Fun fact: London has ~700k cameras and is top 3 in the world by cameras per capita, top 20 being almost exclusively Chinese cities https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surv...
Just Fact, not Fun
Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
11–20 of 162 posts
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#12It's a fight we are only ever gonna lose.
I.e. in Germany, I have seen wave after wave of surveillance passed. People try to fight back each time. Often the supreme court cancels the unconstitutional laws.
But they always try again. And it only takes a football euro cup or Worldcup, or Olympic games or a natural catastrophy to provide the distraction for the public to pass another law.
Our governments want to surveil us, and they will do it whether we like it or not.
People only stand up and fight if the damage if the fight is smaller than the damage of what they are fighting against. We live comfortable, so we will take a lot of this type of immoral behaviour of our leaders. The figth will only start after enough innocent surveillance victims are harmed in the real world (i.e. their data is leaked or worse) and enough people have felt negative consequences of this surveillance.
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#13its worth a try i suppose, but when it was revealed a few years back that 'yahoo video' was used by agencies to spy on millions of regular people 'by accident' it didn't seem to change public opinion hardly at all
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#14It's a fight we are only ever gonna lose. I.e. in Germany, I have seen wave after wave of surveillance passed. People try to fight back each time. Often the supreme court cancels the unconstitutional laws. But they always try again. And it only takes a football euro cup or Worldcup, or Olympic games or a natural catastrophy to provide the distraction for the public to pass another law. Our governments want to surveil…
I think it is even more depressing that there is no push back on EU level. Even worse, there are plans to further push for mass surveillance.
https://european-pirateparty.eu/pirates-commissions-ai-propo...
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#15Fun fact: London has ~700k cameras and is top 3 in the world by cameras per capita, top 20 being almost exclusively Chinese cities https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surv...
Exactly, literally every time I see these articles I just think of the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
I remember being questioned on terrorism charges outside St. Pauls Cathedral, alongside my friends by about 20 police with 4 vans. They told us that we need to leave London (lived outside of it) and they will watch us to ensure that we leave, if we do not then there will be further problems for us.
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#16I think the fight against mass surveillance needs first to be lost in order to even start. Right now the average citizen has not witnessed an impact on his life and there's no shortage of other problems he has to deal with.
I'm not saying techies should just stay passive though. Special cases - journalists, activists, politically involved - need to be protected right now, and when the problem will be generally understood we need to have solutions ready for the average person: information, software, proposed legislation, etc.
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#17"Few pause to think that their phones can be transformed into surveillance devices, with someone thousands of miles away silently extracting their messages, photos and location, activating their microphone to record them in real time."
They were designed to be surveillance devices! Remember when you could replace your phone battery? They corrected that 'design flaw'. Smart phones, smart meters, smart cities, 5g... this is the infrastructure of the technocracy.
Smart = spy.
When papers like the guardian present articles like these as if they care, they are in fact doing a different job. They are actually acclimatising us to the future so that we are not shaken into action, but wring our hands for a bit and move on.
To those talking about journalists needing to protect freedom, what world are you on? Have you heard of 'project mockingbird'? Have you not yet realised that journalism is just a part of the governance structure, along with education, and of course the government?
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#18I don't think the problem is with the "lie" that the innocent need not fear surveillance. Most people will agree that mass-surveillance will negatively affect some people that are indispensable to healthily functioning liberal society: journalists, activists, academics, public figures... The problem is that even if most people don't subscribe to the "nothing to hide" argument in general, they do not care about themse…
> about expected value and perceived risk. Overall for most people the equation is always: (probability of data being mishandled) * damage That is the main reason. To keep privacy is too costly on purpose. In Europe, thanks to the GDPR you can get quite good privacy. But companies give you a 1-click option to be tracked, And then company that build products usually 1-click or 2-click to not be tracked. But ad-based companies will ask you 3,4 or sometimes even dozens of clicks to not be tracked. That extra effort is on purpose and should be regulated. When you get a pop-up "Do you want to be tracked (Yes/no)" most people chooses no.
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#19I don't think the problem is with the "lie" that the innocent need not fear surveillance. Most people will agree that mass-surveillance will negatively affect some people that are indispensable to healthily functioning liberal society: journalists, activists, academics, public figures... The problem is that even if most people don't subscribe to the "nothing to hide" argument in general, they do not care about themse…
Because the 'time and effort required to maintain my privacy' part requires immediate and sustained and rigorous action and sacrifice of various comforts, all for a nebulously perceived, personally theoretical risk. The ultimate trajectory of liberal democracy is towards anarchism. But humans are anything but evolutionarily suited for that. We are biologically built to function in a hierarchy, even if the top of that…
> The ultimate trajectory of liberal democracy is towards anarchism.
It's more like towards feudalism, and that's what the surveillance helps achieve. That's why surveillance is dangerous.
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#20I think the fight against mass surveillance needs first to be lost in order to even start. Right now the average citizen has not witnessed an impact on his life and there's no shortage of other problems he has to deal with. I'm not saying techies should just stay passive though. Special cases - journalists, activists, politically involved - need to be protected right now, and when the problem will be generally unders…
This is an interesting take. My only concern is that people consistently trade security for freedom in modern societies. I wonder how pervasive surveillance has to be to break this trend.