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Comment by plagiarist | Hacker News Reader

There was a HN user recently on a related post explaining to everyone that they don't need privacy because they personally aren't harmed and a murderer was caught by one of these cameras.

It turns out protesters don't need privacy, either, because of various reasons. Same for women seeking adequate healthcare, I'm sure. Or LGBT people attempting to exist.

Sorry, I am strawmanning a little. Actually, we'll simply have regulations on use. Regulation which will certainly be followed this time by a government with complete disregard for Constitutional rights. Certainly they will never be misused by the police currently stalking their ex-partners with existing surveillance systems despite existing stalking legislation.

I wish the legislation you talked about existed already. I am dismayed by the overwhelming number of people that love being surveilled. Without them, we would have it already.

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Sadly, often once some new degree of connection becomes possible, its absence is very quickly seen as unconscionable. But that instinct is corrosive to human flourishing and freedom in the long term.

Once it's possible to monitor your children via networked phone or wristwatch and know at all times where they are, for example, if you do not spy on your own children then other parents who do will look at you askance, seeing you as neglectful. Some will call the authories to complain. Those same complainers will also wonder why so many children are no longer becoming effective, independent adults, with no introspection.

The same philisophical problem emerges independent of surveillance with most, if not all, new technology. Once everyone is genetically engineering children, bringing children into the world naturally will set them up for failure and serfdom (a la Gattaca).

An Apple airtag in your kid's shoes is common enough.

In response to someone in another thread who argued against personal privacy, who said "Why do people feel they can behave in a way that can be blackmailed", I responded with the following:

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Yeah, how dare someone do or say anything that some random crazy asshole could use to threaten that person's personal or professional life or even put them in danger of physical harm. To hell with gay kids growing up in very traditional religious areas in much of the world.

That person who made a racist joke on Discord when they were 13 years old? That should be able to ruin them when they're 30!

Someone confiding to a friend over social media DMs that they're in an abusive relationship with someone violent? Well - she shouldn't be surprised when her partner beats her within an inch of her life when he finds out. If only she did what she was told, right?

And let's not forget the cringiest or most sexual thing you've ever said online - make sure that your every utterance in private would pass scrutiny by your employer's HR department!

Seriously...I don't understand people like you. What a small, listless, and unusually safe world you must live in.

You may as well have asked why can't everyone think and act like you as well as live in your particular region of the world with the same friends, family, romantic, and professional opportunities that you've been provided throughout your life.

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"That person who made a racist joke on Discord when they were 13 years old? That should be able to ruin them when they're 30!"

Or society could move on and accept that people progress. Also I am not aware of any instances where 30 year olds were punished for a racist joke they made with 13.

The only instance I remotely know, is of a german politician, who made a deeply racist and neonazi pamphlet when he was 17 - and the result was some public outcry but nothing else.

Still privacy is important, simply because those who do surveillance are not trustworthy either.

In the 2010's, there was an instance of a late-teens/early-20's girl targeted by a group of too-online people for a racist chat log made when she was around 12 or 13 years old. The people went after her dad's business too because of his association with her.

Aside from getting her fired from her job, they also tried to destroy her dad's business.

I get that less-than-10 years isn't a ton of time, but it also represented nearly half her life. People tend to grow up a lot in their teens even if it's still common for there to be some immaturity leftover in their early 20's

I would like to read more, if possible.

Lynch mobs usually ain't fair or just or busy with factfinding, but I know there are also a lot of people hiding behind a mask and do not like to get exposed by confronting them with something out of a time when they were not so careful yet.

Personally I just avoid racists (or argue with them) and don't attack their stuff or even family and don't think this is the way, to get to a world without or even less racism.

The end state is something like China, where petty street level crime is essentially solved. You can leave your bike unlocked because if anyone stole it the police would find them and return it since they can track the thief on a network of cameras.

