The Rise of ‘Luxury Surveillance’
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Also, what you describe has been done before in history. In the 19th century in the US there were "Pullman Towns" - everything from A to Z owned by the Pullman company.
"Get baptized in a Pullman church, go to a Pullman school, work for Pullman all your life, and get buried in a Pullman graveyard." was an activist slogan at the time. (I learned this from history class at university, paraphrasing from memory).
More on Pullman Towns here: https://www.pullman-museum.org/theTown/
Some of the most exploitive ones were owned by mining firms, as immortalized in the famous protest song “Sixteen Tons”, with its refrain “I owe my soul to the company store”. [3]
(This song may be familiar to South Park viewers.) [4]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_company_towns_in_the_U...
[3] http://www.protestsonglyrics.net/Labor_Union_Songs/Sixteen-T...
In a sense we are now re-living that past, call it the "Digital Industrial Revolution."
Since Amazon Prison is so close to life already, we might all benefit from thinking about how to solve its issues. As the legal system necessitates lawyers, a digital prison might need digital advocates programmed by the prisoner‘s representatives. Could we design a digital jail that could both monitor the prisoner and share privileges?
As software introduces more restrictions on our lives, we could benefit from something like an AI “Freedom Box” that represented us while interfacing with proprietary services. People have already made AI lawyers to suggest options. Maybe these could merge with security software to allow us to navigate whatever future prisons we build.
Cold: the air and water flowing.
Hard: the land we call our home.
Push to keep the corpo growing,
Feel the weight of what we owe.
This: the song of sons and daughters,
Hide the heart of who we are.
Making code to build our future,
Strong, united, working till we fall.
In my mind our goal should be to imagine a future in which the need for prisons becomes obviated.
"Good business is where you find it." - Dick Jones, Omni Consumer Products
This is like asking whether people would prefer home confinement to being in a prison cell
The limiting case for this is the Matrix or Metaverse, where everybody voluntarily confines themselves to their home and interacts with each other only according to the rules of the governing software. No possibility for crime because there are no unmediated interactions, and the state has total control.
While I certainly sympathize with the aspect of reform for prison, it seems unpalatable to me to not punish, say, someone who rapes a child or with complete disrespect for the law and other people and breaks into homes or smashes car windows to basically be told to hang out and watch TV and “reform” at home with pamphlets or asinine internet courses from a state-provided computer.
Parole, probation, house arrest, etc. are tools we have to provide more leniency at the discretion of a judge as appropriate. And there are different levels of prisons to be considered here as well. Rehab can occur while in prison too.
But in addition to reforming prisons, we need to solve the problem at its core. Why do people do things that land them in prison in the first place? This is where healthcare, education, and other projects can stop the problem before it starts.
(I'm not saying that isolation is never necessary. But it should be clearly separated from punishment.)
Criminals who are deranged, either in the sense of committing especially heinous crimes (e.g. child rape) or in the sense of repeatedly committing serious crimes without evidence that they are able to reform should be humanely executed the same way we put down problematic animals.
Especially since you seem to advocate flogging, which is a form of torture.
And advocate executions, which grants the government ultinate tyranical power over a citizen.
And when a mistake is made, and the innocent is executed, this mistake can never be corrected.
Such mistakes are quite conmon, as apparently in America police will lie in counrt, claim that their dog can smell a body that was in a particular location years ago, but now cannot be found and jurors will convict based on testimony of a dog.
I think corporal punishment is vastly more humane and prefer it largely for humanitarian reasons. If we were torturing prisoners, and I proposed we stopped, would you ask for the evidence to back up the idea that cutting out torture was a good idea?
There needs to be some deterrent, but taking years from a person's life, and forcing them to live in squalid conditions and in close proximity to violent criminals, is not a humane deterrent, it is not an effective deterrent (as evidenced by recidivism rates), and it is not an effective deterrent in terms of either dollars or time.
