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Comment by msane | Hacker News Reader

I think this is our future, whether it's dystopian or not.

Technology is eventually going to make it impossible to really prevent "Persistent aerial surveillance". What requires an expensive small blimp today might become the size of a ping pong ball (or wide area flock of them) and come out of a 3D printer tomorrow.

So who will be using such tech? Governments and private entities alike - we can try to legislate against either but technology will probably overpower the legislation quickly.

So what is the impact of this sort of technology? Maybe it's not all George Orwell. Your bike was stolen on Third St at 1pm? Roll the video back or forwards to know exactly where the thief is. Someone shot up a nightclub and rushed out in a crowd? automated video analysis caught them.

Yes it sounds scary if it were a monopolized power, but eventually I don't think government will be able to hold monopoly on it.

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I think it sounds scary anyway.

I mean, I'd know everything about you -- where you lived, where you shopped, where you worked, where you ate out, where your friends lived, what you did with your friends, when you did it, etc.

I could even get further than you might imagine: I probably have a really good guess (>0.99) what you do at your work, given your activities outside of work and the people you associate with.

I tell your boss when you lie about being sick, I tell your insurance how often you do risky things when not driving, I tell your ex where she can find you at the club.

This is the future you're presenting, and claiming that there's some upside. On the contrary, I think humans can't handle it, and are literally going to drive themselves insane with machines.

I sort of agree, but it just seems technology is going that way one way or the other. How could it be stopped?

When/if that sort of tech happens culture would be very different to say the least.

I agree that some of the possibilities of such tech are scary.

However, putting on my optimist hat, they are only possibilities. Of course it will be possible to do such things. The question then becomes: why would anyone do them, and (somewhat linked) what are the chances that anyone will do them to you?

> I tell your boss when you lie about being sick, I tell your insurance how often you do risky things when not driving, I tell your ex where she can find you at the club.

All of these things were possible 50 years ago. They are possible now. They will be possible in 50 years.

Increasingly advanced technology reduces the amount of effort, and to some extent, the prior knowledge about you required to do these things - but that doesn't automatically make them more likely to happen. For the vast majority of people the motivation to do such things remains extremely low relative to the motivation to do other more interesting things.

> I mean, I'd know everything about you -- where you lived, where you shopped, where you worked, where you ate out, where your friends lived, what you did with your friends, when you did it, etc.

Again, this is not far off being trivial with today's technology. Yet you can't imagine (at least I can't) what benefit or pleasure anybody would get out of knowing such information about a person today. Therefore it's extremely unlikely anyone will care enough to do it - evidenced by the fact that practically nobody does. Why will this change in the future?

Taken to the extreme, ask yourself even if you could retrieve this information about any given person instantly, for zero cost or effort, would you even care enough to do it? Are the things you could do with that information more exciting or interesting than what you were otherwise going to do today? For how many people is that answer going to be yes?

> The question then becomes: why would anyone do them, and (somewhat linked) what are the chances that anyone will do them to you?

Let me rephrase the items from the GP comment:

1. A company that your boss hires will tell him when you lie about being sick.

2. Your insurance company pays to find out how often you do risky things when not driving

3. where-is-she.com charges 29.99 per month to report on someone's location at any time, using open drone surveillance data.

The point is, all of this can be turned into businesses and government services. In my opinion it's damned scary. I like Snowden's remarks on the topic:

> Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

It's completely true that these things can (and, to be honest, probably will) be turned into services by companies, that's just one more way in which access to such information will become easier.

It doesn't change the point about motivation and the underlying reasons such information would be used not changing as a result of it being easier.

Let's further deconstruct those three examples:

1. If your boss pays for such a service, it probably points to a wider issue with them, or you. Either your boss is happy with you and your performance, or they aren't. If the former, what incentive do they have to catch you red-handed lying about sick days? Do they even care, ultimately, if you're getting the job done? If not, why would they pay for and/or use such a service? However, if in their opinion you're not getting the job done, and they're actively looking for evidence presumably to support firing you, and you're actually guilty of lying about sick days - well... that sounds like an extremely unhealthy situation that would probably come to a bad end anyway, with or without them using such a service.

