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San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

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Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#61
post #41

It's just a matter of time until we have country-wide full surveillance. It will be the perfect tool for anyone who wants to create a dictatorship. The thought police and the telescreens in 1984 will look primitive and weak in comparison. I think there is no way around it. Add to that drones to keep the population under control and there is huge danger we'll have a pretty bleak future.

Under control from what? Committing crimes, breaking into homes, shooting people dead, raping women going out for a jog, planning terrorist activity? I welcome it.

Voting for the wrong person? Attending 'subversive' meetings that criticize the current regime? Going to the wrong church?

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#62
post #21

This blog post is highly misleading and inaccurate. Access to the video is very limited and subject to strict protocols for use in investigations. And the audio recording capacity isn’t live because the City has no use for it. The SD Reader isn’t a very trustworthy source. Here’s the U-T’s extensive piece on the topic: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversatio...

I frankly do not care how limited access is, or if parts of the hardware are disabled. I do not trust governments to act transparently.

There are a few telling things in the article you link to that make it clear that the government values expediency over protecting citizens' rights.

The first notable one is the process: a police officer has to submit a request to view video records... but to whom? It looks like just to their superiors? If they actually cared about protecting people's rights, the request should have to be made to a court, in the same way a warrant needs to be requested.

The city points out that the audio recorders aren't active because they don't have a use case for the audio. They claim that they would engage the public before activating them, but... is that really true? And regardless, I would not want that activated, ever. Any use case audio recordings of public spaces could possibly have... I do not want that. Having the hardware there and ready is just too tantalizing to public officials.

I've been thinking about moving to SD at some point, but this kind of thing really gives me pause.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#63
post #41

It's just a matter of time until we have country-wide full surveillance. It will be the perfect tool for anyone who wants to create a dictatorship. The thought police and the telescreens in 1984 will look primitive and weak in comparison. I think there is no way around it. Add to that drones to keep the population under control and there is huge danger we'll have a pretty bleak future.

Under control from what? Committing crimes, breaking into homes, shooting people dead, raping women going out for a jog, planning terrorist activity? I welcome it.

If you create a massive surveillance system for "good" purposes that doesn't mean someone can't later use it for nefarious purposes. One (rather primitive by modern standards) example is that Poland required people to list if they were Jewish for their national census, and then the Nazis used that list to round up and account for Jews in the holocaust.

Since the US routinely violates the constitution in the name of fighting "terrorism", I don't want to government to have arbitrarily strong and specific surveillance in case they later expand the definition of what it means to be a terrorist.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#64
post #43

This is what so sad about tech, it gives those in power unprecedented abilities to control the population. Essentially heading back to slavery through technology with no way out for the slaves anymore.

It also gives tech workers unprecedented abilities to fight it. Software engineers need to take social responsibility for what they create.

I don't think new feats in society are accomplished by holding groups of individuals to task and making each one play by the rules. We need new ideas and new government structures to fight the tide or get ahead of it and inspire people with smart and informed leadership. Shaming ambiguous highly paid developers doesn't do anything, because you are criticizing a job role, a "slot" in society, when you think you are criticizing a person. If you get one software engineer to "take responsibility," another will simply step into place and gladly accept the high paying salary to code without ethics.

We need government regulation.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#65
post #43

This is what so sad about tech, it gives those in power unprecedented abilities to control the population. Essentially heading back to slavery through technology with no way out for the slaves anymore.

It also gives tech workers unprecedented abilities to fight it. Software engineers need to take social responsibility for what they create.

Tell that to the Google. Their employees scoffed about working with the Pentagon and dropped the contract, but happily helped China build an authoritarian social-punishment system.

Then denied it ... and then more details kept coming out showing Google continued working on it, just more quietly.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under control from what? Committing crimes, breaking into homes, shooting people dead, raping women going out for a jog, planning terrorist activity? I welcome it.

If you create a massive surveillance system for "good" purposes that doesn't mean someone can't later use it for nefarious purposes. One (rather primitive by modern standards) example is that Poland required people to list if they were Jewish for their national census, and then the Nazis used that list to round up and account for Jews in the holocaust. Since the US routinely violates the constitution in the name of f…

(I think you meant "can't")

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under control from what? Committing crimes, breaking into homes, shooting people dead, raping women going out for a jog, planning terrorist activity? I welcome it.

If you create a massive surveillance system for "good" purposes that doesn't mean someone can't later use it for nefarious purposes. One (rather primitive by modern standards) example is that Poland required people to list if they were Jewish for their national census, and then the Nazis used that list to round up and account for Jews in the holocaust. Since the US routinely violates the constitution in the name of f…

It is crazy to suggest we should focus more on stopping the next Nazis rather than preemptively stopping the Polish census workers?

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you create a massive surveillance system for "good" purposes that doesn't mean someone can't later use it for nefarious purposes. One (rather primitive by modern standards) example is that Poland required people to list if they were Jewish for their national census, and then the Nazis used that list to round up and account for Jews in the holocaust. Since the US routinely violates the constitution in the name of f…

(I think you meant "can't")

good catch

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#69
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you create a massive surveillance system for "good" purposes that doesn't mean someone can't later use it for nefarious purposes. One (rather primitive by modern standards) example is that Poland required people to list if they were Jewish for their national census, and then the Nazis used that list to round up and account for Jews in the holocaust. Since the US routinely violates the constitution in the name of f…

It is crazy to suggest we should focus more on stopping the next Nazis rather than preemptively stopping the Polish census workers?

Who you think the "next Nazis" are is debatable. I think it's easier to just prevent the situation happening altogether. We don't need arbitrarily powerful surveillance to function as a society

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#70

Since the introduction of cameras used at intersections to penalize stop light violators (made famous by a former mayor who ran a red light while getting a blow job from his mistress), San Diego has always been experimenting with surveillance technology especially thereafter. Those intersection cameras have been minimized from county wide implementation at its height. Being a border city and a major military hub for…

Which mayor was this?
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