Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance

#91

Post by gerdesj » Sun, Feb 18, 2018, 10:41 PM UTC

icc97 wrote: post #73

mhb wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like boiling a frog In 2002 Dr. Victor H. Hutchison, Professor Emeritus of Zoology at the University of Oklahoma, with a research interest in thermal relations of amphibians, said that "The legend is entirely incorrect!" He described how a critical thermal maximum for many frog species has been determined by contemporary research experiments: as the water is heated by about 2 °F, or 1.1 °C, per minute, the frog becom…

Damn, there goes another good theory. Perhaps I should change my example to the English getting sunburnt lying on Spanish beaches.

I think you'll find that is more likely Scots rather than English. The Big Yin famously described the effect in his Aussie tours. To be fair, us southerners can also burn as well (but I personally don't.)

What you might consider "English" is two countries and four nations. It's complicated. For safety, I'd refer to the two large islands off the NW of mainland Europe as "Britain and Ireland" (in short.) It's complicated.

Re: Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance

#92

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Sun, Feb 18, 2018, 10:43 PM UTC

gerdesj wrote: post #87

HenryBemis wrote: post #26

Briton are 95% comfortable with massive surveillance. The "average Joe" has the "I got nothing to hide" and that "go get them paedophiles", which are very true statements. We are talking about a nation that has 4,200,000 [1] cameras surveilling them and nobody bats an eye about this. For some reason, Britons have decided (or was forced to them and they didn't push back) that privacy is not necessary, so, let them hav…

We are Britons in Britain. There is no one living here by the name of Average Joe. There are a lot of cameras here, many more than than some other places apparently. The vast majority of those cameras are in town and city centres or on the motorways. It is possible that in Britain we are able to count better (and publish) than some other regions and hence look bad in this regard - who knows. I don't feel more "survei…

>> Push back? Will do when things really do go wrong. You don't know us ... mate.

Problem is, if things "really" do go wrong, it will be too late to push back.

Re: Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance

#93

Post by Spivak » Sun, Feb 18, 2018, 10:46 PM UTC

myopicgoat wrote: post #4

lokopodium wrote: post #2

Mac address randomization is a must if your wifi is on in public (you don't even need to connect anywhere to be fingerprinted and tracked). Also use cookie self-destruct plugins for your browser.

MAC address randomisation has been proven to be essentially useless: https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.02874v1

The goal isn't to defeat every possible form of tracking, it's to make it more difficult than it's worth to track you. Do you think this system even bothers to take into account the tiny number of people who turn MAC randomization on?

I don't think my door lock is going to protect me against a professional locksmith, having one is nonetheless still useful.

Re: Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance

#94

Post by celticninja » Sun, Feb 18, 2018, 10:50 PM UTC

desas wrote: post #79

celticninja wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New government can easily reverse or change the policies of previous governments, the civil service jut enacts what the government of the day tells them to do.

Sort of. The civil service has lots of people with their own agenda which they push to the elected politicians when they ask the civil service for options on how to solve problems

The civil service doesn't push their own agenda. They are tasked with finding solutions to enact policy decisions, they provide the best solutions that they can that will fulfill the policy presented by the government. A civil servant cannot push their own agenda and the civil service as a whole doesn't have an agenda except to serve the government of the day to the best of their ability regardless of their personal politics.

Re: Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance

#95

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Sun, Feb 18, 2018, 11:07 PM UTC

HenryBemis wrote: post #26

Briton are 95% comfortable with massive surveillance. The "average Joe" has the "I got nothing to hide" and that "go get them paedophiles", which are very true statements. We are talking about a nation that has 4,200,000 [1] cameras surveilling them and nobody bats an eye about this. For some reason, Britons have decided (or was forced to them and they didn't push back) that privacy is not necessary, so, let them hav…

>> Briton are 95% comfortable with massive surveillance. The "average Joe" has the "I got nothing to hide" and that "go get them paedophiles", which are very true statements.

The British just have their own ideas about privacy. I've lived here 12 years and I still don't understand how almost everybody leaves their blinds up with the lights on, after dark. It's not without risk either. I think it was last summer when, for a few nights, Creepy Old Dude would walk past my window mumbling "show us your pussy" and "show us your legs". On the other hand, every so often someone tars people leaving their blinds down or curtains drawn as "skivers" sleeping it off through the day while everyone else goes to work [1], or as potential terrorists hiding some nefarious plot [2].

