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Can We Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia?

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Re: Can We Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia?

#31

Post by anigbrowl »

motters wrote: post #20
trekky1700 wrote: post #8

I think super accurate mass surveillance is inevitable. It goes with expanding technological capabilities, both government and civilian. I think the real question needs to be focused at how it's applied, whether it's used solely for good or evil. Fretting over whether or how it's coming is simply illogical, focusing efforts on making sure it's used properly is the only forward thinking, reality accepting solution.

Mass surveillance isn't inevitable, it's a political decision and a decision which is reversible. PRISM and Xkeyscore didn't invent themselves - they took money and manpower and above all political will to come to fruition. We have nuclear weapons, but nuclear proliferation isn't inevitable. Dismissing people who are opposed to the abuse of technology for purposes which are fundamentally anti-democratic as "illogical…

Technology is like water, it finds its own level. When you make sensors and storage as cheap as dirt then you're going to end up with widespread deployment. In many polities, people seem to think that the costs are outweighed by the benefits (of improved security and so on). I'm not sure that they are and you are clearly sure that they aren't, but ultimately the criteria for arriving at a given position are arbitrary.

I mean, lots of people think technology leads to economic inequality by devaluing human labor, resulting in unemployment and pay stagnation, but you probably agree with me that it would be futile to pass a law for the express purpose of limiting industrial productivity per worker.

Re: Can We Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia?

#32

Post by exratione »

afutd wrote: post #19

"'We think the governance has opted for ubiquitous law enforcement.' Pham whistled softly. Now every embedded computing system, down to a child's rattle, was a governance utility. It was the most extreme form of social control ever invented. 'So now they have to run everything.' The notion was terribly seductive to the authoritarian mind ... The only trouble was, no despot had the resources to plan every detail in hi…

And Trygve Ytre and Gunnar Larson? Larson was millennia dead, of course. The civilization at Ytre had barely outlived the man. There had been an era of ubiquitous law enforcement, and some kind of distributed terror. Most likely, Larson's own localizers had precipitated the end. All the wisdom, all the inscrutability, hadn't helped his world much.

--Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky

Re: Can We Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia?

#33

Post by anigbrowl »

stretchwithme wrote: post #24

We can avoid it only if we wake up to the real problem. We don't get to pick who represents our interests. We can only vote for preselected choices. This concentrates power in the hands of a few. And these are more immune to voter desires and more subject to other forms of manipulation. Either you exercise your power. Or its up for grabs. We need proportional representation, at least in the House of Representatives.

The city where I live has PR and I grew up in a country where it is the norm. I like it too, but it's not a panacea, you still get abuse, corruption, and political horse trading of all kinds.

Re: Can We Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia?

#35

Post by vectorpush »

pessimizer wrote: post #12
trekky1700 wrote: post #8

I think super accurate mass surveillance is inevitable. It goes with expanding technological capabilities, both government and civilian. I think the real question needs to be focused at how it's applied, whether it's used solely for good or evil. Fretting over whether or how it's coming is simply illogical, focusing efforts on making sure it's used properly is the only forward thinking, reality accepting solution.

We have advanced weaponry, but we don't spend life at the point of a gun. Decisions have been made to apply technology in this way and to allow technology to be applied in this way. We're not surrendering to some sort of technological determinism, but to government contractors, Congressmen, judges, the unitary Executive, and a short list of private companies and individuals. The government always had the ability to m…

but we don't spend life at the point of a gun.

Don't we? I guess it varies depending on the neighborhood, but there are more guns in the U.S. than cell phones, and it's not just the government that's armed to the teeth, it's everyone from your local mugger to your local teenager (and I'm not just talking about school shooters, I'm talking about adults under 20 who legally hold as well as the range of kids illegally blasting themselves and others in the streets).

This is all to say, I agree with the parent; you can't close Pandora's box. Mass surveillance is quickly becoming too cheap not to be inevitable, not to mention that most people voluntarily crowdsource the surveillance behemoth by uploading their entire lives to facebook and passing everything else into google. One might argue that mass surveillance is already here, if it's a true dystopia remains to be seen.

https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/

Re: Can We Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia?

