameras (see London) that the government uses to watch us every second.

> ticks me off that people lose their collective shit when things like Google Glass [record ubiquitously but] people are totally fine with the ubiquitous billions of eye-in-the-sky surveillance cameras

The overlap between the “people” who don’t like Google to record their lives and the “people” who don’t care if the police do it is quite small...

But in any case the police in a democracy are at least nominally accountable to the populace, and can be checked via elections and other mechanisms. The mission of police is ostensibly for public benefit and includes criminal investigation, which surveillance could arguably help with. Google is a multinational corporation accountable primarily to itself which wants the data to help with its advertising business.

Re: Sousveillance

#52

Post by stcredzero »

Overly centralized control of military power, economic power, and media distribution power are often bad and lead to corruption, while the distribution of the above generally lead to widespread benefit to civilization and society.

The biggest bang for the buck for benefit to the common man would be through the inversion of "Trusted Execution" or DRM technologies to enforce privacy policies on corporations and large organizations on behalf of the public. It will never happen, because the general public, and especially the tech portion of it, are emotionally conditioned against such technology. However, there are many mechanisms like this, which show this kind of asymmetry with regards to centralized power.

Some corporations have already taken a step in this direction, by giving up access to encryption keys and the ability to read their user's data. It would just be one step further for a corporation to cede control of privacy policy implementation on behalf of its customers by running code implementing those policies on trusted execution engines. This way, users will be able to revoke access to their data from corporations and large organizations.

The public will never go for this, however, because they're already conditioned against such technologies from its application by large organizations against the interests of individuals.

Re: Sousveillance

#53

Post by jacobolus »

stcredzero wrote: post #52

Overly centralized control of military power, economic power, and media distribution power are often bad and lead to corruption, while the distribution of the above generally lead to widespread benefit to civilization and society. The biggest bang for the buck for benefit to the common man would be through the inversion of "Trusted Execution" or DRM technologies to enforce privacy policies on corporations and large o…

Does distribution of military power really lead to public benefit? My impression is that e.g. widespread distribution of small arms to local gangs, paramilitary mercenaries, etc. generally just leads to a lot of small scale conflict and death. Look at any of the most violent parts of the world, and they are generally awash with distributed military power.

Distribution of media power also seems like a mixed bag, especially if media consumers have poor media literacy. Social media (and the internet more generally) in the past few years gave pretty well any publisher the same direct-to-consumer distribution channel, and the result was many readers believing in nonsensical conspiracy theories because they couldn’t distinguish them from reputable news.

Re: Sousveillance

#54

Post by kurtisc »

throwaway675309 wrote: post #46
sneak wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you perhaps considered that recording people unobtrusively without their consent may be unethical or, at the minimum, rude?

It kind of ticks me off that people lose their collective "sh##" when things like Google Glass and Narrative help to give power to the civilian to record things in an unobtrusive manner but that people are totally fine with the ubiquitous billions of eye-in-the-sky surveillance cameras (see London) that the government uses to watch us every second.

The cameras in London are mostly private.

Re: Sousveillance

#55

Post by gugagore »

joshklein wrote: post #16
gugagore wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "sur-" necessarily means "more power". Here's a bunch of sur-prefixed words in French: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:French_words_prefixe... My favorite so far on that list "surbooker"--"to overbook"

The etymology of surveillance is closer to “watch over”, as if from above. The literal “sur” prefix could be “over” or “on” or “upon” when translated to English, so it implies an above-ness. The “sous” prefix is the logical opposite, usually translating to “below” or “under” or “beneath”, though it can be used to mean “within”.

I'm not sure if you're responding to my claim that it doesn't mean power. I agree that it means "watch over". Like physical "above-ness".

Re: Sousveillance

#56

Post by gugagore »

bohinjc wrote: post #15
gugagore wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "sur-" necessarily means "more power". Here's a bunch of sur-prefixed words in French: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:French_words_prefixe... My favorite so far on that list "surbooker"--"to overbook"

well, "sur-" in french means a lot of things, alone or as a prefix : on, over, more, about, upon, onto, against, ... So I'm pretty sure there is a pun intended here. About "surbooker", funny thing is that "booker" is literally the english verb converted to french verb (hence the -er suffix). Even if it is well used in modern french, it still is an anglicism.

Like a pun when the word first came into usage?