Flogging, by contrast, can be executed quickly and cheaply, and, while the injury might stay with you for weeks, doesn't take a large quantity of your life. Flogging is also visually impressive and likely to be something that most people want to avoid. Flogging has a long history of use as a punishment too - suggesting it would have a useful deterrent effect.
Regarding execution - no mistakes can ever be corrected. If you send a person to prison and they commit suicide, die of disease, or are killed by another inmate, all of which are vastly more common in prison than in the general population, you can't undo your mistake should you discover that the person sentenced was wrongfully convicted. Likewise, even if you sentence someone for five years, discover after two it was a mistake, they do not get their life back. Does this mean we should never imprison people?
It's fine to say there should be a higher bar of proof required for execution, but the finality of the sentence is not a reason not to employ it. There are people who have committed heinous crimes caught on video, attested to by witnesses, placed at the scene by evidence, and who have confessed their own guilt, and who have no plausible defense. In such a scenario why should we stay punishment out of a paranoia that maybe, despite all evidence, we might be wrong and might one day want to release this horrible criminal back to the general population?
We are torturing prisoners in several ways, from solitary confinement to physical deprivation. People do routinely propose that we stop, and they do get asked for evidence that their proposal would be better. Your idea is one that we have evidence against because, as you mention, it has a long history. (And that is not actually evidence that it works: otherwise we'd just use witchcraft.)
If you followed that logic out, what makes you better than a murderer or violent criminal?
I think the system needs to change but that change needs to be with clear goals and with evidence that those goals can be, and are being, met. That’s why I’d propose looking at models that reduce reoffending and ensure the safety of inmates.
That’s what makes me better than a murderer or violent criminal.
For the "deranged", I prefer imprisonment for at least two reasons:
1. They may have friends/relatives who would be harmed by them no longer existing. Why punish them?
2. Death is too easy an 'out'. If I had no other tether to society, then choosing a peaceful sleep vs a daily reminder of my actions is an easy choice; put me to sleep.
Strong disagree.
As many of us found out during Covid (depending on your country), being restricted from seeing loved ones and not being allowed to leave your house is absolutely punishment. House Arrest is much preferable to actual prison, but is still absolutely punishment. I went to a boarding school, and the strongest punishment you'd get before suspension/expulsion was "gating" - you had to stay in your room except for lessons and meals, and you had to report in to a teacher very regularly. It was a strong deterrent, 'cuz it sucked.
In almost any case where society is mad at someone, rather than scared of someone (re-offending), House Arrest would be cheaper, more humane, but still absolutely a punishment.
Because there would be no upper limit to the number of people you can imprison - limited space in prisons provides vital societal back-pressure on which crimes are considered serious enough for custodial sentences.
In general, the inefficiencies in the justice system are good because they force prioritization. What would be the impact on society if crime detection, deliberation and rulings were all automated?
Well, I can easily one-up this. The Agricultural Revolution was a mistake. We should have remained hunter gatherers.
(Lots of people believe this, or claim to)
I've found that they are receptive of evidence when it comes to efficacy, recidivism, cost, etc. If you care about those things, our prison system makes no sense, it only makes sense if cruelty and maintaining a steady supply of forced labor are the only things they care about.
Criminals generally don't expect to be caught, the quality of prison doesn't matter much if you're not planning on going there.
It's just a business calculation.
if you replace prison time with home arrest, then you remove downside to being caught. Especially for second/Nth time offenders.
In fact you are generally just making your problems worse. First and biggest problem is, that it turns small time crooks into hardcore criminals, because that's the only way to survive on the inside.
So unless you never plan on releasing anyone out of prison, having bad prisons is not great idea.
Second If prisons are so bad, it makes it more likely people will do whatever they can to stay out. There is big difference between spending 2 years doing some manual labor, having bad bed and bad food or being gang raped. And the lesion is not, no to do crime like you and I would hope, but to kill/intimidate witnesses etc.
You have not been around criminals much, and it shows. That’s really not how all of this works, and you’re applying logic to something that offenders themselves often don’t.
If they did, the USAs horrific prison system would work. But it doesn’t.