2. (Disclaimer, this may be wildly wrong or pure fantasy, IANAEconomist) How do they feed this data into their risk models exactly? This won't increase everyones' premiums - rather it would result in some premiums going up, others down. If, due to poor models, it results in some premiums going up unfairly, then presumably some other insurance company will figure this out so those actually-not-that-risky clients will switch to them for lower premiums. There will be disruption, and temporarily some people will be treated unfairly, but the market will adjust and actually may become fairer all round eventually. Transparency in this case should actually be a good thing, right? Or are we saying that people who are actually riskier should be subsidised by the less risky?

3. The type of person to use such a service would not just do so because it's easy. This is a fundamental matter of morals. The type of person to use this service would be incredibly likely to do bad things anyway, regardless of the tools available to them to do bad - technology will not take otherwise moral people and suddenly make them immoral just because it's easier now than it was yesterday. In rather simplistic terms, don't blame the weapon for violence, blame the person making the decision to use the weapon.

> All of these things were possible 50 years ago. They are possible now. They will be possible in 50 years.

But 50 years ago, these things were not trivial to accomplish. You couldn't just rewind a public feed, and find this information out about any given person - you had to dedicate manpower to tracking any one given individual.

That's very true - it's the point I address on the next line :-)

> Increasingly advanced technology reduces the amount of effort, and to some extent, the prior knowledge about you required to do these things - but that doesn't automatically make them more likely to happen.

I disagree that it doesn't automatically make them more likely to happen.

Reading this back, I didn't phrase this in the right way to get across my meaning.

I'm totally not taking the extreme and naively idealistic position that ease of access won't make bad things more likely to happen. It will in almost all cases by some margin - I guess my real argument is that margin might be small enough that it's not really a big deal in practice.

And this is definitely my 'optimist' argument. It's what I want to believe is true, and I think there's some rational justification for it, as I've discussed. However, sadly I can definitely see the opposite case as well, and totally accept that it's not only possible, it could be the more likely outcome.

I want to believe that, too, but when Amazon is spending serious money on a one-press-to-order button - thus betting that ease of access will increase use - I'm pretty sure I don't want to argue the other direction :p

> Yet you can't imagine (at least I can't) what benefit or pleasure anybody would get out of knowing such information about a person today. Therefore it's extremely unlikely anyone will care enough to do it - evidenced by the fact that practically nobody does. Why will this change in the future?

I'm paid to profile people and discover facts about their lives from their habits and the stream of data their phones collect.

Quite literally, there's hundreds of millions of dollars on the line to get that information about you, because it allows people like me to teach computers to manipulate you in to doing what other people want (statistically).

> Taken to the extreme, ask yourself even if you could retrieve this information about any given person instantly, for zero cost or effort, would you even care enough to do it?

The data about people stalking their exes on Facebook strongly suggests that people would peep on each other all the time, given an easy way to do so. However, it doesn't suggest that such habits are healthy.

> Are the things you could do with that information more exciting or interesting than what you were otherwise going to do today? For how many people is that answer going to be yes?

I'm not worried about most people; I'm worried about the people for whom that information is useful, because it can be used against me in effective and highly problematic ways.

I believe this surveillance can be slowed down? We need to stop being so complacent with our photo being taken? We could start be not shopping at stores like Home Depot. Home Depot takes my photo multiple times for the purchase of a screw? I know all stores treat their employees and customers like convicted felons, but some are worse than others?

Then, maybe we could slow down on the posting of pictures? Show up at local town hall meetings--questioning the need for so many cams, and license plate readers? Especially, if said town doesn't have a problem with crime?

That seems like a lot of effort just to keep your apocalyptic narrative alive.

Argument based on reason and ethical principles is not how politics works.

not only in that context worth a read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age

Absolutely

You think people can't handle it but it's actually pretty close to the way most people lived before urbanization brought anonymity to the masses. Now, technological changes might eliminate privacy which would be unprecedented but it's anonymity that's historically weird, not its lack.

Anonymity sure. We're talking about privacy. It's always been at least non-zero available.

Live in a faraday cage. I'm only semi-joking; I think that it could be a solution to your issue if you're that concerned about it. Whatever the outcome technology is going to be persistently ubiquitous.

That's not necessary. Also, lack of emissions would attract attention, and so be counterproductive. But using shielded equipment in a shielded room, that would be prudent for private work.

It was always possible to hide or leave town. Plus people forget.

