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Justice Sotomayor Warns Against Tech-Enabled "Orwellian" World
An anonymous reader writes: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke on Thursday to faculty and students at the University of Oklahoma City about the privacy perils brought on by modern technology. She warned that the march of technological progress comes with a need to enact privacy protections if we want to avoid living in an "Orwellian world" of constant surveillance. She said, "There are drones flying over the air randomly that are recording everything that's happening on what we consider our private property. That type of technology has to stimulate us to think about what is it that we cherish in privacy and how far we want to protect it and from whom. Because people think that it should be protected just against government intrusion, but I don't like the fact that someone I don't know can pick up, if they're a private citizen, one of these drones and fly it over my property."
How high above the dirt do I own? In theory, I could just go straight up with a powerful enough camera lens and zoom in and see what I want on your property from another piece of property, possibly miles away. I see little difference than selling people rights to the dirt, but not to the minerals, and the legality of drilling diagonally underneath someone else's property.
Right now where I'm at on this is allowing someone to look at my property, as long as they aren't "above" my property, and if they do cross my property line they can be held responsible, including me shooting it out of the sky. I can always go inside, just like neighbors can peer over a fence.
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
The impression I got was that she was more against private ownership of camera-equipped drones. I'm guessing that this argument will be used to put limits on individually owned drones, not on government owned drones.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I never knew about Bodhi and probably will never know about it. Could that be the cause of its demise? Was Bodhi very intrusive, invading into peoples privacy?
Isn't she one of the very people that actually helped to build the Orwellian society we already have?
Because people think that it should be protected just against government intrusion, but I don't like the fact that someone I don't know can pick up, if they're a private citizen, one of these drones and fly it over my property
Except private citizens aren't doing this and lack the funds and tools to do it even if they wanted to. Our government, on the other hand, is fist-deep in our assholes at any given moment. I'm not sure I understand the logic behind allowing the government to do as it pleases, while placing further limitations against citizens that aren't even a problem to begin with.
but I don't like the fact that someone I don't know can pick up, if they're a private citizen, one of these drones and fly it over my property.
She's probably just fine with the *state* peeping into your (not her) business. That's the very definition of a self labeled "progressive". Guns, drones, private (no tax man involved) monetary interactions between people, healthcare, retirement, etc.
These things are the bailiwick of the state only. You're too stupid to be allowed to make these decisions.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
It would sure help if people stopped throwing enormous wads of cash at companies peddling Orwellian wares designed to spy on you, or guide you into uploading everything you do to their web servers for data mining.
But no. Hundreds of millions of us stand in line to fork over cash to those companies. THAT is why we live in an Orwellian world. Well, no, I take it back... it's just one reason. There are other reasons too. But it sure as fuck doesn't help.
Was she asleep for, oh, the past quarter century? We've put together a neat little system (really an untidy patchwork of them) such that you can't touch something Turing-complete, drive on a substantial percentage of reasonably major roads, or do just about anything involving commerce without it dropping into the gigantic database somewhere and she's freaking out about somebody's little model airplane with a gopro?
It is the case that there are quite a few values of 'somebody' where worrying might be a good idea; but as a relatively petty footnote to the Orwellian world we've already put into operation. Pretending otherwise is clueless at best and actively dishonest at worst.
... but it is a problem now because the rabble can afford it.
Made simple some people want a monarchy. The government would then be entitled to absolute power and the public left powerless. In order to preserve some measure of equality the people, the government and businesses need to operate under exactly the same laws and restrictions and we all know that will never happen. As it stands the government can do a great job of watching me from many miles away by plane and by satellite. So why should I or my neighbor be allowed less?
if only she were in some sort of position to do more than talk to oklahoma students about the topic.. ah well.
In 1948. That's why his name became an adjective. I fail to understand why Sotomayor's opinions are news when they are not fundamentally different from high school book reports written all over the US.
So stop trying to police it. You already took ownership of the earth beneath your feet. That should be enough, surely.
This from the court that upholds the patriot act?
No, they were an init script holdout and systemd put a hit on them.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
She's probably just fine with the *state* peeping into your (not her) business. That's the very definition of a self labeled "progressive". Guns, drones, private (no tax man involved) monetary interactions between people, healthcare, retirement, etc.