Re: Sousveillance

#57

Post by canada_dry »

cookingrobot wrote: post #29

The researcher who coined the phrase, Steve Mann, has been working on wearable computing since the 80s. In any picture I’ve seen of him over the years he’s had some kind of camera on his face. He also invented the hdr image merging algorithm. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann

Steve is a local geek hero in Toronto. He's been at this game for a long time!

Re: Sousveillance

#58

Post by type0 »

fearai wrote: post #43
Jtsummers wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Sousveillance is possible without intent to observe the surveillance mechanisms in place. Go to a festival, these days, with the plethora of cameras (on phones or standalone, video or still) and people are participating in sousveillance (though likely not deliberately or recognizing it as such). They aren't watching the police or other observers. They're just particpating and recording the event itself.

cool. seems very ambiguous and watered down. without intent seems like it should just be called "watching" or "recording". also does it stop being called "Sousveillance" if done on a plane? or hiking above a certain altitude? we are very interested in pulling data from "accidental" surveillance.

> it should just be called "watching" or "recording". also does it stop being called "Sousveillance" if done on a plane? or hiking above a certain altitude?

or if it's done with a drone it's almost terrorism as many politicians would like you to believe. The concept of sousveilance can never be implemented in any meaningful democratic way on a day to day life because individuals are always subordinate to the state.

Re: Sousveillance

#59

Post by stcredzero »

jacobolus wrote: post #53
stcredzero wrote: post #52

Overly centralized control of military power, economic power, and media distribution power are often bad and lead to corruption, while the distribution of the above generally lead to widespread benefit to civilization and society. The biggest bang for the buck for benefit to the common man would be through the inversion of "Trusted Execution" or DRM technologies to enforce privacy policies on corporations and large o…

Does distribution of military power really lead to public benefit? My impression is that e.g. widespread distribution of small arms to local gangs, paramilitary mercenaries, etc. generally just leads to a lot of small scale conflict and death. Look at any of the most violent parts of the world, and they are generally awash with distributed military power. Distribution of media power also seems like a mixed bag, espec…

Does distribution of military power really lead to public benefit?

Concentration in the wrong hands is the problem.

distribution of small arms to local gangs, paramilitary mercenaries

The local gangs and paramilitaries in those situations represent local concentrations of power, not disbursement. Local warlords rule because they are armed in particular. If they didn't have an advantage over the general populace, they wouldn't be ruling it.

Distribution of media power also seems like a mixed bag, especially if media consumers have poor media literacy.

There were periods of time in the US when there were tons of hyper partisan local newspapers. History itself is a mixed bag. However, things often work out, if you give power to the public.

Re: Sousveillance

#60

Post by jacobolus »

stcredzero wrote: post #59
jacobolus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does distribution of military power really lead to public benefit? My impression is that e.g. widespread distribution of small arms to local gangs, paramilitary mercenaries, etc. generally just leads to a lot of small scale conflict and death. Look at any of the most violent parts of the world, and they are generally awash with distributed military power. Distribution of media power also seems like a mixed bag, espec…

Does distribution of military power really lead to public benefit? Concentration in the wrong hands is the problem. distribution of small arms to local gangs, paramilitary mercenaries The local gangs and paramilitaries in those situations represent local concentrations of power, not disbursement. Local warlords rule because they are armed in particular. If they didn't have an advantage over the general populace, they…

> Local warlords rule because they are armed in particular. If they didn't have an advantage over the general populace, they wouldn't be ruling it.

This claim does not seem well supported by evidence.

We can look at otherwise largely comparable places where either small arms are largely limited to police/military or where small arms are broadly distributed, and violence is generally much higher in the latter.

Giving everybody in an economically precarious place a gun increases violence, strengthens the influence and size of local gangs, amplifies ethnic tensions, etc.

Much of the violence in developing countries is worsened by US and European arms producers/merchants distributing weapons. In the past it was deliberate US policy to distribute weapons broadly in particular countries with the goal of destabilizing them via widespread violence.

There is plenty of evidence that all else equal, gun control leads to reduced violence. See e.g. https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/38/1/140/2754868

Unfortunately in the USA a powerful arms industry resists efforts to systematically study the effects of gun policy, much less implement effective gun control, using comparable techniques to the tobacco industry of a few decades ago. The result is uniquely and shockingly high levels of gun violence compared to the rest of the industrialized world.

* * *

> There were periods of time in the US when there were tons of hyper partisan local newspapers

Yes and the propaganda was highly effective politically, leading to terrible policy outcomes.

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