In 2015 the average robbery netted less than $2,000 while the average sentence length was almost 10 years.
Risking 10 years of your life for $2,000 isn't something that people who understand risk/reward will do, how bad things are while you spend those 10 years is basically a rounding error compared to just how terrible of an idea it already is.
Russia has torture in prisons and 99% conviction rate, how cone their crime rate is high?
Finland's prisons look like 3 star hotels, how come their crime rate is low?
How would that differ from regular life?
(Sorry Mr Dostoevsky).
I wonder if Neal Stephenson has written something of this sort. In Snow Crash, prisons were a per franchise affair iirc.
For decades surveillance has becoming cheaper and therefore more pervasive and more socially accepted.
We are building platforms that can enable turn-key dictatorship.
Something that will be extremely difficult to overturn.
That includes any conversations with lawyers.
* I understand its all encrypted but we're wearing tin foils at the moment.
People will spend hundreds of dollars on something like an Apple watch, and all it really does is make texts and calls slightly more convenient (I don't buy it) and give you little metrics to look at. People are paying hundreds of dollars to see their heart rate or mobility data? Does it really mean this much to them?
Imo the wearables are more of a status thing than anything, but whenever I see someone wearing one it just pisses me off. Specifically the more expensive ones, but also the less expensive ones. I'm sure there are valid (niche) uses like if the wearer has some health condition, but for the general market?
Not only this, but once you normalize them who's to say things like this[0] won't happen? Who's to say insurance companies don't start nudging them harder until Congress does something about it?
Something that I'm not entirely opposed to are wearables that don't connect to the internet and let you see local sensor data. This makes sense from a metrics standpoint. But why exactly is the phoning home to Apple/Google even necessary? What value does it add (for the customer)?
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/with-fitness...
I used dedicated Garmin devices for years, Apple have packaged it up and made it so pretty much anyone can take advantage. While no one in the absolute needs an Apple watch to lose weight or get fitter, for some people it works, so have at it, frankly. Friendly competition on strava.com has been great motivator for me at times in my life over the last decade - devices like apple watch are gateway to that world.
That seems kind of extreme. You don't like it, just don't buy it?
Personally, I like my Apple Watch, it's pretty handy. I couldn't care less about any sort of 'status' it projects (and it doesn't -- everyone around me has one, it's not noteworthy to have one strapped to your wrist).
The remainder of his post explains why such an individual solution isn't enough: it doesn't stop society as a whole slipping further into total surveillance, until eventually it swallows you as well. Either compelled by law, or non-negotiable contract, or by a large fraction of your friends owning surveillance devices, catching you in their crossfire.
I can't prove this, but I'm convinced that there's a bunch of people in this culture who want surveillance and invasion of privacy. There's too many instances of people buying into BS like internet connected wearables or Alexa. All of the reasons people give for buying these products is marginal. What problem does Alexa solve that your phone or computer can't? And why is it necessary to give a device the privilege to have a microphone on 24/7 to solve it?
Note that your phone also defaults to having its microphone on 24/7.
The problem that this solves, for people that use it, is that it removes a lot of friction from computer interaction. "[Hey Siri / Ok Google / Alexa] set a timer for twenty minutes" takes much less time and effort, and even works with messy hands when you're cooking.
There's a difference between it being on vs having a task that's actively listening for trigger words.
Idk if Google/Apple put some kind of latent thing in their phone OS that's constantly listening for advertising or intelligence purposes. I'm assuming this is what you're talking about, since the microphone permission flag for applications on the phone OS can be easily disabled
Me not buying one is pretty much a given here. That wasn't my argument
> and it doesn't -- everyone around me has one, it's not noteworthy to have one strapped to your wrist
But in that kind of situation, wouldn't not having one indicate a lack of status?
If you're in an Apple family or work with people who are all die hard Apple fans (to the point where everyone has an Apple Watch), not having one would count as a lack of status
But yes, largely the Apple Watch doesn't enable new activities. It just makes a whole lot of common ones easier and faster with less pulling you phone out.