Actually, Sotomayor is a bit of an outlier on the Supreme Court and has been highlighted for laying the groundwork to reinstate stronger Fourth Amendment protections -- particularly against the government intrusions -- especially in her ruling in United States v. Jones . (For details on her privacy rulings before joining the Court, you can see EPIC's summary here.)
Note that in TFA she was warning about "Orwellian" surveillance, which specifically tends to refer to a world where the government is spying on you, not just private citizens. The quotation highlighted in TFS seems to focus on private citizen regulations, but she has also demonstrated more concern about many government invasions of privacy than most other Supreme Court members, including those who are definitely NOT ''progressives."
Her majesties subjects, the American people, already live on that. Warning about a state that already exists is called ignorance.
The thing about the mass surveillance state we have now is that muck rakers don't need to do any work.
If you want to soil someone's reputation, you just do a secret bribe to an NSA agent or look up someone's history on Facebook.
No matter how clean someone is, eventually someone misclicks the wrong link, or goes to a forum online where someone is spewing.
She's worried that common, private citizens can get camera drones and fly them above your property as if that ability wasn't available before now in multiple forms? What about governments doing it since we've had satellites? So does having 4 blades matter vs 2? As a land owner and private citizen, is she ready to a) accept that I own this column of earth above and below? b) to what heights do I own c) what rights is she now going to work towards removing to rid us of this scary, old thing?
No, Sotomayor sees limits to government surveillance, unlike many of her colleagues.
You are welcome on my lawn.
to overrule legislated abridgments to our constitutionally-protected freedoms.
It's too bad Mademoiselle Sotomayer isn't in a position to help with that.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
This and the "Automatic Lip Reading" story both approach the attitude of technophobia. I get it. People are affraid that new technologies will encroach on personal freedoms. But it's a futile attitude. One thing is certain --
progress will occur!
The only solution is for freedom lovers to co-opt the technology itself. Camera's everywhere are a problem? Then pass laws that require all government owned camera's to be publicly accessible on the web to everyone all the time. Drones are encroaching on personal property? Then develop technology for property owners to take over any drone entering private property. And legalize it nationwide.
You can't stop technological progress. You can only take control of the rules that make it unfair. That's what self-government is for -- to empower the populatioon to solve all of the new problems that the society encounters.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
Don't worry. In Libertarian utopia your loss of privacy due to private droning is counterbalanced by your right to spend 24 hours a day on your porch with a gun, and shoot them down.
The more I see you post, the more I realize you've chosen your screen name extremely well.
...but I thought judges weren't supposed to show any bias?
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We don't have a right to block private citizens filming our property from the air. I don't see it in the constitution. I would like to be protected from police harassment and legal action taking place based on the interpretation of things supposedly filmed from above occurring on my property. Frankly although I normally respect Sotomayer, I feel she is misguided in this and is doing the bidding of the anti-drone lobby. Do you think government will give up its own right to fly drones? HAHAHA! This is to take away the ability to fly drones, and nothing else. I can understand MAYBE an ordinance against zooming in and prolonged observation of a specific property but the right to fly drones with cameras MUST be preserved. If you don't want to be viewed from above, build a roof. Are we to be banned from taking binoculars on aircraft as well?
"There are drones flying over the air randomly that are recording everything that's happening" Really, I just checked and couldn't see any near my place.... not sure the problem is that big yet!
Old person explains something new to THEM or something THEIR peers are ignorant of but every younger person is aware of.... not news.
1984 wasn't about technology, it was about authoritarianism taken to the next level using primarily negative feedback. A realistic response (because history shows negative feedback is totally dominant) to the highly praised imaginative Brave New World which used positive feedback to control populations. It's a rebuttal based on historic human behavior. Both books need to be studied because techniques from both camps are used to control populations. Soft sciences make it more effective and technology is merely a tool.
When somebody has an epiphany; that is great, humor them for catching up. Then try to guide them to the next step and let them have another one. Technology isn't 1984; we have always been there as humans. Few societies are organized so well using the latest social science as 1984 did. It just allows things to go further and the technology allows for more micromanagement-- which is the holy grail for authoritarian systems... the end game solution. Oh, 1948 was the date of the book; 1984 is meaningless, just a future date taken from 1948 but close enough for people at the time to THINK about it.
The micromanagement technology is arguably is required for an end game solution like 1984 because it's been tried thru out human history but eventually it fails because they can't control all the people all the time-- 1984 is the end game solution, where they finally can. Nothing is different except that it's permanent an unable to be stopped. No revolutions. Likely, there are no other nations to invade or conquer either (likely just a smokescreen.)
