Hacker News Reader

Comment by dumb-saint | Hacker News Reader

I find it extremely creepy to visit the UK because of all the cameras, sometimes actively pointed at me. It is one thing to not expect privacy in the public space, in the sense that others can see you. It is another to be actively targeted by a gigantic network of cameras connected to who knows what -- in an age where automatic face recognition is becoming trivial.

I would like to ask people who make the "you have no expectation of privacy in the public space" claim if they wouldn't mind if I hired a guy to follow them everywhere they go and then report to me.

In the end, I am aware that this is a losing battle, and that people who feel as strongly as me about not being constantly under surveillance will have to move out of big cities. Big cities are becoming highly controlled environment, where one doesn't feel like a sovereign human being anymore. In a sense they are an externalisation of corporate culture.

View on HN

Regarding automatic face recognition: I believe most US/European citizens, at least those who travel on airplanes, are in the facial recognition corpus of the intelligence services by now. What they do (I'm guessing) is use the cameras at passport checkpoints in airports. There they get many thousands of frames of your face from various angles, and due to the strict ordering in the queue they can match all those to your ID when your passport is scanned/entered into the computer.

Yes, I think modern airports are a good prototype for the sort of dystopian environments we can expect in the future. It will only get worse until the entire thing collapses, as it always does -- Stasi, McCarthyism, Gestapo, you name it. This time it's more scary because the technology is sci-fi compared to the previous iterations.

I am more and more convinced that the cyberpunk guys got it right in terms of predicting future trends :(

[Apologies for off-topic]

As a relatively new cyberpunk fan, let me give you a few points:

(1) Cyberpunk is very much about being realistic about human nature. Some of us (like me) assume malice by default. You might not believe me but I get saddened every time I am proven right. This is coming from a 36-year old programmer supporting his mother and girlfriend.

(2) We don't assume altruism by default because (2.1) history is [mostly] not on the side of this sentiment and (2.2) we are touched by ambition and greed ourselves and we realize that we could become just as bad (if not worse) given the same power as the current spy agencies / corporate hires / whatever else.

(3) We understand that "pure capitalism" and "corporatism" leads to the 0.5% having 95% of the capital, assets and anything else valuable. So when you see a dark art piece on DeviantArt showing people miserable on the streets while a high-tech shiny vehicle surrounded by police-men passes by, and a few huge adverts are glowing in the background, don't be quick to say "2edgy4me". ;)

(4) We also know technology is seen as a way of gaining an unfair advantage over everybody else -- and most of the time technology is not used to the majority's advantage. If somebody invents AI by themselves, do you think they'll just share it with the world? LOL no. The "Transcedence" movie script is the most likely scenario -- the AI becomes sentient, escapes to the internet to evade attackers, and then talks to you through a smartphone or a tablet.

=== The general cyberpunk audience is wide and interesting but it mostly boils down to two types:

(1) Rebelious teenagers who would give everything just to prove the bad adults that if their thoughts and feelings are ignored, the world is gonna go to shit (and to be fair, they might have a point). Some of them are toxic, some are not -- but they're mostly an okay bunch. Still, I give them kudos for going outside the typical teenager boxes. Getting engaged in cyberpunk fandom consciously implies some level of critical thinking, IMO.

(2) A group of rather dark-souled adults who stopped believing in the "bright future" a long time ago. Again, we're touched by greed and ambition ourselves, we're very conscious about the balance of power around the world and we don't kid ourselves.

I hope this helps you understand the cyberpunk bunch a bit.

EDIT:

As mentioned by @Fnoord a few comments below, "Ghost in the Shell" is your absolute Bible of a starting place in the cyberpunk genre. The anime movies and the series touch on a plethora of problems that don't even exist yet but are extremely likely to exist pretty soon. And they are a masterpiece in exposing the corruption which all of us would be vulnerable to.

Order of watching:

http://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/2922/in-what-order-...

Thanks for that. Can you suggest some additional reading?

Apologies, not yet (correction: see my edit in the parent comment). It's a newfound "love" of mine only for 2-3 months now (and I am a busy guy). I am just getting immersed in the art and short comics aspect for now. I haven't gone to reading the Blade Runner fanfics just yet. ;)

FWIW, Tumblr and DeviantArt have a lot of art and fanfic work in the cyberpunk genre. Pinterest too, to a lesser extent. You should start there.

Funny that I saw Ghost in the Shell when it was originally released in the cinema but for some reason didn't think of it as cyberpunk!