People for the first million years, lived in one anothers pockets. There was no anonymity. Arguably we're designed to be social because of that.

The modern tendency toward outbursts of antisocial behavior might be a product of anonymity.

What sort of "outbursts of antisocial behavior" are you talking about, and is there really a modern tendency towards it?

Oh anything really. Ranting on HN. Telling off sales clerks. Pushing to the head of the subway line. Anything you get away with because its anonymous. In the old days, you'd know every clerk, everybody in a line, and get harassed if you were antisocial.

You'd also be harassed if you deviated from any social norms, had the wrong religion/skin/... We should not want to return to such times.

That's very much a modern view. And not shared around the world at all. Racism is of course wrong. But social norms are the glue that holds us all together, to a degree. Its not black-and-white.

... So what?

First, it's apples-to-oranges, because we lived in smaller groups.

Second, our cultural-programming changes at a much faster rate than genetic-programming.

That's not actually clear! Homo Sapiens adaptation rate increased 100-fold once we started this civilization thing. And for most of that time our social evolution was very slow. I guess today it might have turned around, but that's a blink in the history of our race.

Given you and most people reading this very likely carry a phone in your pocket that can track most of above fairly well, its already been here for years. I like the benefits of my phone despite the potential for abuse.

Challenges of advancement is nothing new for humans. Just like when cave men discovered how to make fire. It's incredibly beneficial when used well. It's incredibly harmful if used without control.

It's scary because the US government has such a history of suppressing dissenting ideas, especially when it comes to anti-war activists, environmental activists, or any domestic groups which express opposition to the United States' form of capitalism. The FBI has a long history of infiltrating and undermining such groups.

I understand what you're saying, but it also means that many possibly beneficial ideas and/or movements tend to not see the light of day.

If the government wanted to stomp out dissent, it wouldn't take aerial surveillance. People loudly and openly dissent under their real name with no consequences.

Wanting to outlaw any technology that could conceivably be used against you is silly.

"we can try to legislate against either but technology will probably overpower the legislation quickly"

Technology is here to serve us. What's with this attitude that we don't have the tools (laws) to control what our government and people are and aren't allowed to do? It's like the good ideas of small government and libertarianism have been warped mean that laws are no longer the solution to anything.

Laws are great. Laws against use of information technology are pretty troublesome to enforce. Are you thinking of a law against building or operating drones? Or a law against using open source software which controls swarms of drones or stores video? Or a law against advanced 3D printers? I hear distributing copyrighted music is illegal...

"Roll the video back or forwards to know exactly where the thief is."

This is happening collaboratively today on Nextdoor.com when there is a crime in the neighborhood.

"What does your camera show, Mr. Neighbor, at such-and-such time and date?"

Thankfully that all happens manually and requires people to cooperate with one another. The FBI requires no such cooperation.

Everything you mentioned has been possible for several years now: with eyewitnesses, ubiquitous CCTVs, etc. The change will really be in that clearance rates on crimes will shoot upwards when these technologies are invented. Or criminals will find ways around the technology, as they have done for much of human history.

The bigger concern is the possibility of misuse and abuse of such technology, both by the government and by unscrupulous individuals. That is what will make the future dystopian. In fact it has been happening for many years now: think lie detectors and cell phone tower tracking- both demonstrably bullshit, but widely abused nevertheless!

There was an interesting recent book that covers a lot of privacy vs technology concepts that are increasingly relevant. I'd highly recommend checking it out. It's a quick read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_%28Eggers_novel%29

Doesn't it sound scarier if the government doesn't hold a monopoly on it? At least the government is [supposed to be] held to some standard of use. I think that type of technology and data being available to the general public at large is frightening.

It's also probably a lot easier to capture a ping pong ball than a blimp. Then you'll have people reverse-engineering them and figuring out countermeasures. It'll be illegal, of course, but someone will have a way to defeat them and probably use it.

A flying ping-pong ball I find in my house, is mine to do with as I will. I expect courts eventually will find that dominion to extend to some elevation above my backyard as well.

Sharper cameras, higher flights...

I think it will be a monopoly for people/organizations who have the necessary money.

And they will probably create rules that prevents others from getting information. So we will have some information have's and a lot of have nots.

And then after that everything will simply be recorded. Human activity prior to this point in time will be considered kind of "pre-historical".

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