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> But most people would agree that recording everything on every street corner 24/7 is not acceptable in a free society.

Do we?

No, this is a serious question. London seems to have 20,873 CCTVs on its streets[1]. If people don't protest against 20k CCTVs, do you really believe they'll protest against 30k, 50k or 70k? 70k is when by average one street has one CCTV. It's still not one per corner, but practically it's more than enough to track everyone's path.

Slippery slope? Yes. Are we going to slide down? Probably.

[1]: https://clarionuk.com/resources/how-many-cctv-cameras-are-in...

London and its surveillance is a dystopian extreme no one should try to emulate.

And it's not like London is paradise on earth thanks to the cameras. They just have a lot of it.

I've been to many cities around the world that already left the London far behind. Miltiple cameras at every house looking in different directions, cameras at every isle corner in supermarkets etc. There are more cameras than citizens in those cities.

England has always been the first nation to suffer the designs of the elite. The bankster system, first in Britain. The secret services that have “license to kill”, ditto. A show for parliament and representation, the same. Emergence of a new elite class that wields power behind the throne, England. Political churches passed as churches of God, England. Surveillance and police state, England. 1984, also from England. Somebody in that Island knows where it is all heading.

p.s. and how could I forget. “Journalism” fleet street style, also England.

> Political churches passed as churches of God

The Egyptians would like a word

Good one. Yes, they gifted us with priesthoods. For that matter, banksters learned from Mesopotamians, so. But we’re discussing evil incorporated post enlightenment (where? lol) here.

Once true deep fakes come, and they are coming as sure as you're born, these CCTVs will be rendered moot anyway.

I didn’t down vote.

You will have to make a realistic multi angle deep fake faces before it happens. Like the face geometry and looks has to perfectly match the other deeps fake and any other camera. Plus matching different type of lights, camera gradient, lens, types, etc…

Most footage pulled from security cameras is only so-so anyway. Faces aren’t always perfect. Maybe this changes when they’re all 4kHDR.

Even in a world where perfect, indistinguishable-from-reality deepfakes could be created instantly at the push of a button, CCTV cameras would be no less useful in criminal proceedings than they are now.

"Yes your honor, I can testify that I personally pulled this footage from the camera at the corner of 15th street and King Dr."

Or, even better:

"Yes, your honor, I as an expert witness can confirm that this footage was signed by the secure hardware key embedded in the camera at the corner of 15th street and King Dr."

There, problem solved.

And they don't work that well. I had a phone snatched on Stratton St and no decent footage.

I dislike the "it can happen on any street corner" comparison. It's apples and oranges.

The cost of harassing someone online, especially anonymously (even on HN) is virtually zero.

In real life, in person, the cost of harassing someone is many times higher. It's way harder to do so anonymously in person, it's way harder to do it without other people noticing in person, and it has to happen synchronously in person compared to asynchronously online. I could go on... it's just not the same thing.

> Ultimately parents and perhaps schools have to educate children on realistic dangers they can face both online and on street corners and supervise them until they are ready to responsibly use these spaces alone.

For the reasons I mentioned above, neither parents nor schools (on average) are equipped to mitigate online harassment because it's a relatively new attack vector on children. The average parent of a teenager (or the average school administrator, age 40-60) didn't grow up experiencing online harassment in their teenage years.

The danger I see in your comment is assuming that online and offline harassment share the same dynamic. The simple fact is online vs. offline harassment is wildly different in nearly every way. If you were harassed in real life, that doesn't automatically mean you understand the dynamics of online harassment.

Edit: Also feel compelled to say I'm not biased in any way. i didn't suffer from much harassment online or offline. I also don't have kids. It's like saying a Zoom date and a coffee date are basically the same. Or saying "dinner with grandma" is the same in person or via facetime. It's apples and oranges, let's not pretend they're comparable.

How is some random dude exposing themselves to children not similar enough?

Of course it's not the _same_ thing, but they are comparable. Yes, there might be differences that prevent using one in place of the other for certain arguments, but here the reference class is policing vs privacy, no? The concrete issue is almost irrelevant anyway. (I mean I recommend picking privacy in all cases except in some rare freak ones where humanity goes extinct unless we get the mind virus transmitted through Facebook. Oh wait.)

Do you honestly believe this?

> In real life, in person, the cost of harassing someone is many times higher. It's way harder to do so anonymously ...

Take a ride on the metro in New York, or just in the station. If you can't see 5 women being sexually harassed in 10 minutes, you're blind.

> because it's a relatively new attack vector on children

My grandfather showed me a picture from 1930. It showed "couples", meaning teenagers making out in the grass on the side of the road, there was a sort of slope going to a river. It also showed a girl being pushed down ...

This is nothing new, and we all know that harassment of all kinds happens most often at schools. It has been like that for at least a century and hasn't improved.

I think what bugs me most is that I've yet to see convincing evidence that any of these surveillance systems even help prevent such things as child abuse and terrorism. There's even pretty good evidence that these systems enable those things. We like to think child abuse happens from strangers, but usually it happens from someone the child knows, and often a relative. How many parents monitor their child's every move? For short term rewards you have ensured that you fail as a parent: teaching your child to be dependent and ensuring they are unable navigate the dangers and complexities of the world without you. The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions and I completely understand the desire, but sometimes the kid has to burn their hand on the stove (hopefully only a little).

