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Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

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Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#551
post #471
post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get money out of politics (reverse citizens united) and enact term/age limits for all public offices. These problems will be solved. Most Americans agree on most things. Don't let the politicians who benefit off of dividing us fool you. An agenda that focuses on reform outside of the usual finger pointing game of partisan politics and promises to enact these reforms without fear or favor will win. Any such agenda mus…

> Get money out of politics (reverse citizens united) and enact Citizens United was a case about a federal agency attempting to suppress the publication of a movie due to breaching "electioneering communications" rules first introduced in 2002. Contrary to the common narrative, it was more a case of the government arguing "speech is money" as a pretext to use its authority to regulate certain expenditures of money in…

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Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voice to text, should’ve proofread better

Probably, but I didn't dictate that comment.

No I meant on my end, sorry wasn’t trying to be rude to you. “I used voice to text and I should I’ve proofread it better” is what I was saying.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This argument justifies CCTV surveillance of all public places. Well, yeah, I think that was super obvious, no? > In any case, there needs to be more nuance in the discussion than a one-liner. Not really. Super public busy places like train stations ought to be surveilled. The benefits far outweigh any cons.

There is far more nuance than this. What counts as a "super public busy place" ? The airport? The bus terminal? The local library? All major roads that experience rush hour traffic? Who is the person who says where the cutoff line is? What if that authority wants to move the line to include everything? Or nothing? Do they even need to provide notice to the public of their actions? Who should be able to access to all…

> There is far more nuance than this.

There's just....not. It's a pretty well established concept by now. For almost 50 years or so.

> What counts as a "super public busy place" ? The airport? The bus terminal? The local library? All major roads that experience rush hour traffic?

Yes to all of these.

> Who is the person who says where the cutoff line is?

Not a person, but a sound methodology ideally. Kind of like what we've mostly been doing even if it isn't formalized.

> What if that authority wants to move the line to include everything?

Yes, the slippery slope is a problem, agreed. That's why we need to be vigilant in responding to government plans.

> Do they even need to provide notice to the public of their actions?

In a civilized democracy, they should.

> Government investigative branches only?

Yes, pretty much.

> What about the system administrators?

Not if it can be avoided.

> Does this footage require attestation to prove it's legitimacy in a world where AI can generate footage?

No.

> How long should this footage exist for?

3 - 6 months is typically standard.

> Do I have to trust not just current admins and their superiors but all the people who may be in those roles in perpetuity? IE do I have to trust people who haven't even been born yet?

You have to trust the system is accountable.

> Is it allowed to be centralised,

Ideally, no.

> Or should each site have separate data housing with access terms to match so that tracking a person is a significant task?

Bingo.

> There are a lot of concerns. You may argue that there isn't a lot of nuances because you have a set idea of how it should all go. But others may differ.

I'd argue your concerns have already been addressed by current systems that have worked fine for decades.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#554
post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd prefer train stations don't have CCTV? What about when an attack happens?

The CCTV won't do shit to stop me from being attacked, it's a camera, not a cop. It's only useful for figuring out who to blame after the fact. But there are other ways that we could figure out who to blame after the fact that don't require everything you will ever do to be recorded, forever.

> But there are other ways that we could figure out who to blame after the fact that don't require everything you will ever do to be recorded, forever.

No one said anything about retaining footage forever.

What are your suggestions for help finding an attacker without CCTV footage?

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd prefer train stations don't have CCTV? What about when an attack happens?

If I had a choice, I think I’d prefer not to have my death recorded and viewed by many strangers.

Such footage generally isn't viewable by the public unless it serves the public good.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#556

I really like this passage: >It is always the case that there are benefits available from relinquishing core civil liberties: allowing infringements on free speech may reduce false claims and hateful ideas; allowing searches and seizures without warrants will likely help the police catch more criminals, and do so more quickly; giving up privacy may, in fact, enhance security. > But the core premise of the West genera…

Unfortunately for us all, the assault on liberty even done of the “normies” have started noticing recent, is only the latter stages of this assault on on America that has been going on for arguably 180 years ago.

Many in American history have noted that America is a kind of natural fortress protected by ocean moats. What that assumption just did not take into account is how America’s enemies would take action against America with that assumption taken as granted. It has come in the form of endless amounts of infiltration, subversion, corruption, and pollution… as any half-witted strategist and saboteur would have done. America was simply not sophisticated enough to realize that massive threat, because the leaders relied on that assumption that the USA is an impenetrable fort; never considering what happens if your fort is infiltrated through the many different means you open yourself up to being infiltrated.

America, a genuine America or whatever one can scrape together to consider as such, not just one that emulates and imitates like some kind of container cult, is really not long for this world. Another 20 years and Americas simile stops existing in anything but name only, if that, since there’s not even any reason or incentive anymore to keep the name out the branding at that point.

What do we call this place post America? Maybe we just come right out and just call it Oceania.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what this ENTIRE conversation is about… the (ostensible) trade off between surveillance and security. In the case of an attack, I’d wish for a gendarme not a recording that would let me relive the experience.

Right, and I was saying it's wrong not to want surveillance in a super public area like a train station. A gendarme is worse in every way.

The gendarme might actually arrest the attacker. The security camera will do nothing (but record). And having the policeman standing there is about as much a deterrent as a "Smile--You're Being Recorded" sign.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#558
post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jan 6 wasn't an insurrection. Nobody was armed except one guy with a pistol and the dude with a spear. It was a bunch of obese methbillies trashing the place. Insurrections do not look like that.

- Jan 6, the day the votes are certified by Congress. - The goal was interrupting the peaceful transfer of presidential power, a foundational element of U.S. constitutional governance. - Force was used to disrupt lawful governmental authority. - Part of a larger conspiracy to use alternate slates of electors to dispute the election and send it back to state legistatures (see Eastman memo and resulting lawsuits).

All these things are true except

- Force was used to disrupt lawful governmental authority.

In the end, it wasn't anything history books will recognize as an insurrection. Because it wasn't an insurrection. That word means something, and this wasn't it. Was it bad? A bad thing? Yes, it was a bad thing I'd say. Not an insurrection though. Whatever those people did, it wasn't going to change anything. The powers that be could have had every last one of them killed with a snap of their fingers. They didn't because that would have been an overreaction to a bunch of methbillies trashing the place.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#559

Great writeup. Glenn mentions that he stopped using Gemini. While I still use Gemini for technical research and occasional coding/design work via Antigravity, for all day to day queries and prompts I have switched to using Proton's Lumo that is really quite good: use of a strong Mistral model and web search is 100% private, and while chat history is preserved for a while it is stored and processed like Proton Mail. M…

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Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#560
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universal human rights is a very widespread belief and concept, extending to all continents and many, many cultures. It's not hard to understand why.

No it's not. There are no human rights for the lowest castes in Hinduism, there are no human rights for polytheists in Islam, there were nothing like the modern idea of human rights in Japan or China before they westernized. That's why the west was able to leapfrog other nations economically (and hence militarily), because it was the first place where people had enough rights for something resembling a modern economy…

And there were no human rights for the slaves of the Western nations.
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