Police Say They Use Facial Recognition Despite Bans

> Possibly. But if that's the case, it's very important that we acknowledge that fact now and work to prevent it. We can't just say that governments will suddenly become incorruptible because the alternative is unpleasant. We have to face that unpleasant reality and respond to it.

To be clear I'm not saying that government will automatically become incorruptible (we should be so lucky, eh?)

How shall we formalize our response if not through government?

How can we be sure no one is using the surveillance unless we use the surveillance?

> > What would prevent it?

> The fact that it's not working. Even in totalitarian regimes like China, they're not stopping all crime, they're just crushing political dissidents. And they don't even have perfect enforcement on that.

Ugh, give them a minute. :(

To me it seems obvious that you get either: 1) a split-level society, where insiders get away with stuff while the masses live under the panopticon, or 2) you get a universal panopticon that includes the police and politicians and we are subject to the absolute rule of Mrs. Grundy.

I just do not see a realistic scenario with partial surveillance. The technology will become too cheap.

> To get to the point in enforcement you're talking about, we would need an even larger jump in surveillance than what we're talking about now.

Our smart phones are already a surveillance system.

Consider that a fleet of networked self-driving cars will be a surveillance system just as a side-effect.

The economics will drive it even if politics doesn't.

> And even in that world -- it's not lack of surveillance that allows police officers to violate people's rights with impunity, it's lack of prosecution. Enforcement of the law isn't just a problem of finding criminals, it's also wrapped up in the system's own brazenness and willingness to apply different standards to different people.

Now we're talking. Did you see the movie Elysium? I didn't finish watching it, because there's a scene near the start when Matt Damon's character is standing in a line and robot police (it's not clear whether they are autonomous AI robots or remote-controlled by humans) come by and hassle him and break his arm. I saw that and was like, Fuck That.

If that's what we end up doing to ourselves I'm not interested.

Why would you program a robot to do police brutality? It makes no logical sense. If the robot is strong enough to break a bone (already a dubious design choice) then it's strong enough to restrain a person without breaking his arm. FFS! At that point we're just watching someone's sick fetish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)

That's what I mean by "humane tyranny": yes, the police are robots now but they are programmed to be nice.

"Klaatu barada nikto", eh?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gort_(The_Day_the_Earth_Stood_...

> He is but one member of a "race of robots" invented by an interplanetary confederation (described as "A sort of United Nations on a Planetary level" by Klaatu, who is a representative of that confederation) to protect their citizens against all aggression by destroying any aggressors. Klaatu describes "him" as one of an interstellar police force, holding irrevocable powers to "preserve the peace" by destroying any aggressor. The fear of provoking these robots acts as a deterrent against aggression.

> ... preemptively getting rid of privacy when we have unequal standards of enforcement will make things worse because the corrupt parts of the system will have even more power.

Right, but I'm not advocating that.

I'm saying that, since privacy is going away anyway, let's use that to make the system work well.

> > I feel strongly that laws should be legitimate or repealed.

> This is a good ideal that we should strive for, but not a practical reality. Marijuana would not have become legal if people couldn't have broken the law. Gay rights would not have become a reality if people couldn't have been secretly gay. Perfect enforcement of the law can stagnate social progress, because the law is fallible. Fallible systems need safeguards that make it possible to oppose them -- and extra-legal normalization of certain behaviors is one of those safeguards.

I get what you're saying but I think you're wrong about the desirability of selective enforcement of "soft" crime because it's hypocritical and because perfect enforcement of "hard" crimes is very desirable.

I'm saying we better stop rounding up potheads and gay people, because we are about to have the power to make our laws stick for better or worse. There are lots of places even today where it's illegal to be gay. If those places get tech before they get hip they're gonna have a bad time.

(I once worked for a startup that was developing a device that could read blood alcohol level and their market was a staunchly Muslim nation. They hadn't thought it through. This nation severely restricts alcohol consumption and you're trying to introduce a fitbit that measures blood alcohol, think it through guys.)

Computers are the "perfection of the executive". (That quote goes back to Babbage BTW. He didn't say it, a fellow said it to him of his machine, and he agreed.)

We are going to get perfect enforcement -or- hypocritical "justice" systems -or- better, more humane laws.

As I see it those are the options. The cameras are already deployed, billions of folks are carrying self-surveillance devices right now.

> There are other ways we could add checks and balances to the law, but I have not seen many proposals from anyone that seem realistic or achievable to me. The reality is that breaking the law is often how we achieve social progress. Again, see Hong Kong and China, or the history of slavery in the US, or any number of social movements.

You make me realize that I don't have any formal proposals in re: my theory (that since tech makes surveillance inevitable we should all just be cool.)

I don't know that there are any concrete things to do. Or that, if there are, I could come up with them.

> > We in the West could do that too but if we don't because we value our personal privacy over the occasional kidnapped kid, well, I'm no fan of the CCP but that doesn't seem like a defensible moral position to me.

> I think it's a completely defensible moral position.

It's really not. Either you're not taking the thought experiment seriously or you don't have children. I wouldn't wish the loss of a child on my worst enemy.