Then again, when a few years ago, the Labour government passed a law introducing ID cards for every citizen, everybody went up in arms - citing everything from concers about the potential for abuse and discrimination against minorities, the access of third parties to the database etc. Even -I kid you not- the conflict of a national ID card with Human Rights legislation, which is usually portrayed as a "criminal's charter" [4].

But- nobody worries that this is the European nation with most cameras than any other, or about the "Snooper's charter" (a.k.a. the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 [5]). I guess people really feel they have nothing to fear. There may be a historical explanation for why the UK is like this: most other nations in Europe have at some point been under the control of a totalitarian government that spied on its citizens and used the information collected to brutally oppress them.

But I'm sure that will never happen in the UK.

_______________

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2012/oct/08/curtai...

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10929203

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006#Object...

[4] Search for "Human rights laws are a charter for criminals, say 75% of Britons". I'm not linking to the Daily Mail directly.

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016

Re: Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance

#96

Post by gerdesj » Sun, Feb 18, 2018, 11:13 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #92

gerdesj wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are Britons in Britain. There is no one living here by the name of Average Joe. There are a lot of cameras here, many more than than some other places apparently. The vast majority of those cameras are in town and city centres or on the motorways. It is possible that in Britain we are able to count better (and publish) than some other regions and hence look bad in this regard - who knows. I don't feel more "survei…

>> Push back? Will do when things really do go wrong. You don't know us ... mate. Problem is, if things "really" do go wrong, it will be too late to push back.

Bear in mind that this is a land that has executed kings and been a short lived Republic, run up a fairly large Empire and died back down and is still a constitutional monarchy. We've done a few other things here as well.

It's never too late. We're odd.

Re: Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance

#97

Post by dozzie » Sun, Feb 18, 2018, 11:17 PM UTC

andrewaylett wrote: post #88

dozzie wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't They do, or at least that's what they said.

No, they claimed to be German, and _in that capacity_ responded to their parent.

Not really. bayerrr said to icc97:

> As a German, you could not be more wrong [...]

bayerrr claimed that icc97 was German (this is how this grammatical construction works).

Re: Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance

#98

Post by dvdhnt » Sun, Feb 18, 2018, 11:17 PM UTC

yesenadam wrote: post #90

dvdhnt wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I'm going to toss out downvote material because I think it's important to say. > Briton are 95% comfortable with massive surveillance. I think Americans are actually 99% comfortable with massive surveillance but can't admit it because of our culture. We consume reality TV like no one's business, watch YouTube to see people do dumb things in real life, and just in general, feel the urge to record and capture eve…

>Okay, I'm going to toss out downvote material because I think it's important to say. I didn't get past that first sentence of irrelevant filler.

You’d be better served expending energy reading my comment rather than proclaiming your failure to read it, friend.

Re: Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance

#99

Post by yesenadam » Sun, Feb 18, 2018, 11:38 PM UTC

dvdhnt wrote: post #98

yesenadam wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Okay, I'm going to toss out downvote material because I think it's important to say. I didn't get past that first sentence of irrelevant filler.

You’d be better served expending energy reading my comment rather than proclaiming your failure to read it, friend.

Well, judging from the first line, I thought not. And don't be snarky then call me "friend". Thanks. I guess I was too obliquely referring to the "don't mention voting, it's tiresome" guideline. I was offering anecdata, sample size 1, that your first line could also serve to deter readers, which it seemed you hadn't considered. Well, I've learnt (from this and my previous attempt) that offering what free advice I can on here on how to better reach readers, isn't appreciated, so I shall stop. Thanks.

Re: Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance

#100

Post by KirinDave » Sun, Feb 18, 2018, 11:39 PM UTC

ppod wrote: post #77

KirinDave wrote: post #53

There is something very important in working out our tolerance to surveillance vs the utility that is absolutely impossible to get without risking surveillance. I can't really articulate it yet, but reading this article it occurs to me how really the old phone system didn't offer much more in the way of privacy (every phone call was recorded), but it offered more in the way of obscurity. Now that our information syst…

Societies that willingly forego privacy in order to allow things like social credit scores will have a large competitive advantage. The effect on social interaction and interaction with the state will be similar to the effect that tripadvisor has on restaurants, or that uber and lyft have on taxi customer service. Our historical models of losing privacy emphasise the state at the centre of the panoptican observing al…

Knowing what I know about credit scores, it's a bad example.

But I agree that the fundamental struggle with legible societies is asymmetry of access to data and a fair and open access leads to fairer outcomes.

As for a "competitive advantage" personally I think such concepts are nonsensical and over prioritize the personal experience of those at the top of huge social hierarchies rather than any reality.