honest, good faith question: at what point do we say "no more surveillance" and start smashing cameras?
the thoughts "we are free" and "total surveillance when in public" are incompatible...
the thoughts "we are free" and "total surveillance when in public" are incompatible...
See also: https://www.thelocal.dk/20160923/police-instal-cameras-in-ch...
People routinely tear down CCTVs here and in other truely free aka anarchist communities. Another widely known community, Exarcheia, prohibits cameras too.
But then a lot of Middle Eastern women seem to usually get away with it in places.
If we decide that giving up public privacy is palatable (which you may not), only then can we move on to cameras. If we decide they're too powerful of a surveillance tool, law enforcement bodies are going to have to do a lot more hiring to deter crime! And China's bathrooms will need paper dispenser attendants.
Oh, and adopt a no-cellphone Stallman policy or... legislate absolutely Zero Tracking(TM) carrier tower service or something.
If someone hacked my bank, I'd blame the bank more than the hackers; if someone broke into my home and robbed or hurt me, I'd be harsher on them than on my door manufacturer! (Perhaps not even because it's easier to secure my door than it is an electronic banking system but because I'd be more hurt...)
Another distinction I just thought of is that while I have the option of having online accounts to be hacked (or silly-named personas to talk with), I have no option of having a physical place in meatspace to inhabit of my own where I keep my stuff. I need one, and, if I can't get one, I have bigger problems than privacy. :c
That is nonsense.
If a group of people started following you everywhere in public, taking notes of everything you do, measuring anything they can about you that they can without touching you (which increasingly would include health information that is not readily apparent to everyone else) ... you are telling me that that would be perfectly in line with your expectation?
It is unhelpful to conceptualize privacy as binary. Of course, you expect to be seen by other people on the street when you go outside. That does not mean that you expect to be stalked, nor that stalking was somehow an implicitly accepted behavioural norm all along.
Technical capabilities change, and with it, we need to change how we enforce what was previously a natural outcome: You weren't invisible in public, but most people who saw you didn't recognize you and forgot about you within seconds to minutes of seeing you.
The ability to think, speak, write, and associate freely requires privacy. It's not a question of the two being equivalent.
I really despise surveillance, but I am guilty as charged. I have two dash cams in my vechicle.
I think I have a good reason though; being pulled over for driving a old car by our Revenue Collectors, having the nerve to drive past 11:00 pm, and just being pulled over because they can. Oh yea, I'm working on a app that will turn on my smart phone whenever it hears, "Officer".
I think the only remedy to over surveillance will be legislative. I hear it's illegial to video record store employees in France. I don't know if it's true, but we need some of these privacy laws. They will always counter with terrisiom, and theft/vandalism, and the general public will buy it.
Hand up!