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Atlas of Surveillance

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Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#131

Post by manigandham »

dredmorbius wrote: post #130
manigandham wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What race to the bottom? It’s a choice. People like having choices.

When "choice" effectively limits societal options or generates massive externalities and/or long-term unpredictable impacts, all parties upon whom the "choice" impacts are not given voice, or choice. Often commonweal is a better guiding light than "choice". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_bottom Sophie Zawistowska was offered a choice. Did her utility benefit by it? https://youtube.com/watch?v=DZ9bht5H2p4

It's the user's choice to use a cloud-hosted security system. They can weigh the trade-offs and risks for themselves, same as with any other system.

Whether that data is accessible by law enforcement is a completely separate issue. A proper solution would be limiting this access and requiring consent and transparency, not removing infrastructure options because you think you know better than everyone else about what's best for them.

Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#132

Post by dredmorbius »

manigandham wrote: post #131
dredmorbius wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When "choice" effectively limits societal options or generates massive externalities and/or long-term unpredictable impacts, all parties upon whom the "choice" impacts are not given voice, or choice. Often commonweal is a better guiding light than "choice". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_bottom Sophie Zawistowska was offered a choice. Did her utility benefit by it? https://youtube.com/watch?v=DZ9bht5H2p4

It's the user's choice to use a cloud-hosted security system. They can weigh the trade-offs and risks for themselves, same as with any other system. Whether that data is accessible by law enforcement is a completely separate issue. A proper solution would be limiting this access and requiring consent and transparency, not removing infrastructure options because you think you know better than everyone else about what'…

The issue, by virtue of legally allowed warrantless access, is inextricably conjoined, and the impacts of that choice accrue to not only the decisionmaker, but to countless others. Your premises are false.

Your proposed (and grossly insufficient) remedy is one form of legal mandate.

I'd strongly commend Shoshana Zuboff, Hanna Arendt, and Paul Baran, amongst numerous others:

"On the Engineer's Responsibility in Protecting Privacy", Paul Baran, 1968:

https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3829.html

Another view was expressed by AI pioneer and Nobel Laureate (economics) Herbert Simon:

"The privacy issue has been raised most insistently with respect to the creation and maintenance of longitudinal data files that assemble information about persons from a multitude of sources. Files of this kind would be highly valueable for many kinds of economic and social research, but they are bought at too high a price if they endanger human freedom or seriously enhance the opportunities of blackmailers. While such dangers should not be ignored, it should be noted that the lack of comprehensive data files has never been the limiting barrier to the suppression of human freedom. The Watergate criminals made extensive, if unskillful, use of electronics, but no computer played a role in their conspiracy. The Nazis operated with horrifying effectiveness and thoroughness without the benefits of any kind of mechanized data processing."

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a9e7/33e25ee8f67d5e670b3b7d...

There is, of course, one slight problem with Simon's argument: The Nazis did make heavy use of mechanised data processing, provided and supported by IBM. Edwin Black documents this meticulously in his book IBM and the Holocaust:

https://ibmandtheholocaust.com

Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#133

Post by chaostheory »

pdelbarba wrote: post #76
chaostheory wrote: post #67

Surveillance just going to get worse in the US Why? There has been a police shortage since the early 2010's where most departments only had a 1/3 of the manpower that was needed. Now with public sentiment against the police, I'm sure the police shortages will increase, eventually forcing the government to rely on more surveillance, AI, and robotics to fill the gap.

Not if they have no funding for those things...

They are less expensive than people, and they will get funding for those things once crime hits a threshold.

Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#134

Post by pc86 »

stanfordkid wrote: post #82
dllthomas wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting - and likely amusing - to extrapolate how many people must be driving around with huge caches of drugs, based on an assumption that purportedly unrelated traffic stops (or equivalent) were in fact random samples.

I really do think a "google maps" for police activity needs to be created -- including every single arrest, prosecution , subsequent legal claim... you should be able to rate police officers like restaurants on Yelp

My local courthouse is rated on Yelp. In a shocking turn of events nobody could have ever predicted, it has 1 star.

Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#135

Post by kls »

dllthomas wrote: post #50
kls wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the end does not justify the means, due to the fact that it is a violation of their 4th Amendment specifically the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects. Illegal searches are illegal no matter the sound basis after the fact. As an order of our society, historically police where not supposed to go looking for crime. They where commissioned to enforce the law. One cannot enforce the law b…

All of that is true, and nonetheless the parent comment stands: it will be rhetorically more convincing if you show how this negatively impacts the law-abiding.

While it may be move convincing, the hope is for people to see that these rights exist for a reason and that even in the presence of mortal outrage, they should still be defended. Because someone out there, is morally outraged at the way you live your life and would make something illegal that you do if they could. That is the whole point of the bill of rights and the amendments. Is to guarantee a base level of freedom no matter how the winds change. I don't understand why that is so hard for people to get. Maybe it's because I am older and boy have I seen the winds change, but it only takes one swing away from your viewpoint to understand how important they are.

Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#136

Post by manigandham »

dredmorbius wrote: post #132
manigandham wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the user's choice to use a cloud-hosted security system. They can weigh the trade-offs and risks for themselves, same as with any other system. Whether that data is accessible by law enforcement is a completely separate issue. A proper solution would be limiting this access and requiring consent and transparency, not removing infrastructure options because you think you know better than everyone else about what'…

The issue, by virtue of legally allowed warrantless access, is inextricably conjoined, and the impacts of that choice accrue to not only the decisionmaker, but to countless others. Your premises are false. Your proposed (and grossly insufficient) remedy is one form of legal mandate. I'd strongly commend Shoshana Zuboff, Hanna Arendt, and Paul Baran, amongst numerous others: "On the Engineer's Responsibility in Protec…

That's a wildly unreasonable stretch and limiting freedom for the claim of security leads to far worse results.

Infrastructure and third-party vendors need to be managed against risk. This is no different than using Gmail vs your own hosted email box. Same with a million other services. Are you claiming that they should all be shutdown now?

Legal issues need to be fixed by legal solutions, not by disallowing the service from existing.

Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#137

Post by lamby »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #83
srameshc wrote: post #31

> Police Department signed an agreement with Amazon's home surveillance equipment company, Ring, in 2019 to gain special access to the company's Neighbors app this is the most scary part.

1984 While the programmes could no longer be seen or heard, the screen still functioned as a surveillance device, as after Winston is taken into the Ministry of Love, the audio of his meeting with O'Brien with the telescreen "off" is played back to Winston.

You may be thinking of a different chapter, but O'Brien's apartment wasn't in the Ministry, it was in a different "quarter of the town where they lived" where "the whole atmosphere of the huge block of flats, the richness and spaciousness of everything, the unfamiliar smells of good food and good tobacco, the silent and incredibly rapid lifts sliding up and down, the white-jacketed servants hurrying to and fro—everything was intimidating".

Re: Atlas of Surveillance

#140

Post by kulahan »

Cactus2018 wrote: post #86
kulahan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read, by itself, it's not a great system. For example, you can shoot a gun somewhere else to distract officers, and some noises are misclassified as guns (teaching officers to ignore those alarms, making the system ineffective).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/shotspotter-de... .... Wrapped in a weatherproof container roughly the size of a watermelon, each ShotSpotter sensor combines microphones, hardware, software and a clock linked to the Global Positioning System, which uses satellites and radio navigation to pinpoint precise times and locations. In the cacophonous urban environment, sensors are calibrated to ignore all soun…

Yep, this seems to match my point. Thanks! :)
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