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Comment by bryan0 | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: what will happen when people start getting implants? They’ll probably require some sort of off mode, but not sure how that would be enforced.

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It's already impossible to stop someone from recording if they are really determined. Pen cameras, button cameras and all sorts of miniature devices exist and can be snuck through very easily. You enforce the restriction by prosecuting people who upload the footage.

The problem is punishing the uploader doesn't remove the upload. Once the public has it, it has it forever. It doesn't un-contaminate a jury pool, and there's no later retraction if whatever that was uploaded is found to be lacking context, false, or outright fabricated. Once that kind of damage is done, it can't be un-done.

Yeah, that's unfortunate. But the same is true of lots of other crimes. No way to unstab someone. Usually we account for that by setting a higher punishment

> You enforce the restriction by prosecuting people who upload the footage.

but this is impossible to guarantee as well

It sure changes the incentives though. It’s much less attractive to leak recordings as a PR move—or realize any benefit that cranky humorless judges can trace back to the recording—if that, in and of itself, constitutes a whole new crime (and effectively confessing to it too).

It's turtles all the way down. If we had a way to perfectly prevent people from doing undesirable things, we wouldn't need courthouses to begin with. The system doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be good enough that reliably circumventing it isn't worth the effort.

>It's already impossible to stop someone from recording if they are really determined.

I'm no expert, but I believe national security SCIFs use technology that blocks recording.

On-board NN moderates all interactions. Moral NN core must be updated montlhy to support latest moral and legal checks by NN. This core reports when you are doing something suspicious. State, municipal, border and patrol random checks for proper attestation of implants. Of course manufacture and installation of such implants is licensed and tightly regulated. Think of children.

It's not very different from smartphone. But now instead of modem you have nn "firmware" with broad capabilities to warn privacy and ethics police when you are out of line. Recording in the wrong place, or looking at a crime and not reporting. "Off mode" won't fly for a gun, and your implant threatens children, so I don't believe this could be delegated to the user.

> On-board NN moderates all interactions. Moral NN core must be updated montlhy to support latest moral and legal checks by NN. This core reports when you are doing something suspicious.

This module is formally called "conscience" and fortunately, at this time, is securely sandboxed to not directly communicate with any device or service outside of the body.

Look how that worked out for whatever‘s your favorite mass genocide in history.

I don't think networking it with powers-that-be will help, though.

Thankfully Silicon Valley discovered you can be so much more productive by removing the conscience as well as the soul.

This is dangerous terrorist version you are talking about. People can not be trusted with choosing their own conscience, that's how you get terrorists and pedophiles. Remotely attested module is trusted by democratic authority, not using it is basically admiting intention to hurt fellow citizens.

Drop the democratic, and you just invented crypto-church.

For ex. in a lot factorys, is is forbidden to make pictures (and movies). So maybe you just don't have access to such areas. In Switzerland pen cameras etc. are just forbidden.

In fact, pre smartphones more or less, bringing cameras into even an office workplace was generally pretty controlled. Still is under some circumstances.

I banned them from our office and while using work-issued computers. There’s no circumstance here in which someone should be working with a personal camera aimed at their screen.

Recently someone showd me a cellphone picture from something he saw in our company. He was not brave enought to make a screenshot (with the companys computer), so he made just a photo with his cellphone from the screen. So, this is a thing.

That's so far into the future that we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

On the audio side, it's not a stretch to imagine cochlear implants (or hearing aids) having an undetectable recording ability.

AFAIK some wireless buds can work as better hearing aids, they just don't have the medical device label to officially perform that function.

Some even have that label: https://support.apple.com/en-us/120992

> so far into the future

Idk, I think this is like, maybe 5 years in the future

You really need to look into what people are doing with prosthetic eyes.

Here's a dude from 3 years ago adding a flashlight: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/yblzi4/g...

And I'm pretty sure I saw one who added a laser to theirs for raves, but can't find the link :)

You can buy very very tiny cameras today off the shelf, the main problem would be just packaging either a storage medium or wireless transfer capability + power inside the eye. With government-level budgets it's doable, possibly even by a skilled maker with resources.

AirPods knockoffs are mass-produced. They contain power and RF comms in a package that's significantly smaller than an eye. The only problem with prosthetic eye camera I as a half-skilled home-lab owner would have is how to not ruin the source prostetic. Which is trivial - just buy a dozen and practice.

It's so far into the future that it overflows the temporal coordinates and is actually a few years into the past now.

sounds like an expensive way to get disqualified from jury duty.

The easiest way to get out of jury duty is to ask about jury nullification during voir dire.

But the bigger thing is: why would you want to get disqualified from one of your biggest civic duties?

Or you could just write to the court and ask to be excused, so you don't even have to show up. Most judges will excuse you for any reason if you ask.

In Miami, writing "No English" on the summons does the trick. Or, tell them that you do not consent to be searched (courthouse searches are deemed to be "consent" searches) so please have someone escort you inside without being searched. A quick note saying, "only God can judge" gets you off the hook. They'll hustle you right out of there if you mention jury nullification. Announcing that "the defendant must be guilty because the police arrested him," or "plaintiff lawyers exaggerate injuries to get more money" usually work. "I'm prejudiced against [fill in the blank] people" works too. If this doesn't work immediately, serve up a stereotype in response to the judge's question. "Everyone knows that most crimes are committed by black people" will earn you an a quick excusal. I could go on. "I can't pay attention because I'm worried about..." "Maybe this case is important to these people but I've got my own problems and I can't concentrate on their while I'm worried about my own."

"Your honor, it is my ethical framework that I first must determine if the law should even be the law, and secondly if the defendant did it if the law is worthy. I will find the defendant not guilty even if they claim in open court they did it, but the law is bad."

