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Comment by JonCox | Hacker News Reader

I sometimes feel the Hacker News crowd are a bit out of touch with the rest of the population.

Here in the UK most people I know feel safer with surveillance, it's used primarily to keep law and order.

We don't live in some authoritarian state where it's used for nefarious means, it's used to keep the public safe.

And seriously, why would you care if you're sitting on a database? What difference does it make to anything?

And I want to know when this mythical time was when we all had total privacy? I don't understand what bothers people so much about a person in a CCTV monitoring station looking at them sitting on a bus, or a spook reading the emails I send to my parents. Honestly, no-one cares.

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The key point is interpretation and use of the data.

I don't particularly mind CCTV coverage of cities, if we still live in 1970 and technology limits it to essentially manual viewing of feeds to follow criminal suspects. In that world, ordinary citizens walking around a city centre are items of data that are discarded forever as soon as the tape reels run out. Even if they're kept, the volumes of data involved are so huge that they're effectively lost in time anyway.

The world we live in today is not that world. We are not far from being able to use facial recognition to track the whereabouts of every single citizen and save it forever, indexed along with the video recording of them at the time. We already have the capability to do that using cellphones. We can save the entire life history of individuals using these records and collate them into a viewable form near-instantly.

As I alluded to in my earlier post, the way we're going it's not a huge leap to imagine voice recognition allowing for phone calls to follow suit. Why is voice recognition important? Because it turns weeks and weeks of trawling through transcripts into a search query with instant results.

It's a completely different ball game. It's permanent, searchable, indexable super-fast memory. 'Forgetting' becomes obsolete.

In the old world of tape CCTV cameras, my neighbours knew more about me than the Government. Now, it's almost certainly the other way around, and if not, only because they've decided not to type 'stegosaurus' into the Big Database of Everything.

"it's used primarily to keep law and order."

Except when it's not. No one disagrees the advantages afforded to us with access to data. However with great power comes great responsibility and our leaders, including the institutional powers behind them, invariably show a lack of the latter.

"Honestly, no-one cares."

That is patently untrue. People who understand the disadvantages and pitfalls of unfettered access to data care very much and fight for our rights even if we are too busy to make it a priority in our lives. The EFF have made it their job to care for example.

> "Except when it's not. No one disagrees the advantages afforded to us with access to data. However with great power comes great responsibility and our leaders, including the institutional powers behind them, invariably show a lack of the latter."

It would be political suicide for a UK politician to use the data the police and security forces have for political gain (assuming they got caught of course). It just doesn't happen.

> "That is patently untrue. People who understand the disadvantages and pitfalls of unfettered access to data care very much and fight for our rights even if we are too busy to make it a priority in our lives. The EFF have made it their job to care for example."

It's nice there are people out there making sure things don't get too out of hand. I just question their underlying beliefs about our need for privacy.

Also the "no-one cares" goes both ways. I seriously doubt the state cares about my conversations with friends, most people just aren't that interesting. Perhaps Hacker News suffers from collective delusions of grandeur ;)

It didn't stop the Murdoch press from bribing cops for data from their information systems. If police have it without intense scrutiny then anyone can get it, the press, corporations who you disagree with, your violent ex-husband. not to mention some yob at the council or any government agency with enforcement powers.

It doesn't make a difference until someone trawls the databases and can reconstruct much of your life. Also even if it doesn't matter to you don't you want journalists and lawyers free from communication (and who they contact) surveilance?

I'm actually fine with a CCTV operator in a monitoring station viewing the feeds. I'm also OK with the recordings being kept a short time in case they are needed to investigate something not spotted at the time. What I'm not comfortable with is them being kept more than a month or so. CCTV footage kept long term may be linked with Face recognition for detailed and personal tracking.

Likewise with the ANPR, I would be OK with it kept and accessible for a month or so (although I think a judge should approve searches both on a particular event (time and location) and for searches on a particular number plate.

We may not yet live in a authoritarian state but can you rule out one occuring in the next 50 years? What if legal and reasonable things today are outlawed, gay rights roled back and they search the ANPR for people who may have frequented gay bars or the archived communications data for anyone who used Grindr.