Which also reduces distraction for many people, since often when you get your phone out you end up getting into various time consumption apps that aren't actually how you intend to be spending your time.
You seem to have made up your mind that it's a fixed-function non-programmable computer and got angry about that, but I don't see how that's my problem.
I mean, you could just do the exact same thing with your computer, or your phone? That's what I do when I cook
Where's the pure utility? Not having to walk over to your computer or phone?
> You seem to have made up your mind that it's a fixed-function non-programmable computer and got angry about that, but I don't see how that's my problem.
It isn't your problem. I never said it was. My problem is that the "utility" from wearables is complete and utter BS, and that what little value they add comes nowhere close to justifying the cost or invasion of privacy
But I guess if the niche uses are appealing enough to you, then by all means indulge ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Why should someone not be able to monetize their discipline to exercise and eat healthy?
You might see short term benefit for yourself, but others could end up getting screwed by insurance companies because their lifestyle doesn't qualify as "healthy". Not only this, but lifestyle data could be used to profile potential customers and either deny them coverage or jack up their rates
It makes it cheaper for those who exercise and eat healthy. We use individuals' history of repaying debts to price their loans, we use individuals' history of driving and location of driving to price their auto insurance premiums. We use their history in school and work to price their work product.
Where is the line for pricing someone's risk based on individual factors vs pricing based on the collective risk?
>Not only this, but lifestyle data could be used to profile potential customers and either deny them coverage or jack up their rates
Per Affordable Care Act, health insurance companies in the US cannot deny coverage and premiums can only be priced using the 5 criteria listed here:
more complex answer: why does everything need to be monetized, or monetizable? How does this shape society, and is this the society we want?
See today's discussion on luxury surveillance https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33256724
All jewelry signals status. Wearables just add some functions to the ancillary time telling.
One thing I think it interesting about the status marker of wearables is that it is a bit tied to its origin at the moment. Maybe that will wear off in time, but as of now, they have a whiff of "white collar drone" to them. The really wealthy people I know wear (very expensive) analog watches, or nothing on their wrist.
To answer your question, the appeal was originally niche and expensive advertising campaigns convinced consumers that they needed it, too.
Growing up in Detroit under the specter of the police unit STRESS—an acronym for “Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets”
...am I the only one heartily sick of propagandistic backronyms? The branding of public policy is a disturbing (and long-running) symptom of institutional capture. This example is particularly totalitarian, inflicting a reminder of STRESS on an entire community.
Of course, the excuse is that 'it's just meant to create stress for the criminals.' We should be looking at outcomes, since intentions are unfalsifiable.
[1] https://www.robertankony.com/blog/the-rochester-street-massa...
We're not very far from being able to run pretty powerful AIs on edge devices. For one today's newest android phones all support vulkan and are equipped with GPUs that can run pretty sophisticated models. Also our better understanding of those models will lead to optimisations in their size.
So, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. Let's not paint AI assistants watching over out sleep as something bad. It is not. It is bad only when we have no control over what it does with the data it collects.
Most people aren't programmers, people who are programmers don't read the source code of everything they run even if they're allowed to, and even people who try to read the source code for everything they run won't necessarily be able to catch every potential nefarious act. The ingredients list on the back of the box is not the only form of consumer protection in place for food. It shouldn't be the only consumer protection in place for software, either.
Your gadget communicates with the outside world, let's assume HTTP+TLS. Ok, so you need to MITM it. Does it speak plaintext? Ok, how do you know a=1234234&b=30487234807 does not say anything about your habits? Does it speak a binary protocol? Now you need to reverse that.
No. Either I trust the device or I don't.
About your specific points. Yes, MiTM would be required today although under a nicer name. In "corporate security" context this is often called "SSL inspection" and various hacks to end devices are required to make it work well. In future I hope no hacks will be required for home devices and enabling it will be a matter of a simple setting. Then a router/appliance could be used as SSL traffic decrypting proxy. One way it could be done, a customer could push a button on a device for it to download a self signed certificate from the router/scanning appliance. Then it would trust that cert in place of the target while the router would handle the ssl between itself and the remote service.