Terrorists like the founders of the USA would be caught early. No revolutions. Violent human struggles on the group level would end. ORDER is one of the top priorities of authoritarians. can't allow unrest. can't even allow protests -- you need a permit or it's disorderly --- we accept that despite it being in the 1st next to speech; we don't quite accept speech zones or permits for free speech... but we are not that far from it.
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why we don't consider private surviellance as insidious as government surviellance. I think in my lifetime I'm more at risk from some sociopathic corporation than malicious government intrusion. Besides how hard is it for the government to get its hands on private data.
Good job striking down the straw man.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
...news, and the realization of how big will become apparent in the short term future.
She pefectly knows the scale of NSA-KGB surveillance. Her ignorance is feigned.
There is A FILE ON EVERBODY and they call the file store "lock box". It works like:
1,) www.IcyReach.mil
2.) "John McInnocence +dirt"
3.) Call officer Jeffrey Donovan tó use said dirt.
When I hear from time to time those wonderful thoughtful remarks by US politicians that seem to be so upfront against "reactionary" establishment, it always reminds of a 30-year old (at least) Russian meme called "The fight of Nanay boys". Basically, those Nanay folks of Far North of Russia had had this traditional entertainment show called "The fight of Nanay boys" where an entertainer would dress his lower and upper parts of his body in clothes in such a way so when he bends forward and stands on his feet and hands it appears so as if two boys are fighting each other
Here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
That's what first come to mind when I here statements like the one from Mrs. Sotomayor
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Everyone keeps talking about drones being an issue.. They are just the side show and distraction. We don't need to regulate drones, we need to regulate big data.
Reality is that the NSA didn't need drones to know everything about you. They could collect all payment information, all internet presence, own your smartphone with spy apps, own your PC, and track your every relationship through meta data from your telecom provider. They know who you talk to and how frequently and in fact and have in fact "stopped revolutions" while they were small when it comes to terrorism. The notion that we live in a free and open society is long gone. People have ended up on watch lists for being aware of TOR, linux and other technologies. I wouldn't surprise me if anyone that uses slashdot as they have had discussions is "watched". That's just your US government. Companies track your spending, and manipulate your environment to try an get you to consume more. There are records on your credit, what services you buy, what you read, where you shop, where you live that are traded and bought and sold as profiles between corporate entities for the sole purpose of their profitability.
Practical surveillance is here. They don't know when you fart and burp yet but with exercise sensors that report to the cloud, and the internet of things they'll know those things soon too. All they need is a big enough data center to consolidate the data build complete profiles on you. If stores (e.g Target) can start sending you diaper coupons because your purchasing habits suggest you might be pregnant believe me they will (in fact they already have).
----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
I like that she is speaking out on this, but I wish she would say something about the attempt to repeal the free speech/press part of the first amendment that the Democrats are working on. https://beta.congress.gov/bill...
``Section 1. To advance democratic self-government and political equality, and to protect the integrity of government and the electoral process, Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.
``Section 2. Congress and the States shall have power to implement and enforce this article by appropriate legislation, and may distinguish between natural persons and corporations or other artificial entities created by law, including by prohibiting such entities from spending money to influence elections.
``Section 3. Nothing in this article shall be construed to grant Congress or the States the power to abridge the freedom of the press.''.
For clarification, Section 1 will be interpreted as "for any purpose we say 'protects the integrity of government" no matter how far-fetched a regular person would think it is. (see Wickard v. Filburn).
"by candidates and others" will be interpreted as "by anyone and/or everyone"
" reasonable limits" means "however much the party in power decides"
"and may distinguish between natural persons and corporations" means whichever party in power can choose to limit corporations but not individuals, and they can also choose to limit individuals but not corporations. It's unclear to me if it also means they can choose which people to limit (though they'll surely figure out a way to do so).
" Nothing in this article shall be construed to grant Congress or the States the power to abridge the freedom of the press." Given that a straightforward interpretation of this statement would negate the entirety of the amendment, the Court will have to conclude that it doesn't mean what is says and that it does indeed grant Congress the power to abridge the freedom of the press (since you'll need money to buy ink).