Time to dive into it again it seems!

Not sure if manga qualifies as reading but for manga/anime cyberpunk I can recommend Ghost In The Shell. It deeply touches these subjects, from multiple angles.

Then, since you specifically said read, there's Philip K. Dick, who wrote loads of books on this genre. When people think of Blade Runner they don't even know its based on a novel by him [1]

If you're referring to a book which studies cyberpunk as a genre from a documentary PoV then I wouldn't know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_...

+1000 for "Ghost in the Shell", I am ashamed to have forgotten to mention this absolute masterpiece which remains unbeaten in this genre to this day.

I've finally just started reading Snow Crash since I told myself I would one day roughly 15 years ago.

It's excellent.

Thanks! :)

+1 For Ghost in the Shell. Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig was great.

I'd recommend Diamond Age. The shows shows almost the death of Cyberpunk (poor people) into Victorian Style Steampunk (rich people).

The US overtly explicitly gather the photographs and fingerprints of visitors

https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/general/border-bio...

> Select travel procedures and biometrics to learn more about the Department of Homeland Security’s program at U.S. ports-of-entry, which verifies the identity of the traveler using the electronic fingerprint data and digital photographs.

Visitors and Permanent Residents.

I would love to know the rationale of greater scrutiny of PR's - I suspect it would be quite hard for someone to forge a "green card" (it has a lot of obvious security features built in) and it needs to match your passport anyway. It's not a big deal but it always stuck me as a waste of time.

Here's a terrific-terrible idea: let's create an open network of surveillance cameras with facial recognition. Permanent logs, free access to all, an easy search function, plot all events on a map with timestamps. Should kick up a storm.

That is a great idea, but it will not work. People will say that only the government and big corporations can be trusted with that data, because of reasons.

I think it's a terrible idea. If I decide to call in sick and go lamp shopping, there's a vast difference between the FBI or Google being able to track me, with some effort, and my boss being able to idly hit a web page and see where I am. At the end of the day most of us are hiding trivial, below-the-radar infidelities, not dragging dismembered bodies around in suitcases or plotting revolutions.

You could probably take geo located timestamp Facebook / instagram / snapchat and get a similar result.

I entirely sympathize. Over time, I've gradually come to the same conclusion as Bruce Schneier in Data and Goliath: regulation and legislation are the only way to make sure that surveillance works in the interests of the people, not against them. It should be possible for a society to decide what its surveillance is and is not used for.

The problem that we currently have in the US and the UK is that there is a total breakdown of trust between the state and the citizenry. The government does not trust the people it obstensibly serves, and lies to them. Many people generally are apathetic and disorganized (proud individualists). It's the latter part that means that decisions are likely to go against the interests of the population, and this problem extends well beyond surveillance.

I should have originally mentioned, it's possible for CCTV -- without good legislation -- to have almost no utility for individuals. This is what the linked article demonstrates; corporate surveillance protects corporate interests.

All this said, I remain optimistic about the prospect for change. 2016 beat the political apathy out of me.

I've never understood this "UK is creepy cos of all the cameras they have". Yes, there are a lot of them in the built up cities, most are privately owned and a lot are probably directly controlled by the government (and related agencies as well).

The large paranoia towards the UK probably stems from "The UK has more CCTV cameras per person than anywhere else in the world" but no ones knows this to be true for certain[1][2].

It may well be true, but don't think that you're being filmed any less in any other first world country. Also worth noting that most of the statistics are based on "per person". There may well be countries with a much higher population and much higher CTTV camera count.

1. https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/cctv_cameras_per_capi... 2. http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/spy-britain-six-million-cc...

> It may well be true, but don't think that you're being filmed any less in any other first world country.

In Germany there are strong laws against CCTV proliferation. They exist mostly in public transportation, and their presence has to be clearly advertised. You can even order Google to blur your house on street view. Try it in a German city, and you will see how common it is.

And yet, Germany is one of the safest countries in the world.

I think Germany being safe is a result of culture, not anything with cameras. Many, many modern problems are fundamentally cultural issues and things like CCTV cameras are either masking or exhibiting their symptoms.

Wouldn't cameras-per-person be a more meaningful metric in this context than total count?

I agree with the parent r.e. safety concerns though. It's a cheap, easy way to provide a relatively sure record of truth for public spaces. It helps prosecute people who enact violent or other crimes, and reduces the number of those in the first place.