In addition to this, it seems that when we do use these tools to go after people that we end up just going after the low hanging fruit. It's the same reason the drug war has been a failure. Instead of going after manufacturers and distributors we go after users. It's easier and we create incentivize structures and metrics that make these the best path to optimization. I am absolutely okay with introducing a little friction. I'm far less concerned with someone looking at child abuse as I am about the persons creating and distributing it. Both are bad but clearly one is much worse and should be prioritized. If the worse group isn't prioritized then it isn't security, it is theater.

I live in the UK, a "free society", we have CCTV everywhere. It didn't stop me being sexually abused as a child, it's not there to catch pedophiles because pedophiles generally aren't like muggers. Encountered pedophiles at all three schools I went to—you put far too much trust in authority figures like teachers. We got educated by the same people who sexually abused us.

Where there's people, there's problems. From fraud to racism to pedophilia, and everything in-between.

Instead of worrying about children lying to access services for adults, worry about the problem in a non-technological way. Maybe we need greater deterrents in terms of legal repercussions? Maybe we can even help these people figure out what makes them this way?

I think you need to just ensure “best practices” are followed, and mitigate whatever harm comes.

For example: teachers should have background checks, schools should actively survey alumni, teachers should never be alone with students, etc.

That’s the best you can do.

I have children in their early teens. We have to make choices about who to trust and hope for the best.

We definitely had background checks at each school, but background checks are largely just theatre as it can only tell you what is currently known about someone, nothing more. Every modern-day undiscovered pedophile teaching kids has passed a background check at some point to end up teaching in the first place.

I was openly groomed in a room full of people for months on end before I was taken advantage of. We knew it wasn't right, we just weren't sure about the why or how, or what to do when we could articulate it to some extent.

Early teens is a good age to be because they're less vulnerable and more aware of themselves and others. Single-digits is a scary place to be. Wishing you and yours excellent health and peace.

> Ultimately parents and perhaps schools have to educate children on realistic dangers they can face both online and on street corners and supervise them until they are ready to responsibly use these spaces alone.

Agreed but I believe this is maybe 50% of the effective solution.

Ideologically I’d like to say 99% but the defense (educating children) is always reacting to the offense (predator tactics).

To affect the offense, the rules must change and that power rests with Meta (and to a lesser extent, one’s ability to ignore Meta products).

> Child accounts can be more locked down. But children can lie and use parent's id/phone/etc to create adult accounts.

Teenagers can also use a fake ID to buy alcohol, but we don't use that as an excuse for not having laws preventing children from buying alcohol.

I'm reminded of patio11's The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero [0]. It is worthwhile to have laws that are designed to substantially reduce the amount of harm done. It is also worthwhile to be aware that there is a threshold beyond which those laws would do more harm than good.

However, just because we can imagine laws beyond that threshold does not mean that our current laws are optimal. There's a delicate balance to be struck, but from the evidence that I've seen so far I'd say our laws regarding social media and children are way too far on the permissive side.

[0] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...

> we don't use that as an excuse for not having laws preventing children from buying alcohol.

Listen, social media is just disrupting society like Uber disrupted taxis and Door dash disrupted food delivery.

The downsides are always fine and ignorable because of the financials, and regulation is just an archaic attempt to hamper disruption

We should never disrupt the forward momentum of the disruption economy, whatever the harm. Business owners will make enough money that we can soothe all harms. Later. With initiatives.

> The downsides are always fine and ignorable because of the financials

Do you sincerely believe that the downsides (which are, in the context of the forum in which you said what you just said, child abuse of all flavors) are always fine because of money? How is that even remotely defensible?

I'm pretty sure this is sarcasm. They just forgot /s.

Poe's Law in action.

Thank you. I choose to believe you. I'd like to fall asleep tonight.

Well, how is War on Drugs going so far? Is it very hard to get drugs as a teen and what about the unintended side effects? Also making a purchase with precisely quantifiable ingredients is not the same thing as having a conversation where harm or benefit can be only evaluated given full context. Why do you think current laws are too little rather than too much? If personalized advertisement to children was not banned, companies would be more incentivezed to offer child accounts which are full featured enough for children to actually want to use.

> Teenagers can also use a fake ID to buy alcohol, but we don't use that as an excuse for not having laws preventing children from buying alcohol.

I would expect that the checks we expect around financial transactions to buy drugs would be higher than commenting on Facebook.

We need to seriously rethink how children’s safety is handled online.

The scariest moment in my parenting career is when my eldest daughter turned 13. Suddenly all of her kids accounts are grownup accounts.

This happens overnight with no in-between phase.

My main concern isn’t even controlling what she sees as knowing what she sees.

If I could set her browsing history to “non-private, no-delete” I’d be happy as a clam.

Maybe we are around when time `bool child` can be cast to `int`. 80 years old grandma could use some child-intended protection as well as someone just over 13, 18, 20, 21, against internet malice, there's no reason they have to be cut off from platform mechanisms just because they boolean disqualify.

My parents never got to see most of the stupid stuff I did and saw as a teenager IRL. That is a natural part of development.

Do we expect 100% surveillance of their lives just because it is online?

Speaking as a father of boy and girl tweens fwiw.

Maybe it would be better to teach her how to handle situations when you can't be watching what she's doing, rather than chasing some ideal surveillance system that will become ineffective as soon as she learns how to circumvent it...

>But most people would agree that recording everything on every street corner 24/7 is not acceptable in a free society.

Uk government joins the chat.

> But most people would agree that recording everything on every street corner 24/7 is not acceptable in a free society.

I admire your optimism. A huge number of cameras just popped up out of nowhere in my city last year. People are actually excited about it. When I tried to say something, they treated me like one of those crazies that escaped the mental hospital.