Then you raise a point of traffic scanning. It is not a trivial problem, but much of the technology already exists in various (again corpo) security scanning products. From signature based, through heuristics, to perhaps future AI based methods it is possible to achieve some level of protection from information leakage if you are able to scan all outgoing traffic and devices that communicate are generally built supporting well defined protocols. When AI runs at the edge at least we have a fighting chance to succeed most of the time. When it runs in the cloud and we just stream camera/microphone/sensor data there is no hope.
It's market forces that are causing the edge to fractalize, pushing the computing and storage hardware closer to the customer, but only to a point. It may take a different market and different forces to push the edge to its end state.
I think centralized compute and storage could very well end up ceding some ground to private, redundant, locally networked dedicated computing/storage substrates, which might take increasingly smaller and more exotic forms. What an interesting time that would be!
The article pitches it as something people willingly embrace which doesn't seem correct to me. Its more like reluctantly accept due to the benefits.
I'm personally hoping that a lot of this becomes more accessible via the Matter protocol
If anything the really successful implementations of this generally are overlord free.
You can quibble about how trustworthy apple should be, but people generally consider them more trustworthy. Especially due to their "on device only" stance. They're also the most successful smart-watch and biometric tracker. They're also making great progress on the voice assistant front too.
> more accessible via the Matter protocol
Unlikely IMO. Matter just isn't there yet, and doesn't mandate local only, and doesn't apply to camera/audio, which is big on the invasiveness front.
I was under the impression that it does make ability to do only mandatory?
Eg a lightbulb will have to talk over lan to a hub/controller for on/off/etc, but for non-matter features (eg sync to music) it can still talk to the cloud. Yes you should be able to ignore these features, but in many cases you’re still putting it on your network so it’s free to talk to whoever (by default).
In fact, several companies (Philips hue, SmartThings) have already stated that their matter devices will still have non-matter features that are tied to proprietary cloud APIs.
If there’s no privacy-respecting equivalents, then… do without.
At best. At worst, it is a concept pushed by corporate giants to pin responsibility for plastic/trash production on the working class. "It's not our fault for shipping everything in plastic, or using Chinese factories spewing unregulated megatons of smog - it's your fault for not recycling."
But really until we get to a renewable majority power production, any garbage with carbon in it should just be burned in power plants designed for that kind of thing.
“I watch nothing happen over and over again….The worry begets more worry, all because the camera offered only a sliver of a view of the whole—one meant to spin doubt into tizzy. It’s better to see nothing if you can’t see everything.” https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/10/home-...
Source: I have a few Amcrest cameras and am sad at how much it'll cost to switch over to Unifi Protect.
Does it mean something different than if one's life becomes completely legible to a government.
If yes, then why.
If Apple goes all out on me, it sucks. If the government does, it's deadly.
Hidden below all of this is the normalization of surveillance that consistently targets marginalized communities. The difference between a smartwatch and an ankle monitor is, in many ways, a matter of context: Who wears one for purported betterment, and who wears one because they are having state power enacted against them? Looking back to Detroit, surveillance cameras, facial recognition, and microphones are supposedly in place to help residents, although there is scant evidence that these technologies reduce crime. Meanwhile, the widespread adoption of surveillance technologies—even ones that offer supposed benefits—creates an environment where even more surveillance is deemed acceptable. After all, there are already cameras and microphones everywhere.
The real difference is who can access and control the generated data. An ankle monitor's purpose is explicitly to send your location history to the government. A smartwatch's purpose is ostensibly to help you record your activities so you can analyze and optimize your life, which on its own is not unreasonable, but in reality there is little separating the government from that data so it's practically the same as an ankle monitor.
The solution here isn't more regulation, it's individual sovereignty over data you generate. Maybe that means software goes back to being software and the market for a 'data service provider' is squeezed out.
