Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

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> The tech is there.

This is why comments such "but spy agencies have always been spying, it's their job" have always pissed me off. The spy agencies will continue to encroach on our rights the more "tech is here". We now have "smart" devices with mics and cameras in every room, so they're going to use that.

If 30 years from now we'll use some kind of "bluetooth headset" that actually interacts directly with our thoughts, then they'll use that, too, to screen out thoughts and arrest you for "extremist thoughts". There's no limit for how far these people are willing to go - just because "the tech is here".

And the sad part is the vast majority of people don't understand new tech, so they aren't even aware what's happening until it's way too late. And then it's already "normalized" and the government agencies cry about "how much they need it" and do slight of hand tricks with "look over here, this tech helped us save a kid from kidnapping!" -- "but don't look over there, where we abused it in 95% of the cases for our own twisted and vengeful interests."

Yup. “The tech is there” is just the cowards’ excuse for not doing anything. The tech doesn’t make the difference. England had a police state when the only way to do that was to open paper mail with steam.

This use of facial recognition is a clear violation of the 4th Amendment. The government is always trying to do shit like this, and it’s our job as citizens to stop them. The big takeaway should not be this pathetic, wimpy “they’re always going to try shit” as if trying were the same thing as succeeding. The big takeaway should be give your money to the ACLU and the EFF.

> Yup. “The tech is there” is just the cowards’ excuse for not doing anything. The tech doesn’t make the difference.

I feel like you and the parent of your post are misinterpreting what sho said. I didn't read it as him trying to justify it, or even say "the tech is there (so let's just accept it)", I read it as him pointing out that it's not just the TSA (or other US agencies) doing it.

And how do you know that he's a "coward" and not doing anything about it? What are you doing about it, other than presumably giving money to the ACLU or EFF?

> England had a police state when the only way to do that was to open paper mail with steam.

England (I assume you mean Britain) has never been a "police state", however draconian new laws may be in this day and age. What are you talking about?

The appropriate spectral continuum to consider here is Authority vs Liberty.

Some things to specifically consider:

1) 240 years ago, the USA was the first country founded to prioritize liberty. 'Everyone' else had authoritarian monarchs at the time.

2) IMO, 'police' states are fine outside the USA if that is what those citizens want (e.g. Singapore, Australia, etc.).

3) U.K. has way too many public cameras (for me to feel comfortable).

When your "right" to privacy starts conflicting with your "right" to safety, something has to give.

A false dichotomy should always give first. You can both be safe and have privacy

In my opinion, that's just propaganda. It's not at all clear that all the surveillance is making anyone safer.

Safety is never an absolute. Imagine a world of "very-many-nines" safety, where only once in a century a person died from a violent death, planetwide: the cause of that death would be on people's minds for decades, and any measure for decreasing the chance of it ever happening again would see great support.

Once we have established that safety is a relative term it becomes pretty clear that ruthless surveillance would yield some safety improvement. I think that you can make a much more meaningful stand against surveillance when you acknowledge that, a opposed to outright denying any possible effect.

So far, I don't believe we have much, if any, concrete evidence that pervasive surveillance makes anyone safer. What little evidence exists is self-serving and sounds more like advertising then anything else. These surveillance organizations cost large amounts of money and produce nothing but large backlogs of data that no one has time to analyze.

In my opinion, that only makes it more likely that this data will be misused in order to prove that the dollars spent yielded _something._ That the cry of "safety" is accepted as somehow obviously true is a significant problem and exacerbates the issue.

You'll never seen concrete evidence. Nor is it in anyone's interests to offer it. You have two choices, one at each extreme. You can assume:

- Everyone working for "agencies" do so with no regard for their stated goal and are simply interested in their own personal gain.

- They're genuinely intending to prevent incidents of "crime" and are relatively disinterested in the maintenance of your privacy.

I find the latter more likely than the former, with a mix of the two broadly probable. Given that I find it equally unlikely that they achieve literally nothing. (Frankly even if the former were the truth it seems unlikely they wouldn't prevent something at some point even by accident).

Claiming they do _nothing_ is ill founded. The more valid argument is "But at what cost?"

I strongly disagree with the idea that revealing ways in which pervasive surveillance provides us all with greater safety will somehow nullify that very benefit. This is clearly a simple and straightforward way for those who are performing the surveillance to excuse the fact that they are not, in fact, saving us from anything at all.

To be honest, the only way I might even consider that this kind of surveillance is helping would be to see some concrete examples of them literally saving lives.

I do not believe that those performing the surveillance do nothing, on the contrary, I believe they may be responsible for any number of harms (leaking private information, having that information stolen, becoming a party to blackmail, etc.) But I certainly do not believe that they are making any of us safer.

Much of the data gathered by agencies to make us 'safe' is alter used for ulterior motives such as tax collection or, much worse, spreading of propaganda of censoring anti-establishment information. The recent events in Spain being an example of the last case. There is nothing wrong with having to pay taxes, but using information that you gain access to by scaring people into giving up by waving terrorism in their face is not ethical and not what many people signed up for.

Also, there are lots of actually effective measures to improve safety that don't involve giving governments direct access to what everyone says and does.

this statement is predicated on the violation of our right to privacy having a significant and causal impact on our safety.

I am something like 100x more likely to get struck by lightning _twice_ than I am to be killed by a terrorist

And the govt. controls the lightning man...

While I don't disagree, it's still hard to turn a blind eye to the Texas church shootings, or the Las Vegas shootings, or the NY park pickup truck slaughter. Any politician that just throws up his arms and says "it all just statistics" is likely out of a job.

Privacy invasion has to be stopped by law. There is no way, currently, for a person who has public safety as a responsibility to say "no" to this kind of technology.

It's much the same with businesses invading user privacy and using it to drive profits. Without a law forbidding it, everyone has to keep up with the profits of the most "evil" corporation.

We need explicit laws.

That is perfectly fair, but I think to a larger extent than they realize politicians drive public discourse and narrative. I'm not saying do nothing, i'm simply saying that more often than not the TSA and their methods have been shown to be utterly inept. Just because it is logistically simpler for me I bring 'contraband' on every flight I take...hundreds of flights, never even been noticed. (Most/Many) of us live in a state that declared war on a plant and is losing and the majority of people accept it for no other reason than its the narrative presented to them.

I'm not against doing something, I'm against counting doing anything as equivalent to doing something productive.

I'm against counting doing anything as equivalent to doing something productive.

I completely agree with you.

> Any politician that just throws up his arms and says "it all just statistics" is likely out of a job.

They get away with that when it comes to gun control, why not with privacy too?

NRA yearly budget 220-250musd

EFF yearly budget 9musd...and they have a complicated history with active political engagement.

ACLU yearly budget 133musd

Both the EFF and ACLU do a lot more than just privacy. The NRA does one thing...and they are really good at it. They also have language in the constitution they can mis-interpret. For privacy we are left with the abstractness of unenumerated rights.

> Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Quotes aren't arguments. They are quotes, and often sound like an appeal to authority. And it is further weakened by the weasel words _essential_ and _little temporary_.

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