I was always doubtful about David Brin's views on privacy and surveillance[1], mostly because I didn't want it to be true.
But I'm increasingly coming around to think that it might make sense to explore his model more.
But I'm increasingly coming around to think that it might make sense to explore his model more.
I expect it would do that for lots of other folks.
The last little while I've been thinking of buying a car or maybe a motorcycle. For quite a long time I've enjoyed the fine public transit we enjoy here in Vancouver and Portland, but I'd like to go camping in the desert.
The reason I haven't already done so, is that I know from experience that when you drive a car, the police find all manner of reasons to pull you over. The cops don't always have evil intent in doing so; consider that Timothy McVeigh was pulled over for expired registration a few days ago after he bombed the Oklahoma City Federal Building. I expect everyone was getting pulled over back then.
I was appalled just a couple days ago to learn that the Feds have - or maybe they are working on - a nationwide license plate reader database.
Even were I completely law-abiding, drove my car legally, my physical location would be in that database. No matter where I travelled in my car or on my motorbike, my entire path would be in a computer file.
I've thought about that quite a lot; I am simply unable to tolerate such a thing, even today.
By contrast, one does not need a license plate to ride a bicycle. I'm rather out of shape but back in the day I used to ride my bike fifty miles on a regular basis.
I'm not dead certain but I might ride my bike from Portland to Burning Man this year. That's mostly desert, much of it mountainous. To do that wrong could be life-threatening but to do it right would be quite cool.
Please enjoy your anonymous public transport to the fullest for me. :(
There's not a whole lot one can do to prevent it.
My take is to convince a whole lot of people to swap their cards with each other. That is, you and I would each purchase a $20 card. Say you and I worked at the same company - when we arrived at work, we'd trade cards.
When I got home, I'd trade my card with my neighbor.
That would enable The Man to cut down on his cash handling expenses, which really are quite significant when you handle quite a lot of coin and currency. But it would make a total rat's nest of any attempt to track transit riders by tracking our payment cards.
We have seen how keeping cameras on police moderates their behaviour. I wonder if that "reverse surveillance" could also moderate things like unjustified stops when one is driving?
Apparently not in the most recent case in South Carolina where the officer's dash cam was running and didn't stop him from shooting a man eight times in the back, did it?
Also, the camera's are there for the cops sake, not for ours. I welcome having body camera's, but I think you'd be surprised at how many times a cop has justifiable means to use lethal force, and doesn't.
Sure, it helps us keep tabs on them, but I'm pretty sure the actual reality of what they put up with compared to how these situations are portrayed in the media, are going to be eye opening to a lot of people.
Sure, it's no panacea.
But in San Diego:
Complaints have fallen 40.5% and use of "personal body" force by officers has been reduced by 46.5% and use of pepper spray by 30.5%, according to the report developed by the Police Department for the City Council's Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods Committee.[1]
And the ACLU tends to think they are on the balance, positive[2].
I think Brin's argument would be that we've tried policing without cameras, maybe it is worth trying it with lots more cameras.
It's worth noting in that case you mentioned above it was mobile phone footage that led to him being charged, not a dash cam[3]. That's an argument for more cameras, controlled by civilians.
[1] http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-body-cameras-201...
[2] https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/police-body-moun...
[3] "the video, which was taken by a bystander" http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/us/south-carolina-officer-...
I do agree on your points, which are all well made.
Do you think he would have been charged had it not been for the civilian video? Or do you think it simply would've taken longer to charge him since they would have to get the video off his dash cam, review it, and then decide whether to take action.
Cameras' purpose is to allow gathering evidence in the (hopefully rare) instances of inexcusable behavior by officers, and to encourage them to do things "by the book" rather than stretching the truth (lying) about what actually happened.
If you're careful, riding a bicycle through the desert and mountains is pretty safe. The most dangerous part are roads with narrow shoulders and lots of truck traffic. You can almost always find a lightly-traveled road to get you where you want to go. You should carry lots of water in the desert, but you should be fine if you run out and don't panic. I never ran out, but I was pretty confident if I did I could just sit still and wait for a passing motorist to share some water.
Motorcycles still have license plates, and I got pulled over more than once for speeding. But there seems less incentive for an officer to try and search a motorcycle than search a car. So you might deal with fewer overzealous police officers on a motorcycle than in a car.
Over the last 20 years, I've put well over 220k miles in on a variety of cars, and have gotten pulled over exactly four times, all of which were for unarguably justified reasons.
(in fairness, I'm a white dude and they're not gonna pull me for 'driving while black')
(And yes, every time I mention this I secretly hope someone will argue with me, explaining the reasons to fight for so strong privacy we enjoy now (relatively to all the history of humanity) that are different than just belief in the privacy as a basic human right - an axiom which I don't really recognize).
I'm curious how you think that privacy is stronger now than any other time in history?
While the "small town" / "small group" effect was definitely present in the past, if you ran afoul of said group, you could always leave it (and the stigma) behind. Now the Internet allows people to inspect your history wherever you go. It becomes inescapable. This is something that has never existed in the past (aside from becoming so super-infamous that news travels between disparate groups, I guess).