> I think that our privacy is one of the reasons that the US government is not the CCP,

The USA totally spies on us. That's what the "Bumblehive" is for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

> and I think that the harm China is doing to its own citizens is pretty objectively greater than the harm that a couple of kidnappers will do. I'm not a fan of kidnappers, but the CCP is building concentration camps. Muslims in China need privacy more than they need protection from kidnappers, it's not a hard trade for me to make.

But that's not the trade.

We can get rid of the kidnappers and the evil concentration camp-building bastards.

In the world I'm envisioning no one could build concentration camps.

Think about it: the CCP say those aren't concentration camps and the very reason they can't lie about it or about the other vile things they do and get away with it because there is too much information!

> > We should be talking about a universal highest-common-denominator of laws for the planet so that the decreasing cost of asymptotically-prefect enforcement becomes a solution rather than a problem!

> I think the solution you're proposing is more difficult and less likely to happen then even the most long-shot of my proposals. The odds of all of the nations of the world uniting under a common set of laws, and those being laws being good are astronomically low. It would be easier to invent an invisibility cloak.

I find it depressing but I agree with you there. Realistically, I think the CCP will pretty much pown the world this next century. Depressing thought but if they can avoid starting a war (and we all don't get creamed by climate change) I think they've got it cinched. Bummer.

Just to be clear, I want the world you're describing. I don't want the world I'm describing I just don't see how to avoid ubiquitous surveillance. It seems to me that either the good guys use it or the bad guys will.

> then I might as well say that in the world I'm envisioning, we don't have concentration camps or kidnapping or mass surveillance. Let's imagine that we've figured out a way to get rid of all of it without any cameras anywhere.

I would love for that to happen.

> But having an end goal isn't enough, you need a feasible path to get there.

Sure, but I'd say that we already have that in the form of Jesus or Sathya Sai Baba. If we would just follow the advice of the holy people we would do just fine. You don't need mass surveillance, or even government, to manage good people.

> I don't believe there is any possible world where you have perfect mass surveillance that doesn't result in totalitarianism.

I don't believe that either.

Mass surveillance -> totalitarianism. I'm with you on that.

> I think it is a trade between kidnappers and totalitarianism,

I don't. I think techno-totalitarianism can't be stopped short of either a terrible collapse in civilization. It's already happening. You're getting whether you like it or not.

> and saying you'd prefer it not to be a trade... well, great, but it is.

I prefer my life unsurveilled. However, in real life, my phone, my car, my TV, my electric meter, my browser, my ISP, etc., these things are all already reporting on me.

Never mind the word "trade".

If you're getting surveilled anyway, you should get the benefits too.

The Chinese are already catching kidnappers in near-realtime.

> If you have an actionable plan to get to the society you're envisioning then go for it,

I don't. I wouldn't "go for it" even if I did. I'm not the type.

> but in the meantime let the rest of us try to invent invisibility cloaks, and build E2E encrypted chat apps, and promote Tor, and legislate/restrict State surveillance, because even if those solutions are imperfect we still want to try and protect the people who are suffering under the oppressive regimes that exist right now.

I am not about to stop you or anyone from doing anything. I think it's a silly thing to do and a waste of time, but then 99% of everything humans do seems that way to me so don't let it get you down.

(Be aware it's potentially unhealthy. You've heard of COINTELPRO? Have fun with your new friends.)

> At the very least, even if privacy can't be preserved forever, every day that we delay the world of perfect mass surveillance is another day that people like you get to spend figuring out how to create the utopian society you're imagining.

Just to be clear, I don't think the end result I'm imagining is utopian, and I'm not trying to bring it about, because on the one hand I don't like it and on the other I think it's inevitable (or something so bad will happen that I won't want to participate anyway. I don't have any children so if the world goes to shit too badly I can go live under a rock somewhere until I die or something eats me.)

> And frankly, it kinda sounds like you could use all the time you can get, because I don't see how you plan to get from point A to point B.

I don't. I gave up trying to predict things when Twitter became a thing, let alone plan how to pilot world society.

> So if it helps, think of the privacy advocates as buying you time to make sure that facial recognition won't be applied selectively against civilian populations while police officers don masks and cover up their badge numbers.

Instead of letting people get away with crime, police officers shall be subject to the panopticon along with everyone else.

> Once you've figured out the laws that need to be passed to make your utopia, and once they're far enough in the process that they have a pretty good chance of passing, then we can stop advocating for privacy.

I'm not about to figure out any laws, aside from that, AFAIC you can advocate for privacy all you want, I won't try to stop you. I'm rooting for you more-or-less. I just think it's a waste of time.

I mean, let me ask you this: How are you going to know that any of that ("invisibility cloaks, ... E2E encrypted chat apps, ... Tor, and [laws]") is working? The NSA isn't going to drive by your house and give you a respectful nod?

The sooner we get used to the idea that the only privacy we have is a polite fiction the sooner we can round up all the kidnappers and kiddie-molesters and rapists and murderers and other monsters.

We can put them on Antarctica or something.

(BTW thanks for engaging in debate. I don't know if we got anywhere but I'm glad to be able to hash this out with other folks who care. Cheers!)