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Comment by pekk | Hacker News Reader

I don't want my snoopy neighbors to be photographing me at every time of the day. I am not doing anything to deserve that level of suspicion. Not even criminals deserve this level of surveillance, it is abhorrent nonsense out of 1984. And we accept it just because we change the 'sur' to 'sous' on the grounds that the government is not allowed to do it?

Believe me, if constant personal surveillance in every moment and place becomes generally socially acceptable, there will be nothing to stop 'surveillance'.

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Cheap easily accessible recording devices have powered most civil interest in abuses of police power, the identification and capture of domestic terrorists and a few full out popular revolutions against corrupt government regimes.

The constant refrain of "oh it's 1984" is completely at odds to the empowerment of the public that readily available and pervasive recording devices have given us - the cellphone camera has done more to prevent tyranny then that book ever will.

You're already watched in the vast majority of public spaces you go to. However, you don't have direct access to this kind of footage for personal defense -- which just increases the susceptibility of our surveyors to corruption, abuse or simply omission.

Moreover, I don't think your neighbors would be particularly interested in recording your life; what they see is already stored in their minds. Now in exceptional cases they _would_ be interested, such as spotting someone break into your house -- and also on their own defense, of course -- for example if you offended them.

In any case, the case for the right of personal sousveillance is vastly stronger than against, as I see it.

I think we should have the right to prevent Facebook-like companies from aggregating our friends' data about ourselves, that's the only problem I have with Glass. Ideally we'd be able to force a company to delete any recognisable image of ourselves that we haven't signed a release for. Especially when your friends and neighbours are going to screw up privacy settings (by Facebook's design) and share it with at least everyone they know.

Even though I will never be able to get this, I want this so much. People I know constantly over share and refuse to listen about how the information is being used, and I know I make it into their streams.

Can you elaborate on "abhorrent nonsense out of 1984" with a rational argument?

There won't even need to be any surveillance; the gov't can just review the sousveillance footage.

Sure, but we'll see 'em when they do, and then we'll see 'em again when they try to act on the info they've gathered, etc.

We'll vote them out of office if they abuse their knowledge, because we'll know they've abused it.

I think my sarcasmeter just pegged.

I choose to believe the US system of checks and balances isn't broken.

It may not be broken but it definitely has been co-opted.

>There won't even need to be any surveillance; the gov't can just review the sousveillance footage.

“If the NSA is big brother, Glassholes are the new little brother.”

`Godwin's Law' Reductio ad Hitlerum:

"Our NSA-Youth Corps wears Glass, shouldn't you?"(tm)

Will "the government" exist in 100 years?

You don't, but your grandkids probably won't care.

Eventually you're going to elect priests and public officials (i.e. establishment authority figures) even though there are videos of them having sex and/or taking a shit. Because no one will care anymore.

I don't think I'm ready for that future, but there will be benefits as well as the obvious negatives.

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