Comment by jrochkind1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrochkind1 | Hacker News Reader

> I told them about the script kiddie, the link and that I wasn't using a VPN because I did nothing wrong but of course they were sceptical even thought one of the agents said my story sounded plausible to him.

A) This is a weird thing to tell the cops. "I wasn't using a VPN cause I wasn't doing anything illegal, I only use VPNs when I do illegal things!" Uh... you don't want to tell the cops you do illegal things and have opsec procedures for when you do illegal things! No wonder they were skeptical!

B) This story is literally the explanation of why "If I'm not breaking any laws, why would I worry about my privacy from the police?" is the wrong attitude. You don't have to have known you did something wrong/illegal, you don't even actually have to had done something wrong/illegal -- for the police to really inconvenience you. It could have been a lot worse than this. Even people who never knowingly/intentionally break laws have an interest in keeping their activities from police notice. As this story demonstrates. "If you have done nothing worng you have nothing to hide, why do you mind police surveillance" -- nope nope nope.

surveillance state is the price we pay for a civilized society. abolishing that would mean , like 1% more crime. nobody wants to live in a world like that

A surveillance state wouldn't be such a burden if the rights we had actually could be enforced on the spot the moment they were infringed by a police force.

The fact that you can be imprisoned (borderline indefinitely it seems at times) as well has basically need a lawyer even though your issue is straight up black and white really shows the failures of a police state. Whats the point in having rights in a surveillance state? The government will just make stuff up against you anyway.

Where you say "really shows the failures of a police state." It's a great success, the greatest actually. The people who fail to enforce anything against the police are the same people who need them to act as the tip of their spear. The purpose isn't everyone compliance - just the compliance of those with the potential to change things. Think FBI and MLK, or Aaron Swartz. It's like spear fishing vs mass spam, tracking the individual agents of change and their social network vs fire hoses and dogs at protests.

I guess I was coming from the philosophy of why it's bad on a liberalism mindset. I totally get why it's good for a governing body to assume control.

The only interesting hypothetical I've heard in support of surveillance is when/if some armageddon level technology becomes cheap and easy to employ. If nuclear weapons, self-replicating nanobots, designer viruses didn't happen to require the resources of a wealthy state, then extremely invasive and automated surveillance may be the only thing that can protect us from random trolls wiping out the planet. The risk of surveillance abuse is still there, but would be weighed against the benefits.

This hypothetical also assumes that the surveillance state would be competent, rather than merely oppressive. I think at this point we into a vanishingly small set of possible worlds.

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