(Basis and justification of jury nullification.)

Edit: Seriously, -1's? Given how many bad laws there are, judging the law first, then the defendant should be a given.

You're getting downvotes because openly stating it like this is gonna get you contempt of court.

Imagine if everyone did this. Then when you’re in court for a crime you didn’t commit the only people on the jury would be those too stupid to have failed to be dismissed from jury duty.

The last time I was on jury duty in New York, any time someone tried any of these, the judge just reassigned the person to the jury pool for civil cases which, he claimed, are usually longer trials and likely to be more of an inconvenience.

Not on my last summons! I had to go to a side room with the judge and show him that I already had personal, not work-sponsored, travel during the scheduled dates. He was clear with our instructions that work travel was not an excuse; that was the employer’s problem, not the employee’s. I showed him my airfare receipts and he thanked me for coming, and sent me home. I was one of like 5 people who got to leave.

We had a 2 or 3 month old and my wife didn’t get dismissed due needing to breastfeed the baby every couple hours. They gave her a room to feed in, so I also had to take time off to take the baby to her.

I’m a bit surprised that they didn’t just let you reschedule. As I recall when I got a grand jury summons I kicked the can down the road as far as I could and then avoided being empaneled.

It was some big federal case that was scheduled for like 3 weeks. There were 60 or so of us in that batch of juror candidates, and they weren’t letting anyone go without a short list of excuses. That was a first for me, too.

>But the bigger thing is: why would you want to get disqualified from one of your biggest civic duties?

Because jury duty does not pay enough to put a roof over one’s head and food on the table?

Supposedly, for what amounts to an "extremely important civic duty", pays to what amounts illegal under-minimum wage for compelled work. Its usually $60/day which is barely $7.50/hr. Then you have to pay for parking and overly expensive food downtown.

And the only reason people even care about being on a jury is because we are threatened with state violence if we dont. Its not like they have to pay people fairly - they just threaten you with contempt of court and jail.

Money wouldn't solve everything, sure. But being paid $50/hr would greatly alleviate many problems.

That's only relevant if you would lose out on your income from work, which most people won't as they are paid salary. So yes, for people paid hourly it's legitimate to want out of jury duty, but that's also not the typical situation. Most people just don't feel like doing it.

>But the bigger thing is: why would you want to get disqualified from one of your biggest civic duties?

because jury duty pays like 2 dollars an hour and I gotta eat. I know lots of folks on this website are relatively well off, but the entire country doesn't make 6 figures

Meanwhile you’re probably paying for parking, gas, etc.

Also grand jury duty can be something like six months (may not be every day depending on jurisdiction. Federal may be even longer. Probably no company will keep paying you for that length of time even if you squeeze in some work nights and weekends.

The company doesn't get the choice. If they fire you or cut your pay over jury service, or even just threaten to to do so, and you can prove it, they can be arrested immediately. I have personally witnessed a judge issue a bench warrant for the arrest of a retail manager who told an employee that if she failed to get out of jury duty before her shift started that she would be fired. When the manager was brought in and questioned by the judge he tried to argue that it was his right to deny jury service by his employees. He was given 90 days in jail for contempt of court.

I don’t know. Maybe I could worked with HR for more but our employee manual said they would pay for two weeks and this was a company that was generally pretty understanding about personal matters. Certainly an hourly employee or someone self employed is probably not getting any sort of a deal.

I wouldn’t have been fired (which seems a different case) but being largely unable to, say, make sales calls or other external activities for 6 months I would expect to have consequences even if just as simple as underforming my peers. Maybe a manager would understand and take it into account but I wouldn’t count on it. It doesn’t have to be blatant as in your example.

If you perform nearly any work at all in a given week you're entitled to your salary, and they can't fire you. They might be able to take away the $15/day stipend from your pay, and there are obvious additional negatives (6 months with limited context and practice of your craft will reduce your performance when you get back too), but that 2-week cap is a lawsuit waiting to happen unless they also forbid you from doing any work while on jury duty.

As I say grand jury duty is often not every day, you can always take your PTO, and there are always nights and weekends. A company can always keep paying your base salary but, as you say, there could be longer term consequences.

And the case upthread is obviously a retail manager being stupid but I also assume there is no obligation to pay hourly employees for hours they don’t work or for tips they didn’t collect.

> not every day

Yep

> can take your PTO

You can, but if salaried you usually shouldn't, ignoring any particularly malicious employers and social contracts around the outskirts of the law.

> No obligation to pay hourly employees, tips, etc

Yeah, if you're not salaried you're screwed. PTO might cover a few days, but if you have a month-long trial and need money for rent then my understanding of the law is that serving as a juror will make you homeless unless the courtroom is willing to extend some compassion for your hardship.

That's the only legitimate reason to not want jury duty, but you also just need to explain to the judge that you get paid by the hour for work and can't afford to not be paid for several days. The judge will let you go.

That's also not the typical reason people want out of jury duty. Most people are just lazy, not actually at risk of economic hardship from it.

what will happen is people will get away with it, unfettered, until someday someone ends up in a courtroom for it. they'll be punished, then if it happens frequently enough more people will chime in on wanting a way to inhibit it, maybe people would start wearing those anti-paparazzi-clothes that somehow ruin the footage

I don't remember the book, but some scifi novel had an idea where each visitor to some country needed software installed on their implant. This software allowed any one to be opted out of visitor to see their face and clothing style. Basically, on demand anonymity in real life.

You can ask someone to take off glasses or power down a phone, but you can't really "check" an implant in the same way

EMP wave.

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