In my view the collected knowledge is more dangerous than the terrorists to a free society and oversight and limits on retention are required.

You are right though that the majority of the public do not feel this way yet. That doesn't mean we shouldn't oppose the surveilance where not fully justified and try to educate them.

I would also note precisely what you said "people I know feel safer with surveilance" and while I think you may be right I'm really not sure how much safer they actually are.

I guess it really comes down to who can 'reconstruct' my life. If it's the police or security services I believe that's absolutely fine, whoever you are (journalists, lawyers etc. included)

The UK government don't misuse surveillance for political reasons, if they did there would be uproar. We're not slipping into an authoritarian state, that would be completely at odds with British culture and where we're really heading.

I'm just tired of seeing a trend of people who post here all spouting the same anti-surveilance, privacy is everything, ideals. Without adding any caveats for the benefits and protection we gain from people watching over us. It feels like there is total disregard here for what we would lose by giving it up.

I'm okay with giving up a little privacy for the greater good.

Then you're a fool. Stop trying to foist your lack of critical thought on others.

> I guess it really comes down to who can 'reconstruct' my life. If it's the police or security services I believe that's absolutely fine, whoever you are (journalists, lawyers etc. included)

Well I'm don't. At times there may be suspicions and warrants to go after lawyers and journalists but at other times that may endanger whistleblowers and it should be overseen by judges issuing warrants.

> The UK government don't misuse surveillance for political reasons, if they did there would be uproar. We're not slipping into an authoritarian state, that would be completely at odds with British culture and where we're really heading.

Prove it. And how would we ever find out that the government were misuing surveilance? A whistleblower could immediately be identified by correlating movements with the relevant journalist or internet traffic. Secondly trusting today's government and security services isn't enough you need to trust all future ones too.

> I'm just tired of seeing a trend of people who post here all spouting the same anti-surveilance, privacy is everything, ideals. Without adding any caveats for the benefits and protection we gain from people watching over us. It feels like there is total disregard here for what we would lose by giving it up.

I never called for the security services to be disbanded, CCTV to be removed or ANPR to be stopped. I said limit retention. Is it possible that some crimes will not be solved that could have been with unlimited retention - Yes. Is it also possible that legitimate speech, whistle blowing and reporting could be deterred by the current surveillance - Yes. These things have to be balanced.

> I'm okay with giving up a little privacy for the greater good.

So am I. With the emphasis on "little" and "greater good". Your approach seems to be "all" privacy with little information on the "greater good" that will come from it or acknowledgments of the harms done. I believe of association, thought, speech and movement are also goods that are damaged by omniscient government (if people avoid doing legitimate things because of the surveilance).

Oops yes, forgot to preface that the police should need a warrant first - I'm not so sure with the security services, probably they should but from a secret, faster process - with more lenient requirements than the police.

Overall though I agree with basically everything you say. I'm just tilted a little more towards longer retention and more information than you I guess.

I concede it is possible that I jumped in here and made blanket statements that aren't 100% realistic. The general sentiment does reflect my opinion though.

Thankfully this is why we have democracy, so a more tempered approach most people agree with can be used :)

By the way your comments come across as more balanced and reasoned than I lot I read expressing basically the same viewpoint.

It is sure great that the UK never has and never will have a child molestation scandal involving individuals in power, some of whom may try to silence, cover up, or postpone the issue by abusing their power.

There are plenty of people who hold positions of government power that have done far worse than abuse surveillance for their own ends.

I does not matter until you are a journalist investigating on some issues with the country, it happened multiple times.

"Innocent data does not exist, it is only a matter of the right time and the wrong hands to turn it into a weapon." - https://www.trilightzone.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=3190

Don't presume to speak for people in the UK.

I'm from the UK and I absolutely, utterly disagree with what you are saying, most of which is baseless.

There have been abuses, there are corrupt intentions at work and there most certainly are people who do not think this level of surveillance is a good thing.

Clearly not everyone holds the same beliefs. On this occasion it's me and at least one other person https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8952794

I am less worried about the government agencies as a whole having my data, I am more worried about so random person who works there taking a dislike to an individual, and making their life hell with the access they have.

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