But like you say, many things which have been crimes were based on unethical laws. It's easy to two sides this issue, less crime would on a whole be a good thing but some level of committing crime and getting away with it is required for society to progress.

> You can leave your bike unlocked because if anyone stole it the police would find them and return it since they can track the thief on a network of cameras.

In the US it is actually even worse than that.

The government and large corporations (basically the same people owning it all) will spy on you 24x7 for anything that they dislike you doing.

But if your bike (car, etc) is stolen right in front of many cameras providing video evidence, police will not do anything about it.

I know first hand people who have crystal clear video evidence of theft, gave it to the police, and they just don't care to do anything about it.

> The end state is something like China, where petty street level crime is essentially solved.

That’s also true for many states that don’t have the same coverage of CCTV and total lack of privacy.

These are NOT two sides of the same coin.

Where is petty street crime solved without massive government intrusion?

Japan for starters, Taiwan for seconds.

> The end state is something like China, where petty street level crime is essentially solved.

PRC netizens, and who knows what percentage of them are real but presumably more than 0, will defend this when I talk with them about it. How the surveillance makes them feel safe, how they wouldn't feel safe without it.

Hm, maybe, I'd prefer the person looking over me while I slept to be someone I know, but I guess everyone knows brother Xi. Regardless, the implication seems to be that we need the requisite police state to go with it, when Taiwan and Japan both have basically total CCTV coverage as well, yet are liberal democracies. Both countries are also comparably safe to the PRC. So there certainly seems to be some middle ground. I don't know about Japan, but I've not heard of issues of private companies exploiting the CCTV for profiteering purposes, or like, cops using it to stalk people, or the government using it to engage in civic oppression (post constitutional reforms).

I think we just need sensible levels of surveillance with proper safe guards. I'm quite happy with a network of CCTV that can track down the driver who just bulldosed and killed a kid on the their bike. I'm not ok with Amazon building their own network of spying doorbell cameras to sell adverts.

> Japan both have basically total CCTV coverage as well,

Japan is nowhere near "total CCTV coverage"

> The end state is something like China, where petty street level crime is essentially solved.

Petty crime in China was also "essentially solved" before there were cameras anywhere.

> You can leave your bike unlocked because if anyone stole it the police would find them and return it since they can track the thief on a network of cameras.

Leaving my bike unlocked in Shanghai 10+ years ago, it was stolen about once every one or two months. That's better than the US, but it's not exactly economical.

The modern solution is that you don't own a bike. You use the rental bikes instead. They're not as good as the bike you'd own, but if they get stolen it's not your problem. (And they have trackers installed, so it's not much of a problem for the rental company either.)

Using a very lightweight lock for the frame and ideally having a saddle and wheels that can't come off without tools would change things economically, especially if the bike is cheap but good enough.

The issue is having to rely on luck and the fact that humans are risk and loss aversive even when the risk is worth it.

"Leaving my bike unlocked in Shanghai 10+ years ago, it was stolen about once every one or two months." Seriously? How many times until you started locking it up?

China is an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society, with their ethnic minorities being about as different from the Han majority as the Czechs are different from the Slovaks. if China was to experience Western levels of diversity, inclusion, and cultural enrichment, then no amount of surveillance could possibly help prevent crimes, petty and otherwise. just look at the UK.

"then no amount of surveillance could possibly help prevent crimes, petty and otherwise. just look at the UK."

I don't understand your argument. Are you suggesting surveillance cameras are somehow less effective in diverse societies? Are you claiming UK has as effective a surveillance network as China?

They're racist. The argument is racism.

>Are you claiming UK has as effective a surveillance network as China?

a more effective one.

>Are you suggesting surveillance cameras are somehow less effective in diverse societies?

I'm suggesting that certain cultures are less risk and conflict averse, to put it in the most politically correct way possible, and are less disincentivized from committing crimes by the possibility of brief imprisonment.

If it happened in the Land of Freedom, of course its going to happen everywhere. Legislation WILL be exploited, its just a question of when.

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