Hacker News Reader

Comment by pintxo | Hacker News Reader

1. There is a huge difference between my neighbors accidentally seeing me leaving my place, vs an anonymous person 7 months later, being able to statistically analyze when I leave my place in the morning, and when I return in the evening, even getting a list of the places I stayed over night on the days where I did not return in the evening.

2. see above

3. The downsides are enormous as well - Want to know who went to that protest last night? Query your local palantir console. Who met with your former wive within the last 2 weeks? Flock will give you answers.

4. The problem is scale (in the number of people who can observe me, the time frame I can be observed over and the length of time over which that information is available)

View on HN

I cannot reply to everyone but still want to defend the above post (apart from a patronising tone so apologises for that)

The most common response here is “but in the future some other government could do X”. And yes. This was also a major reason for opposition to the orignal “Peelers” in 1800s - a civilian police force. The police today are able to commit many egregious violations but they are mostly held back by laws, and social expectations. It’s not perfect but it beats police in non democratic countries by a mile.

“ Who met with your former wive within the last 2 weeks?” Yes that’s something we have seen police officer and politicians doing - it’s almost always illegal then and should continue to be so.

I think this is about trust in institutions- it’s a problem.

We need sensible laws, a social acceptability of privacy violations just below corrupt cops. The scale is great but so is ability to monitor who monitors us.

Why create an instrument that has a limited upside, but a downside that can lead into totalitarianism, in the first place? If it does not exist, I don't need to trust anyone, hence there won't be a problem.

Institutions can go evil, as seen in any friendly dictatorship all over the world in the last 100+ year.

Keeping the police on the legal side of things seems to be challenging (ICE killings? Asset forfeiture? Police brutality?), better to make it harder for them to do something illegal in the first place.

I am still waiting on a working answer to the question of "who watches the watchmen", so far, this has never really worked (NSA/Snowden?). What has worked quite well was limiting the institutions up-front.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com