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San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

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Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#121

Post by jjgreen »

tmh79 wrote: post #75
zzzcpan wrote: 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.

On the other hand, people of color are currently living in a world of extremely corrupt police (see https://www.baltimoresun.com/year-in-review/bs-md-yir-baltim... ) and general danger, and these cameras will help keep the police and other criminals accountable.

As with the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes in London, you may well find that the cameras turn out to be "broken".

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#122

Post by _bxg1 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #56
zzzcpan wrote: 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.

Agreed. The narrative is frequently, "Tech company X's CEO was running secret, morally-questionable project. Rest of the company's engineers upset to find out about it."

So far that dissatisfaction has been mostly inert, unfortunately. But I like to think that the typical engineer's morals haven't been as corroded by money as the typical CEO, and that we'll eventually reach a breaking point where things will get so bad that the engineers will finally take a stand. Tech puts power in the hands of the few, but that tech can't be built without lots of engineers. The sooner they see past the utopian narratives peddled by their bosses and set aside their comfy lives, the better.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#123

Post by ams6110 »

maxxxxx wrote: post #58
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But you know they won't. There is a lot of money to be made in going along. Heck, I probably wouldn't refuse big money from google for a few years. Maybe after having enough money I would eventually turn into a freedom activist, but who knows?

Would you have helped to build Auschwitz if you got paid enough money?

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#124

Post by Zenst »

maxxxxx wrote: 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.

I'm kinda expecting vehicle cameras to be conscripted into this surveillance penchant on the back of road safety in some future autonomous vehicle standard.

But if you want to see 1984 play out - look at parenting and children today compared to children growing up in 1984. Many freedoms removed directly and indirectly by laws on the back of child safety.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#125

Post by ssss11 »

unstatusthequo wrote: post #34
shittyadmin wrote: post #33

Maybe this will be viewed as too anti-social, but has anyone considered doing laser based attacks on these? Lasers seem to be able to damage camera sensors fairly easily and permanently and as they operate in the visible light range should be hard to block. Could make a system like this prohibitively expensive to operate.

Until they arrest and fine you for damaging government property... The way to fight this is with votes or in courts, which may not be effective in short term but doesn’t land you in jail.

That’s a nice sentiment but in reality your vote doesn’t count because every politician and government puts these measures in at the first opportunity. You may think governments work for the people but that’s just theory.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#126

Post by Benjammer »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #72
Benjammer wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

I do agree we need government regulation[1], but as perhaps a bit of defense in depth, I absolutely think we need to be instilling engineers with ethics. Would your point make any sense if we were talking about doctors, instead of engineers? We teach "first, do no harm" from day one in that field, and we wouldn't assume for any act a doctor would refuse to do, one that would is readily available. We need the same for…

I would definitely support a digital privacy amendment.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#127

Post by maxxxxx »

ams6110 wrote: post #123
maxxxxx wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you know they won't. There is a lot of money to be made in going along. Heck, I probably wouldn't refuse big money from google for a few years. Maybe after having enough money I would eventually turn into a freedom activist, but who knows?

Would you have helped to build Auschwitz if you got paid enough money?

I am from Germany and a lot of people did help. They were ordinary citizens before 1933, then they supported mass murder until 1945, then they became citizens of a democratic country. History has shown repeatedly that most people will follow brutal dictatorships and only a few will resist.

I don't know what I would do and neither do most of us without being in that situation.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#128

Post by stickfigure »

misterprime wrote: post #87
veryworried wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me tell you something: No matter what you do, evil always finds a way. And when it does, do you really want to live with the regret that you could have done more, but chose not to for fear of some imaginary future evil?

The answer is yes. We can estimate the severity of the negative consequences of mass surveillance and censorship across the entire country or globe and compare that to the smaller number of isolated, but perhaps more severe cases of evil. We can then choose which we predict will be the better state to live in. Here in America we do that with guns. We do that with cars. We do that with natural gas accessible in the ho…

Hold on a minute. Today's society has vastly more surveillance than the society of say fifty years ago. Cameras are everywhere - in our phones, on buildings, on dashboards, on policemen. How has this affected our democracy?

I'd argue that so far, the cameras are working in our favor. Police abuse gets caught on tape and prosecuted. Political corruption is harder to hide. A white supremacist who murders someone with their car and speeds off is caught. The Saudis get busted murdering a journalist.

I'm not sure we can honestly estimate the negative consequences of mass surveillance. Certainly not if we lump every camera in to that category; I wouldn't want a camera in my living room, but I sure would like a camera pointed at my parked car. Streetlights? If it stopped my car from being broken into for the fourth time, I'd be pretty ok with it.

Here in the US, it's not for want of camera technology that we are not living in a police state. If anything, the cameras are helping keep our social institutions honest.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#129

Post by chr1 »

maxxxxx wrote: 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.

Technology makes full surveillance easy, and usefulness of surveillance in preventing small crimes, regulating traffic, etc. makes fighting against it hard.

Maybe instead of fighting with technology we should find ways preventing it's misuse: more open governments, electronic voting for individual laws, more surveillance over finances of elected officials.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#130

Post by vokep »

slg wrote: post #67
opportune wrote: post #63

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?

Yea, lets just figure out what sort of ideology leads to that. Then lets make a list somehow of people who are of that ideology or likely to fall to it.

Then we just ought to round em all up, maybe put them in camps where they can be reeducated on why they're wrong...and ones who are uncooperative could be put to work, and...oh shit we're the next nazis, woops!

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