But yes, clearly the best way forward is individual data sovereignty. The reason intelligent personal digital assistants that knew you intimately didn't seem dystopian when they were in Star Trek is because nobody then envisioned that the software and data would be running on corporate servers. We envisioned these things being more along the lines of trusted friends in their own right, with a clear data boundary at the physical limit of the sensing devices they used, not that they would be perpetually networked and owned by third parties like Amazon. They weren't supposed to share information with anyone but you.
Nothing goes to the cloud. Nothing leaves my home without my consent.
If you really want sovereignty over your data, you keep it non digital.
My main problem is the crappy medical software complex that you have no control over. Visited a doctor any time in the last decade? Great. Your most personal details are scattered all over a bunch of insecure systems.
At any rate, I have zero trust in the government’s ability to help here. Their incentives are misaligned with mine. It’s rare to find a legislator who really wants more privacy for the average citizen.
These days what we normally call an OS is really just another guest OS to the embedded OSes that are really running the machine. Yes, smuggling things out unnoticed would be hard.
As you say, the problem is largely data on you held by others.
It us government regulation that protects your sovereignty over your body or anything at all, including from the government itself
It's an additional megacorp data collection tendril that they let you use a fraction of.
The solution to abuse cannot be curtailing of rights.
Second, the appropriate response may not be to ban all of those things outright, but comprehensive regulation is certainly within the best interests of society.
Finally, the casual assertion of abortion as a right is noted and summarily rejected. I won’t engage further though on that point, in an effort to not drag us off topic.
I just want to note that there are two types of "rights." There's positive and negative rights.
Negative rights are the typical libertarian types of issues, namely that things cannot be taken away from you or rather that you do not have s specific duty. These are things like freedom of speech (no duty to regulate your speech), freedom of religion (no duty to have a specific religion), fair trial, life, the right to not be enslaved by another, etc. tldr: you have no duty to act (or not act) in a certain manner.
Positive rights are typically left leaning and are entitlements. As an example, you have the right (you are entitled) to an attorney. Others include public education, national security, and a minimum wage. People are advocating for other things like the right to clean water, fair housing, higher education, health care, internet access, etc. tldr: you do have a duty to act (or not act) in a certain manner (often in the form of taxes).
I bring this up because people often talk past one another because they just say "rights" and are using different definition. So I believe this causes a lot of fighting rather than productive conversation as people just embed the idea that "rights are rights." It is also a good example of where communication breaks down because what is obvious to one party is not obvious to another party and they are operating in completely different frameworks, refusing to recognize that the other party is operating in said framework.
As for abortion (maybe I'm maybe sidetracking) it is often considered a negative right because one (the state) needs to take action to stop a specific action (abortion). Though it can also be framed as a positive right if either 1) the fetus is viewed as a human, and thus they are being deprived of their rights to life through the action of another or 2) one is forcing physicians to perform abortions.
https://europe-cities.com/2022/09/12/the-use-of-%E2%80%B3das...
We should always be legally allowed to film public places. Europe’s legislative approach to this is wrong, I think, but I see the problem. Perhaps we need different societal norms.
I'm pretty sure I'd prefer that photographing, filming, or audio recording me in an identifiable way was illegal without my explicit consent.
I think public officials should be subject to recording while performing their duties. I think celebrities should not, unless they explicitly consent.
Security cameras might need some sort of exemption: record, but don't look except under explicit circumstances (like, you've been robbed).
You’re talking about banning street photography, a rich art form with a long history that is presently regarded as protected artistic expression.
Additionally, you can’t really reasonably hold any expectation of privacy when you are in a public place where anyone can see you.
If I can legally see you with my eyes, I should be able to legally photograph you. That’s my right.
I'm coming to a view that there's a lot of difference between being seen (like, with eyes) and being photographed. It's certainly a shame that photography as an artform might be collateral damage here, but it doesn't change the situation that a photograph of me, in public, is now a gateway to a lot more than just an image.
I don't know the right solution. I do know I hate been photographed or videoed in public though.