Do you disagree with that, or value being invisible in public higher?

I agree that more authoritarianism leads to less crimes. This is a well-known fact. But at what cost? Historically, we have been through all this before.

Notice that it's never just the cameras. You also have to make it illegal for me to hide from them. No face camouflage, for example. And even if you don't make it illegal, you will immediately single me out and pay close attention to me. Not in the old sense of having some police officers "keeping an eye on me" but in the new sense of using the full power of all of our current technology to track me.

I'll tell you what the cost is: spontaneity, randomness, street-level interaction, the right to be WEIRD. All this while crime rates have been naturally going down for decades. None of this stuff is about crime for the politicians, it's about control and business deals (I promise you someone sells all those cameras and related equipment to the cities, and it's not you or me).

I am not that old, but old enough to already see that historical lessons don't last long, and everything has to be learned over and over again :(

Lots of CCTV isn't government-run. Some is, like local parks or whatever, but most is run by businesses who want to be able to catch folks who have broken in. In order to get access to the footage, police generally need a warrant.

I guess I disagree that "camera == authoritarian", but I totally get your concerns. I'd be more worried about the secret courts(US) and super-injunctions(England) that mean we can't talk about things, than I would about being on camera.

I have no problem with businesses having CCTV inside their premises -- as long as this is clearly advertised, so that I can decide if I'm ok with it or not. But I don't think they have the right to point the camera to the public space outside and film me without my consent.

Cameras are a tool of authoritarianism because they tell you in no uncertain terms that someone is watching. Pointing a camera at a space changes how people behave in it. There is no way around it. Maybe you don't value what they destroy, but it is hard to deny that something is destroyed.

Imagine kids playing. Do you think they behave the same when no adults are watching? And do you think it is good for mental health to have zero "unsupervised" time?

And then, let's not be naive. After Snowden we know that the reach of the government knows no bounds. Every private camera is potentially public. Everything that is recorded is potentially recorded forever, and sifted through by increasingly powerful algorithms. In this realty, one less camera is always a little bit more freedom for everyone -- to do both good and bad things, of course, but I would rather live like a free adult than as a constantly supervised child, always submissive to Society with a big S.

>Cameras are a tool of authoritarianism because they tell you in no uncertain terms that someone is watching. Pointing a camera at a space changes how people behave in it.

Not really? I don't look for cameras and I legit don't see them pretty much anywhere. I know they're in all the tube stations, but it doesn't make me wary?

I'm sure cameras mean you're less likely to do things which are not allowed - but guess what, I actually would rather have less vandalism, less assault, etc etc. Now if you want to straw man and say "well they can make anything illegal and use the cameras against you" - well sure. Come back to me when they do that, until then I'll keep enjoying lower crime rates.

> until then I'll keep enjoying lower crime rates

Unless you live in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Japan, or Singapore, it's unlikely you'll have lower crime rates than Germany.

Yet, Germany has close to no surveillance of public spaces, at all, as private surveillance of public space is banned, and public surveillance of public space is very strictly regulated.

> Not really? I don't look for cameras and I legit don't see them pretty much anywhere. I know they're in all the tube stations, but it doesn't make me wary?

Are you saying or are you asking?

> I'm sure cameras mean you're less likely to do things which are not allowed - but guess what, I actually would rather have less vandalism, less assault, etc etc.

Yes, and you are also less likely to do things that are allowed, but that could still harm you depending on who's watching. Kiss your girlfriend. Do a silly dance. Participate in that protest. Use that t-shirt with the political message. Hold hands with your gay lover. The public space changes when you point a camera at it.

Don't worry too much about arguing with me -- I will lose this argument. Every day that passes, fewer people will remember what a world without constant monitoring looked like. You can't miss what you never experienced.

> Now if you want to straw man and say "well they can make anything illegal and use the cameras against you" - well sure.

A strawman is when you attack a claim that was not actually made by your opponent. Maybe the expression you are looking for is "slippery slope"?

> Come back to me when they do that,

"They" have already done that over and over in analogous historical situations. I can show them to you, but you will probably just say that I am exaggerating and that this is a different situation. Just as people did back then.

> until then I'll keep enjoying lower crime rates.

Crime rates have been going down for decades, long before all this new tech. The perception of crime rates has been going up, because of many things including the lowering standards of journalism. I live in a very safe big city where CCTV cameras are mostly illegal.

I'm not asking, I'm telling but with a questioning inflection to reflect the absurdity of the statement.

