If there's any justice in the world every person who participates in this sort of work will be shamed and ostracized in the future.
Rather than hope for a chance to make someone else miserable I’d rather people just weren’t building this stuff to begin with.
I assume a lot of people think like that.
Even if it does, is it worth violating rights in the process?
So basically everyone on hackernews that worked for a modern data-driven consumer-target company participates in adversarial data gathering. Even if you just gave your data to a FANG company, in exchange for comfortable features, you helped them more effectively spy on people like you. So shame on you!
I don’t think it actually does this as well as the government would like you to believe.
For instance, it may be applied to "protect the people currently in power in the country" instead of "protect the [people living in the] country".
Business surveillance might be less problematic because laws and government are supposed to make businesses acting for their own interest not be a problem (or be less of a problem), while the same mechanism for governments (constitution and supreme courts) is less restrictive.
There are many laws (e.g. Sarbanes–Oxley, Dodd–Frank, etc.) that were created to prevent unscrupulous acts in search of greater profits.
Business surveillance and government surveillance can be equally problematic if the people behind it have bad motives.
I am further under the impression that way more checks and balances are in place to make sure that government surveillance does not overstep its boundaries, where businesses don't really care, especially if the profit justifies the fines or stricter regulation.
Government surveillance is not a problem, it is a solution, and it helps save lives. Facebook tracking me without a profile and knowing that I am gay or religious is a problem, because the judge/courts is a room of unethical engineers drinking Red Bull.
> While there exists potential for misuse
It's not just the potential for misuse that is the problem, it is the reality of misuse that is the problem.
> I am further under the impression that way more checks and balances are in place to make sure that government surveillance does not overstep its boundaries
Those "checks and balances" are rather weak, and growing weaker over time. They don't reassure me as much as they should.
> Government surveillance is not a problem, it is a solution
Government surveillance really is a problem. It is also a solution for some things.
Opponents mention that counter-terrorism is not effective for all cases of terrorism, in effect arguing for an increased and more efficient surveillance. "They were already on some watch-list.", of course, mass surveillance put them there successfully.
I hear of surveillance abuse, where privacy is violated (spying on ex-girlfriend). But, like the police has a monopoly on violence and can physically restrain your freedom, so has the government a monopoly on violence of privacy. If you deem your country incapable of holding that responsibility, I guess it is time to move to a country where the US government can gather even more than your telephone meta-data.
Finally, that we could end up in a totalitarian surveillance state, is a pessimistic projection akin to adversarial AGI or all police deciding to start abusing and shooting random citizens.
There is more than a little truth to this, although I think the argument is relied on more heavily than it should be.
Here's how I view the issue -- surveillance is inherently oppressive, but it also brings certain benefits in terms of safety. So it's a tradeoff. Where the balance should be is something that reasonable people can, and do, differ about.
My bent is that I'd rather live free in a dangerous world than to live oppressed in a safe world. That's simply my bias -- I wouldn't want to live in a world that exists at either extreme, of course, but I want to preserve whatever freedom I have left.
We have been seeing a serious erosion of that freedom over the past couple of decades, primarily because of the actions of the private sector, and I am highly resistant to letting it erode even further.
You speak of surveillance (and other) abuse as if they are rare things that people make too much fuss over. I don't think that they're nearly rare enough, personally.
So, while I am not a privacy absolutist, I am of the opinion that we've already set the balance far too towards the "oppression" side of the scale, and we need to resist having it slide even further in that direction.
> If you deem your country incapable of holding that responsibility, I guess it is time to move to a country
As a patriotic citizen, I consider it my duty to not abandon my nation when I think it is behaving badly. It's my duty to help correct it.
But yeah, I absolutely agree that the NSA et al are less damaging than Google and friends.