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I think an implicit assumption behind fears from surveillance systems is that our society relies on small rule breaking all the time and human judgment is needed to smooth out the rough edges and be flexible. If 100% enforcement becomes the norm, the laws need to be much more precise with many more exceptions and clarifications.
The other issue of course is that many laws are not written according to normal people's interests, so their 100% enforcement would harm society.
Precisely. And individually, we all have different ideas of which are acceptable to break regularly, which we're generally indifferent about, and which should be considered absolute.
The prospect of absolute enforcement sounds great when used against something you agree with, like failing to pick up dog poop.
Probably not-so-great when used to enforce one of the rules you personally break regularly. I'm sure you can think of several, and I might only agree with half.
> If 100% enforcement becomes the norm, the laws need to be much more precise with many more exceptions and clarifications.
I think it's the opposite. We need fewer laws with less precision. Too many laws are effectively "How not to be a dick all the time or endanger other people." But what constitutes being a dick or endangering someone is often more situational than a bright-line "Never do X."
Nevermind that we have so many laws it's impossible for anyone to be sure they haven't already broken one today.
I'm sure there is a good middle ground that can be reached. The more we automate, the less we leave ambiguous. Because even though ambiguity enables us to be civil towards one another in the form of understanding "context", it also allows a lot of genuine bad behavior to occur and also inevitably leaves loopholes for bad actors.
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Once upon a hypothetical time, beyond the statute of limitations, I was on a motorcycle and made a perfectly safe but illegal pass of another vehicle. Not at all dissimilar to this video[1]. As I completed the perfectly safe pass that negatively affected no one, the driver of the passed vehicle sped up, crossed the solid center line to get beside me, then quickly swerved into the space I was occupying. After failing to force me to crash, they harassed me with their vehicle until we got to a place where I had the opportunity to turn to get away from them, where they then swerved at me again, tried to force me to stop... and I finally, hypothetically, decided to raise my jacket and make my legally carried firearm visible. They immediately, and quite dangerously, turned around and fled.
Now, that's just the setup. Put aside for a moment whatever you think about motorcyclists in general, motorcyclists ignoring road laws, road ragers, guns, self-defense, "instant justice", and then read on.
I shared this story on a forum related to the nearest city, a place with a rapidly growing super-Liberal techie hippie population surrounded by pro-Trump people. The VAST majority of the responses were that I should have anticipated that reaction, that I incited it and deserved it, that my breaking of a road law was equivalent to attempted vehicular manslaughter. Several people claimed to have reported me to law enforcement. They specifically wanted me "brought to justice" and couldn't care less about the other person.
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That's what I think of when you suggest there's a good middle ground. Some people think attempted vehicular manslaughter is ok and that an instant extra-judicial death sentence is a reasonable punishment for making an improper pass.
The people behind China's Social Credit system surely think it's a good idea, that they're finding a good middle ground, that tying it in to mass public surveillance and automated detection of certain public crimes will make their society better.
If you disagree with the Chinese system, how can you possible believe that another society can manage to do it better? Especially if you're in America, which has its own rich history of using State power to oppress groups of people? Particularly of groups we'd call Dissidents were they in a different country.
To me, this is the slippery-est of slippery slopes. The State can't be trusted to find a good middle ground and the people are even worse. It's the stuff of 1984-brought-to-life-and-was-actually-optimistic nightmares. The beginning of a new "First they came for the..." poem.
[1] https://reddit.com/r/motorcycles/comments/d8ppzc/first_of_al...
I actually believe China is the playground for the future, unfortunately.
Playing cyberpunk games, etc got me into computers.
I suspect that sort of techno-curiosity and infatuation with tech is what brought many of us to the industry.
I’ve helped build tracking and spying systems my whole career under the guise of “data”
That dystopian reality of every single thing you do, see, seek has spread like a cancer into every aspect of our lives.
Heck, there are even stories (I haven’t confirmed their veracity) of people being attacked by governments for attempting to be totally off grid.
It is completely impossible to detach from the system.
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I recall when we used to talk about Eschelon in the 80s and 90s and nobody believe our crackpot conspiracy theories then.
But now the we are many generations beyond the original Eschelon, it’s been hyper-normalized, and there is nothing you can do about it, because-fuck-you-that$-why
So, I don’t have any “whataboutism” - many brilliant minds have been exploited for authoritarian profits, and you can’t escape the world we have all worked to create through evolving technology.
high tech surveillance in the US has been going on for a while, the mentioned book by Arthur Michel is a recommended read.
China is literally selling their surveillance tech (with backdoors of course) to Western local government... https://theconversation.com/amp/is-chinas-social-credit-syst...