Comment by vonklaus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vonklaus | Hacker News Reader

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I have began to change, or at least think more deeply about survelience and the role of gov't.

I still am pretty much the same mind of the author, and blanket survelience is intrusive, ineffective and anti-anerican; both literally and in sentiment.

However, and I still not sure what role I trust the gov't to play here, the need for defense is pretty strong.

Let's take this red test for example:

While $100k is a lot of money to me, we will assume many people could have access to this amount.

There were > 1 million people in times square on NYE.

The strike cabanilities of an inclined individual are higher now than ever. This is the negative sode effect of the otherwise positive shift in individual autonomy and lowering of power distance between entrenched heirarchies and individuals.

A flock of drones can be purchased and controlled remotely and outfitted with bombs or guns and used to conduct an attack previously reserved for the u.s militaries indiscriminate bombing raids on other countries.

Analytical tooling and conputation can be purchased cheaply. Trend analytics, macroshift evaluation and near real time satelite imagery can be had for little money.

Biohacking is quite new but even after the overhype of the synthesis of (i think it was) smallpox from discrete labs, this is still semi-possible.

So, I don't think it is up to the government to fix this, especially with blanket survelience, but we do need to come up with a reasonable way to mitigate threats.

5 people and 100k could basically outfit a safehouse, a drone fleet, real time intelligience and a small bio labratory giving those who would not use that amazing luxury for good, the ability to create a high impact negative change event.

You set a scenario for a potential disaster but what has surveillance done to protect those in times square on new year. This question has no answer and the answer if it exists is NOT something a democracy has access to.

So if surveillance is an answer to a potential terror plot then what needs to be known is whether it can actually be effective. Terror plots are not the norm of human life. They are feared more because we humans are designed by nature to be afraid first when we see a lion, run away and think later. If we stood there contemplating the possibility of of having a deep conversation with that lion that lion would have managed to have a meal deep in its stomach. Thought is very low on mother nature's agenda. Even other great apes don't comment here! Basically we are more afraid of the danger because we are primed to be so. I guess what I'm trying to say is that while fear is a danger is a logical thing it shouldn't be the only thing to consider when deciding on surveillance. Currently it is the only reason presented to the public and it is not good enough on its own.

I agree and, except for the "terror plots aren'the norm" conclusion, im with you.

What I am driving at is that while the blanket "people" who watch fox news and are scared of brown people label terroists as myslims, i am proposing a different idea of "distuptive event".

It had nothing to do with edgecases like 9/11. Look at it like gun violence. I think people should be able to own guns, but the more people own guns, the more ahootings there are. If 0 people had guns, there would be 0 shootings.

So, suppose you were (i am) willing to accept x amount of ahootings to keep this right and we know some people will legally pr illegally obtain guns and do ill with them.

My point, is that eventually, people will have the same access to the strike capabilities of small governments in the 90s for very little money. I believe we should retain these rightts, we will have casualties to such freedom, but we also need to expect that as peoplehave the ability to affect global change positively, they do negatively as well.

Whena group of small people have the power to go to mars for example that is great, however similarly many peoplewill have access to satellites in > 10 years. So we need to be pretty cognizant of how we handle this.

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