I don't believe any of your suggestions are true in a way that don't apply to public spaces in general. I wouldn't do "thing x" in case the wrong people saw, but that includes the possibility of a friend of my boss seeing me making out with his wife so I'm not going to do that where I might be seen.

Claiming that surveillance is bad because oppression is bad is a Strawman. It's the process of taking any position (the GP stating public cameras are fine) and then introducing your own version of his claim (Cameras=Oppression) and then arguing against oppression.

>"They" have already done that over and over in analogous historical situations.

This argument sits in the box with my father who was eternally upset because we didn't have the military to fight a war and we'd regret that because ~World War 3~. He may indeed end up being right, but to pretend that nuclear proliferation hasn't changed the face of war seems ludicrous to me.

It all depends on your model of who is on the other side of the camera. If you think the entity on the other side is on your side, you probably have fuzzy feeling about cameras. If you don't think that the watcher is someone like you, it feels creepy.

Again, historically, people who had comfortable positions in an oppressive regime tend to sincerely claim that the abuses being attributed to secret/political polices are an exaggeration. They are usually not lying, they had a nice position in society, so those that protect the status quo feel benevolent to them.

Most people on this site have a very nice situation in live compared to the remaining 99% (to be conservative) of the world. So I take any "doesn't bother me" uttered here with a grain of salt. Also, many here have a vested interest in the expansion of the global technocracy.

When I go to the UK I feel oppressed, even though I have no intention of breaking the law. You can argue that I am crazy and should take some meds, but this is how I actually feel. Judging from art that I see (for example from Banksy), I don't think I'm alone in feeling like that.

>When I go to the UK I feel oppressed, even though I have no intention of breaking the law. [..] Judging from art that I see (for example from Banksy), I don't think I'm alone in feeling like that.

I very much doubt you're alone, and I am more than happy to concede that my perceptions and your perceptions are both valid. When you start saying that the current UK government is oppressive though, i'm liable to get a bit fractious about the meaning of words. They are not, on any realistic measure, an oppressive regime.

> A strawman is when you attack a claim that was not actually made by your opponent.

...

> I can show them to you, but you will probably just say that I am exaggerating and that this is a different situation.

Which is precisely what proceeded to happen: "I don't believe any of your suggestions are true in a way that don't apply to public spaces in general. I wouldn't do "thing x" in case the wrong people saw, but that includes the possibility of a friend of my boss seeing me making out with his wife so I'm not going to do that where I might be seen."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13220139

There's plenty of spontaneity, randomness and street-level interaction occurring in the cities of the UK. I see this every day. I don't think CCTV is stopping this.

There's no point arguing over something we can't measure. Instead let me give you a scenario:

Behaviour X is illegal. "No expectation of privacy in the public space" people argue that, well, stopping illegal behaviours is great, don't you think? There will always be an implicit shaming: surely you are not up to something questionable, right?

Time passes and now 75% of the population believes that behaviour X is fine and should be legal. Nobody will ever rebel and do X in public, because they could go to jail. Civil disobedience is over.

No, we have total order and we should go through the "proper channels" to change the law. Like Snowden should have done. Like homosexuals should have done, instead of throwing the reality of their existence in everyone's face, in the public space.

Don't you see how much power this apparatus of surveillance represents? Don't you read enough history to know how much power corrupts, and how no human being can be trusted with it?

How the fuck can anyone believe that politicians care about crime? Crime has been going DOWN, consistently, for decades. Do you ever see politicians pointing that out? No! They want to give you more "solutions" for a problem that appears to be solving itself. Why? What is in it for them? Ask yourself that.

Want to save people? Show them how to eat better. Improving nutrition would be orders of magnitude more effective in saving lives. Can't be done though, because it would interfere with too many corporate interests.

Meta-study: http://www.popcenter.org/Responses/video_surveillance/PDFs/W...

TLDR: The value and effects of CCTV cameras are very much context-dependent. Also, nearly half of the research in this are was deemed too unreliable by the authors.

> I would like to ask people who make the "you have no expectation of privacy in the public space" claim if they wouldn't mind if I hired a guy to follow them everywhere they go and then report to me.

I wouldn't mind.

My life is divided into public and private spheres. If you try to invade my private space (spy inside my home, ban encryption, etc.) then you will have rigorous pushback.

My public life is public and open to inspection. I'll gladly provide you with a list of everywhere I ever go if you like.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com