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The Captured City

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Re: The Captured City

#11

Post by carapace »

harimau777 wrote: post #6
carapace wrote: post #4

Ironically, the site loads google-analytics.com. - - - - > The idea of the captured city requires an adversarial view of a city’s inhabitants Maybe by definition, but consider the Peelian Principles : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles > The Peelian principles summarise the ideas that Sir Robert Peel developed to define an ethical police force. The approach expressed in these principles is commonly know…

I'm not sure I follow you. I don't think we have police by consent in America and I don't see how the idea applies to surveillance.

What I'm saying is that, if ubiquitous surveillance is inevitable (as I believe), then it behooves us to address the antagonistic relationship (to the degree that it exists) between our governments and ourselves.

- - - -

As for specific ways the idea applies to surveillance, I can only speculate. The essence would be that everyone is equally under the microscope including law enforcement officers and administration.

Re: The Captured City

#12

Post by BurningFrog »

carapace wrote: post #11
harimau777 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow you. I don't think we have police by consent in America and I don't see how the idea applies to surveillance.

What I'm saying is that, if ubiquitous surveillance is inevitable (as I believe), then it behooves us to address the antagonistic relationship (to the degree that it exists) between our governments and ourselves. - - - - As for specific ways the idea applies to surveillance, I can only speculate. The essence would be that everyone is equally under the microscope including law enforcement officers and administration.

One angle, which you may or may not have implied:

We can't stop Google or the government to cover the city with cameras.

But we can put up our own camera network!

Re: The Captured City

#13

Post by harimau777 »

trothamel wrote: post #7
harimau777 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow you. I don't think we have police by consent in America and I don't see how the idea applies to surveillance.

Why don't you think that we have police by consent in America? The police are generally accountable to elected people. What's more, they are generally fairly popular. When asked: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way the police in the United States are doing their job?" 65% say yes, vs 26% no. https://www.pollingreport.com/crime.htm

While I don't think that "police by consent" would require everyone to consent, if one in four people don't then I think that at least calls it into question.

It would be interesting to see the numbers broken down by jurisdiction and demographic. This is just speculation, but I would guess that some jurisdictions and demographics are policed by consent but that many are not.

Re: The Captured City

#14

Post by harimau777 »

carapace wrote: post #11
harimau777 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow you. I don't think we have police by consent in America and I don't see how the idea applies to surveillance.

What I'm saying is that, if ubiquitous surveillance is inevitable (as I believe), then it behooves us to address the antagonistic relationship (to the degree that it exists) between our governments and ourselves. - - - - As for specific ways the idea applies to surveillance, I can only speculate. The essence would be that everyone is equally under the microscope including law enforcement officers and administration.

That's a good point that I hadn't thought of much before.

One issue that I could see is that there would still be asymmetry in the ability to use the information from surveillance. Someone with access to lawyers, the media, PR people, lobbyists, etc. who knows your secrets is much more dangerous than the average person who knows their secrets.

Re: The Captured City

#15

Post by harimau777 »

trothamel wrote: post #7
harimau777 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow you. I don't think we have police by consent in America and I don't see how the idea applies to surveillance.

Why don't you think that we have police by consent in America? The police are generally accountable to elected people. What's more, they are generally fairly popular. When asked: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way the police in the United States are doing their job?" 65% say yes, vs 26% no. https://www.pollingreport.com/crime.htm

Also, nice find! It's helpful to have actual numbers to discuss.

Re: The Captured City

#16

Post by trickstra »

germinalphrase wrote: post #3
nostromo wrote: post #2

I've been thinking about this a lot with regards to Waymo. Google already knows just about everything one can know about us on the internet. And if you use Google Maps or Android, they already know a lot about how you move through the real world... where you live, where you work, where you shop, who your friends and family are. Adding in a network of vehicles that are always "patrolling" the streets of every city, co…

Only if the alternatives are made to go away.

Or if the company is compelled to hand over the data, accompanied with a gag order...

Re: The Captured City

#17

Post by tristram_shandy »

trothamel wrote: post #7
harimau777 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow you. I don't think we have police by consent in America and I don't see how the idea applies to surveillance.

Why don't you think that we have police by consent in America? The police are generally accountable to elected people. What's more, they are generally fairly popular. When asked: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way the police in the United States are doing their job?" 65% say yes, vs 26% no. https://www.pollingreport.com/crime.htm

Policing in America is a mostly modern invention, and the first public full-time police force is less than 200 years old: before the police, towns would typically have a night watch made up of citizens who volunteered for certain nights and certain times, and industry would pay other citizens to protect property and commodities. These paotection jobs typically didn't pay well, and mainly employed a segment of the population who might otherwise be criminal.