A bunch of small/private companies do too, because your client IP on the background app refreshes from your phone changes from residential isp to mobile phone isp.
Amazon is the least of the worries on that front.
(And my original point was that this is not just about people who choose to be surveilled themselves.)
A couple days after that, my neighbor got a camera of his own. I'm happy that he did so; my camera made his home safer, and his makes mine safer.
What's the difference between what you wrote and responding to someone who is in favor on limits of publicly brandishing guns with: I don't know about your neighbor. But my neighbor (a black man, fyi) was very happy that I sat on my porch with a loaded shotgun every evening, and shot the dude who climbed through his window and stole his kid's MacBook.
The Joe Horn shooting controversy occurred on November 14, 2007, in Pasadena, Texas, United States, when local resident Joe Horn shot and killed two burglars outside his neighbor's home.
So you're not against making things up if you can make this up, so why not go along with the hypothetical?
I wouldn’t doubt that a webcam (real or dummy) deters crime. I’ve looked hard for statistics on arrest rates for home property theft with security cameras, but propaganda/fearmongering from camera companies clogs up my search. Maybe you’ll have better luck.
> my camera made his home safer,
How did the camera help? It seems that he has to worry about you or the police watching his house, and still has to worry about burglary
I do honestly expect the first ad style company that is fully homomorphic will upset the balance that we have now.
Apple HomeKit will stream, process, encrypt the data locally then upload the encrypted data to iCloud so I think we're seeing it?
Lots of other companies (nest?) are offering on-device or on-lan processing of video feed. TBH this is probably so the company saves on bandwidth.
One thing I learned from HN is housing cannot be both a universal human right and a reliable asset for people to retire out of so I must choose the former. This by itself means I cannot win any meaningful political office, or if I do, I cannot imagine not being swiftly nerfed so I won't be able to act on it.
Now that I've alienated homeowners, next idea I have is elimination of all credits, deductions, and exclusions or anything like that when it comes to taxes. You can probably see how this is a very bad idea for national security.
Next idea is eliminating income eligibility or similar ideas in government programs. Everyone from the richest people to the poorest should feel safe to take advantage of all our programs.
At this point, I'm sure I've made enough enemies that I won't even get ballot access (:
We should all be more politically active - look at what happens when only the idiots do it.
How will environments without this purported widespread adoption of surveillance technologies react to an increase of these 'luxury surveillance' items? Will they also gradually accept more (government-imposed) surveillance into their lives? Maybe even demand it? Or is acceptance of surveillance culturally biased?
To respond to your thought-question about adoption of surv-tech in places where it isn't common: Taken outside a privacy context, in many small towns locking the doors to one's car or house is not a norm. I grew up that way. When I visited my big city cousins the emphasis on locking doors struck me as odd. If one lives in such fear then one has a larger problem than locking a door or not.
Another privacy
The Pareto optimal point doesn't have us optimizing too far in any one dimension.
One great example of "good enough" is scanned paper ballots at elections. We want ease and accuracy, but the "luxury surveillance" risk of purely electronic voting is a slippery slope sliding into tyranny.
Wisdom will draw a line and let technology support improving standards of living, while confining that tech in well-defined ways.
To get around this problem, it would be cool to see something like a DIY merged with quality industrial design where the owner gets end-to-end custody of resulting data. Unfortunately this doesn't lend itself to being a favorable investment for corporate monopolies.
His argument has been tackled extensively by academics, techies and journos. The author’s opening but could be classed as plagiarism in an academic setting for how familiar its beats are.
There are many critiques of Amazon survelliance/tracking products and wish the authors would’ve engaged them.
Hopefully the author gets feedback and grows from this
Did you click through to the wired article ([0]) about the tech disproportionately making false positive identifications of black people?
The thesis is not, "surveillance can be misused by authorities / corporations", but rather "surveillance technology as it currently exists is killing and/or ruining the lives of, specifically, falsely-accused black people".
> Hopefully the author gets feedback and grows from this
[0] https://www.wired.com/story/wrongful-arrests-ai-derailed-3-m...