Scale. The possibility of surveillance was far less worrying when three police officers had to tail you, because they'd only expend that effort when they were pretty sure you'd done a crime.
Warrants aren’t required so the police are sportsmanlike. Warrants are required because interacting with the police can be inconvenient or hellish, depending on the interaction.
Move fast enough with sufficent scale and you can eliminate peoples ability to protect their own rights before they even realise they are under threat.
Sometimes friction in government is necessary for individual liberty.
I know this is lagging, and American culture will take decades to accept it, but the better our police are the lighter the sentences can be. Part of why a big hard sentence was seen as a deterrent was sort of the EROI ... If the chances of catching are small, you need a big deterrent. If the chances of catching are near 100% you only need a smaller deterrent (and apply it close to the behavior to maximize the brain training of "Do bad, bad things happen")
>If the chances of catching are near 100% you only need a smaller deterrent
I would rather live in a world with marginally higher petty crime rates with zero surveillance, than a world that has no petty crime but where there are Flock cameras on every corner and drones patrolling overhead at all times.
Peter Thiel and his ilk are creating Big Brother.
And what is a petty crime these days?
Within the last year in Woolston Lyttelton and Brighton: I've been assualted unprovoked, I've had the outer unit of my split heatpump stolen (for Al, $$$ to fix), I've had outdoor plumbing damaged (for Cu, $$ to fix), I've had the rim stolen[1] off the back of my parked car, last week my friend had tools stolen that they can't afford to replace.
I'm not sure what the answer is, but the above petty crimes are unacceptable to me or my friends.
Nothing has been reported because that just costs time and doesn't resolve the problems.
In small groups of people society is surveillance (yes, often detrimentally). I've lived in small towns and the surveillance is extreme. Society has got worse at encouraging/enforcing good society.
I loath surveillance capitalism, but systemically I'm unsure what the answer is.
I finally gave in and installed a Eufy brand camera (my security friend used that brand and installed it, although I can't recommend the UI). I don't think that it will even help. Ironically the security friend was broken into recently and had their security camera stolen.
None of the above was motivated by hunger or good reasons: it was real scumbags for the situations I know the perp, and likely drug users for the metal thefts (or perhaps kids - two brass taps are not worth it).
[1] https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360962317/its-bit-epidemic-m...
In my very limited experience, individual officers seem well intentioned. They are extremely well trained in the privacy rights of crooks: I'm guessing crooks use that to their advantage. Tht outcome feels like gaslighting if you're a victim trying to understand what is going on.
I assume it is possible to get involved in politics to make some systemic change. But that costs too much (selling my soul to become a politician, not just time and money).
I'm an engineer type that at least sees solutions to systemic flaws. I have worked on enough broken software in enough broken businesses to know my limitations to effect change.
How you could you possibly quantify this? It's so vague to mean anything, and worse, this sort of rhetoric is the moral licensing that gets poorly thought out policies passed through congress.
>I loath surveillance capitalism, but systemically I'm unsure what the answer is.
The answer should never be to make privacy impossible, because the government will take advantage of that.
+/-fortunately voters do matter.
I can't vote for much in the US given that I'm in New Zealand.
Yes, this is preferable to me when compared to a society where police can surveil everyone, everywhere for no crime at all. I don't want to sit on my roof listening to music and wonder how many police drones are watching me, trying to figure out if I'm a "prowler." I don't want to be followed by a police drone while I'm on my way to the basketball court to shoot hoops with my friend, simply because the police thought one of us looked like a "suspicious individual."
> I know this is lagging, and American culture will take decades to accept it, but the better our police are the lighter the sentences can be. Part of why a big hard sentence was seen as a deterrent was sort of the EROI ... If the chances of catching are small, you need a big deterrent. If the chances of catching are near 100% you only need a smaller deterrent (and apply it close to the behavior to maximize the brain training of "Do bad, bad things happen")
I think you're really underestimating the public's desire to punish criminals.
Yes, i understand what you're saying hence why i mentioned culture. American justice (and cultural cues that inform the policies) seems to be more about revenge than rehabilitation.
And here it looks like they use it on criminals on the run - not something they use to practically monitor each person like some surveillance system, or court ordered wiretap
At least, that’s what I’ve gathered