The rise of the police was a consequence of economics peculiar to 19th century capitalism, the first public police force was created in Boston only when merchants convinced the public that the expense should be born by all for the common good, and in the South the public police force evolved from slave patrols as a necessity of maintaining the slavery system.

The public police force continued to spread throughout America, particularly in the West, in 19th century only as businessmen began to fear labour activism and required a militant police force to end strikes.

The public police force before the 1930s was not only a new idea, but it was entirely a weapon of political power and terror: police forces were chosen by the leader of the ward's winning political party, and would ignore that political leader's own street gangs as they intimidated rival voters. It wasn't until 1929, after the Wickersham Commission, which noted such gems as "the inflicting of pain, physical or mental, to extract confessions or statements... is widespread throughout the country", that a push for professionalism and the independence of the police force began in America.

The consent the average citizen has given to be policed and the satisfaction she should have with the current system is very debatable.

Would the night watch have enforced the war on drugs to such a violent end?

Do we really need to have squad cars looking for speeders, or can citizens just report dangerous drivers to the DMV?

Was it not easier to pay off erstwhile thieves a wage to 'guard the property'?

Perhaps our consent to the police is just a manufactured consent, as our economic system was only able to survive by creating a force capable of quelling our collective dissent?

Re: The Captured City

#18

Post by carapace »

BurningFrog wrote: post #12
carapace wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm saying is that, if ubiquitous surveillance is inevitable (as I believe), then it behooves us to address the antagonistic relationship (to the degree that it exists) between our governments and ourselves. - - - - As for specific ways the idea applies to surveillance, I can only speculate. The essence would be that everyone is equally under the microscope including law enforcement officers and administration.

One angle, which you may or may not have implied: We can't stop Google or the government to cover the city with cameras. But we can put up our own camera network!

You're still taking the stance of "us against them" in a context where "they" have much greater resources than "us". I think that's already a "failure mode" and we have to integrate society and government somehow (or fall into some techno-dystopia.)

Re: The Captured City

#19

Post by carapace »

harimau777 wrote: post #14
carapace wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm saying is that, if ubiquitous surveillance is inevitable (as I believe), then it behooves us to address the antagonistic relationship (to the degree that it exists) between our governments and ourselves. - - - - As for specific ways the idea applies to surveillance, I can only speculate. The essence would be that everyone is equally under the microscope including law enforcement officers and administration.

That's a good point that I hadn't thought of much before. One issue that I could see is that there would still be asymmetry in the ability to use the information from surveillance. Someone with access to lawyers, the media, PR people, lobbyists, etc. who knows your secrets is much more dangerous than the average person who knows their secrets.

Hmm. It reminds me of how Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan sued Gawker into the ground. The whole thing, from Gawker outing Thiel onwards, was sordid, but I feel that it was made much worse by Thiel acting in secret.

Maybe, if everything the powerful do is just as watched as the little people, that balances things out a bit.

I'm not postulating some utopia: I think what we'll get is what I call the "Tyranny of Mrs. Grundy":

> Mrs Grundy is a figurative name for an extremely conventional or priggish person, a personification of the tyranny of conventional propriety. A tendency to be overly fearful of what others might think is sometimes referred to as grundyism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs_Grundy

E.g. the Chinese "social credit" system. If that applies to the powerful communists as well as the masses then it might actually work, if not, it's the genesis of Morlocks and Eloi.

Re: The Captured City

#20

Post by leppr »

carapace wrote: post #11
harimau777 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow you. I don't think we have police by consent in America and I don't see how the idea applies to surveillance.

What I'm saying is that, if ubiquitous surveillance is inevitable (as I believe), then it behooves us to address the antagonistic relationship (to the degree that it exists) between our governments and ourselves. - - - - As for specific ways the idea applies to surveillance, I can only speculate. The essence would be that everyone is equally under the microscope including law enforcement officers and administration.

It's hard to imagine how a government set to police the minutiae of everyday life of pretty much a whole continent's worth of humans, can not be antagonistic with the majority of it. Even in such a uniform cultural environment as the US, local differences will "always" be too important to make such relations with a state-wide governing entity consensual. High-level principles and policies, sure, but low level policing and surveillance applied uniformly at such a scale can't be consensual.
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