#36

Post by snizzysnaps »

I'm tired of this argument. Really.

LISTEN UP: There is only this tiny fraction of the population that cares about surveillance, represented by a tech minority, Hacker News, and Reddit.

The rest of the country could care less. They're 10x more outraged that Netflix seems a little slow this week, or that their favorite jelly donut is out of stock at Krispy Kreme.

We've had a surveillance state for 30 years, and nothing is going to change that.

If you don't want to be surveilled get rid of all of your electronics.

The truth is, the gov't is going to continue on the path of a Brave New World, not 1984.

Don't believe me? 50% of ALL drugs produced in the world are used by Americans. All most people care about is their next bump of Oxycontin with a chaser of Xanex, and the next bit of TV or internet nonsense they are going to piss their time away on.

Edward Snowden proved - that deep down - the masses don't care, and they certainly aren't going to do anything about it.

I wish this circle-jerk would end.

Re: Can We Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia?

#37

Post by lelandbatey »

trekky1700 wrote: post #8

I think super accurate mass surveillance is inevitable. It goes with expanding technological capabilities, both government and civilian. I think the real question needs to be focused at how it's applied, whether it's used solely for good or evil. Fretting over whether or how it's coming is simply illogical, focusing efforts on making sure it's used properly is the only forward thinking, reality accepting solution.

Indeed, I get the feeling that whining isn't the solution; trying to get out in front of it is.

As a bit of a social experiment, I acually built this just a couple days ago: http://whereis.lelandbatey.com/

My location is updated via GPS every two minutes, and the last checked in location is marked on the map. I'm curious what will happen, if anything.

Re: Can We Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia?

#38

Post by onnoonno »

sentientmachine wrote: post #18

The question is, which civilization will most thoroughly utilize the superpower that is the internet and getting millions of people to act in unison, as one. We will need new founding fathers to re-write the book on what the most perfect union looks like. Perhaps capitalism is not the best system, considering everyone can instantly know what everyone else is contributing or not contributing.

Maybe we shouldn't be thinking in terms of utopia/dystopia or good and evil. If there is one thing about us, it is technology marching on.

Maybe we're just slowly being converted (or converting ourselves) into the borg. And it isn't brutal, it is cozy, nice, a little bit dull maybe, because we are working on losing our ape-like rawness. If it would be brutal, it wouldn't be efficient, and we highly value efficiency! We have the drugs for 'fixing people', and the neuroscience progresses. Maybe we'll simply end up as some kind of big, self-aware, computing foam covering the whole planet. Which many here would describe as 'dystopian', yet it is interestingly close to the simple idea of 'utopia' from, let's say, the movie 'Avatar'.

Re: Can We Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia?

#39

Post by iamwithnail »

snizzysnaps wrote: post #36

I'm tired of this argument. Really. LISTEN UP: There is only this tiny fraction of the population that cares about surveillance, represented by a tech minority, Hacker News, and Reddit. The rest of the country could care less. They're 10x more outraged that Netflix seems a little slow this week, or that their favorite jelly donut is out of stock at Krispy Kreme. We've had a surveillance state for 30 years, and nothin…

They don't. But they should. And that's part of the problem.

Re: Can We Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia?

#40

Post by sentenza »

vectorpush wrote: post #35
pessimizer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have advanced weaponry, but we don't spend life at the point of a gun. Decisions have been made to apply technology in this way and to allow technology to be applied in this way. We're not surrendering to some sort of technological determinism, but to government contractors, Congressmen, judges, the unitary Executive, and a short list of private companies and individuals. The government always had the ability to m…

but we don't spend life at the point of a gun. Don't we? I guess it varies depending on the neighborhood, but there are more guns in the U.S. than cell phones, and it's not just the government that's armed to the teeth, it's everyone from your local mugger to your local teenager (and I'm not just talking about school shooters, I'm talking about adults under 20 who legally hold as well as the range of kids illegally b…

It's not like that in all countries, though. If the technology was inevitably reaching everybody, then guns would be readily available independently of cultural and political frame.
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