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Comment by fixermark | Hacker News Reader

Reasonable people can disagree on the definition of "unreasonable," however.

Is it "unreasonable" for the Amber Alert system to co-opt the eyes and attention of ten thousand citizens around a kidnapped child? Hard to say. Most people seem to think 'no.'

If that system could co-opt camera feeds instead of human attention, we could get most (all?) of the benefits of the existing Amber Alert without having to burn civilian resources on it. Wouldn't that be a strict improvement over the current system?

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Is it right to track the all online dealings of people that may be connected to terrorist organizations? Pretty reasonable people seem to think yes (Patriot Act).

Is it right for the government to track all the online dealings of an average citizen? Most people think no.

You may see a discrepancy here. That is why there is the saying "First they came for the fascists...". It is why when we talk about breaking encryption and backdoors discussion is centered around terrorists and pedos. Because those are universally hated groups. The problem comes with the fact that there is spill over. (See cases like San Bernardino shooting or the cop that is sitting in jail without sentencing because they know he has child porn on an encrypted drive. Btw, they use this same tactic to frame less controversial legal cases too)

I think if backdoors/searches/whatever could only be applied to universally hated groups and not include a single random citizen than there would be almost unanimous agreement that we should do that (you are not violating a "non-criminal's" rights). The problem is that technology doesn't allow us to exclusively target those kinds of groups. As tech oriented people we understand that this spill over HAS to happen, but the average citizen (outside SV) does not understand the how it works, the scale, nor ramifications. I'd like to remind everyone that 1984 wasn't about the government watching everyone at all times, but having the ability to. I'm not sure why we call that a dystopian society but many people readily accept the use of this technology by the government. Sure, the police have the technological ability do facial recognition without Amazon, but technological capability is not the question. It is SHOULD THEY?

> Pretty reasonable people seem to think yes (Patriot Act).

Sure

This is such a fascinating and interesting question. I highly recommend reading the book 'Automating Inequality'[0] if you haven't already. My initial reaction to this question was 'I certainly would prefer groups of humans making collective decisions over an opaque, proprietary, algorithm'. But then I also think back to the latest internet firestorm of the woman calling the police on black barbecuers over charcoal (this happened a block from my house). Can we actually trust people en masse to make collaborative decisions that generally avoid bias? Definitely not.

I think your comment may have changed my mind about the utility, objectivity, and overall value of amber alerts...

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Automating-Inequality-High-Tech-Profi...

This is a case of "system worked as intended." Humans are fairly audit-able, can be seen, and public discourse can have its moment. Imagine if instead one of the thousands of street-cams was used to phone in the call to police. There would be no public discourse because of the invisibility of the actions.

Wait, I don't get it. Someone was using charcoal as opposed to, say, wood? So what? Is that a fire hazard or something?

>If that system could co-opt camera feeds instead of human attention, we could get most (all?) of the benefits of the existing Amber Alert without having to burn civilian resources on it. Wouldn't that be a strict improvement over the current system?

In my area amber alerts are usually along the lines of "the non custodial parent has the child when he shouldn't". Reducing the resource cost of (and therefore threshold to utilize) that system or similar systems is not something I can get behind.

Finding and bothering specific people should be something that scales poorly enough that all the government organizations that engage in it are forced to pick and choose who they do it to. A low threshold is an invitation for abuse.

Edit: and I'm wrong because why?

> Wouldn't that be a strict improvement over the current system?

No, that would be an implementation of a panopticon. You'll find a lot of interesting criticism of that concept, and of Bentham for trying to solve societal problems in an inhumane fashion.

And why stop at Amber alerts once the resources to perform the search no longer complain or question oddities about the alert?

I definitely feel like we're missing positive opportunities for mass surveillance. Things like being able to recognize someone in cardiac arrest, or who is at risk for a stroke. Someday mass surveillance will help as much as it hurts society.

What's interesting is that anyone implementing mass surveillance could care less about your proposed benefits.

Or exactly the opposite - it may be their primary motivation, with the negatives ending up being caused by others co-opting the system.

I believe technology will ever erode privacy, and that the best we can hope for is to make sure the transparency goes both ways. The government should become more transparent to the people as the people become more transparent to the government. Like you though, I'm afraid we'll end up with a vast and reliable surveillance system which police will be able to use, while the police themselves are still "struggling" to get their body cams to work reliably.

> could care less about your proposed benefits.

Could they? Oh well, that is at least something then.

Many prisons have blanket surveillance systems. I suggest you ask the prisoners how beneficial they find it, and extrapolate.

"Prison has X, therefore X is bad" isn't a very compelling argument.

Its exactly analagous. The government agencies want to implement this technology for the same reasons they do it in prisons - not for your benefit.

It isn't analogous because someone walking freely on the street has not been convicted of a crime.

Extrapolating is not always useful... See relevant xkcd: https://www.xkcd.com/605/

> Things like being able to recognize someone in cardiac arrest, or who is at risk for a stroke.

Can those things actually be done with a vanishingly low false-positive rate? If I'm walking down the sidewalk and a camera sees me suddenly grimace because a rock got into my shoe, I don't want paramedics rushing to the scene to offer me assistance for a heart attack.

Currently? No. In the future, sure why not. Just don't ask when.

All I see here is a slightly different version of “it’s for the children”.

I'm the last one to stay "it's for the children". I don't think mass surveillance can be rolled back though I will continue to support changing legislation that harms us. There are positives to consider if we must live in that reality. It's the best we can do if we can't go back.

Amber Alerts are opt-out, not mandatory.

They should be opt-in. When the feature was implemented on my phone I was not informed, the checkbox was already selected.

At least in Canada, the new Amber-Alert-over-LTE system is mandatory, and cannot be opted out of:

"People cannot opt out of this," said CRTC spokesperson Patricia Valladao. "There is a high importance that people — want it or not — receive these alerts."[0]

[0] http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/emergency-alerts-system-ph...

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