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
...we have a proliferation of these cheap camera. Many stereoscopic. Train stations, market plazas, trains themselves. You betcha they are all connected to some cheap-shit, hackable system which runs over the internet. So, if NSA-GCHQ feels a need to put some train station in lower saxonia (or Portsmouth) under total visual surveillance, they can do it. From a comfy chair in Erbenheim, Ft Meade or Hawaii. Depending on the daytime.
In other words, cheap cameras are mounted everywhere and can be perused by NSA-GCHQ or other competent players (GRU, 8200 ?) at ease. That is what IBM means by "global village", I assume.
Of course, extend that to all the crappy camera systems in shopping malls and corporations. Or the local butcher, which has a camera, too. No shit.
The globe is a village and the Sharif can peek at you anytime.
Captcha: placenta. Hää ?
Nice story bro. They should make a movie of it.
Come on, you, your family and your friends and probably already uploading their lives on facebook/twitter/G+ or some other services already, stop being hypocrites about it already when you've been embracing it for a long time.
deep thoughts - boil down to one trivial thing: don't fly the f.. copter over my land. basta. that's all what justice sarowhatever minds and wants.
even in our supposed democracies there is an undercurrent, spurred by the sustainable use of resources movement, to eliminate private property. If you don't use your property in proper sustainable ways the government now has the authority granted by an executive order to take that property away from you.
Well, if you have no private property then you have no privacy concerns over that property. Problem solved.
. . . Did she just crawl out of a cave or something? Has she never heard of Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept over at firstlook.org, wallstreetonparade.com, cryptogon.com, crytome.org, wikileaks.org? WTF to the max, dood???
Orwell was an Optimist
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I don't know can pick up, if they're a private citizen, one of these drones and fly it over my property.
If I follow the reasoning, if you have no property, you have no right to privacy, right?
The danger of surveillance is almost the least important theme of Orwell's works. "Orwellian" refers to corruption of language, inversion of meaning. Accusing a peace activist of being a terrorist would be Orwellian - you reverse the meanings of words in service to power. Hence Orwell's famous motto of Oceania, "War is Peace, Slavery is Freedom, Ignorance is Strength." The Byzantine Empire was Orwellian a thousand years before the existence of cameras. The UK surveillance state is a lot more total than North Korea's, but where would you rather live? You can't have freedom if you fetishize objects in one direction or another (e.g., pretending that guns make you free, or that cameras make you unfree).
Orwellian society has come to us not because of technology, but because of people. Everyone from the President, NSA, Congress, Courts, Law Enforcement, and General Public is guilty of encouraging or simply allowing the erosion of our liberties. Because we need it to fight the terrorists, druggies, and especially child molesters. Think of the children!
Even if we manage to get government espionage under control, what technology is allowing is for private companies to collect massive amounts of data on us. And every idiot who installs apps on their phone that require "spy on you" permissions is guilty of helping them do so and even financing them. I can't see this stopping until someone makes a sufficiently shocking news story about violations of people's privacy. Maybe someone will make an app that forwards a copy of your browsing history to your mother and significant other, and a message to you saying "this is a small fraction of what every company knows about you".
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Im sorry, but its too late. We are living in the Orwellian world right now.
We are being spied upon and tracked and monitored and analysed in ways that would make 1984's Big Brother very very proud indeed.
All we can do now is try to live with it as best we can.
And before anybody comes up with that quaint idea of voting it out of existence, please come back to reality.
Note that in TFA she was warning about "Orwellian" surveillance, which specifically tends to refer to a world where the government is spying on you, not just private citizens.
I think that the world described in the three stories in David Drake's Lacey and His Friends might be a better analogy -- a world where everyone is under constant surveillance from multiple angles and by different organizations, where buying 'privacy' pays for a room with only the single mandatory government camera, and the ability of the police to roll back surveillance footage to track the movements of a criminal result in the overwhelming majority of criminals captured within hours of their crime. I think it better describes the extreme end result of the expansion of technology allows capturing more and more actions and communications until, by law, everything anyone does must be recorded.
Privacy is not just a negative right, but also positive. A persons constitutional rights, and more importantly human rights are not always protected solely by limiting the government, but also by actively forming the environment the person is operating in.
As you explain, the technology of surveillance isn't the point. But mass surveillance requires somebody do something: The East German (and Alfred Hitchcock's) alternative where everyone spies on everyone else, works when the noise can be eliminated. Or it results in the Afghanistan version, where any disobedience means an innocent citizen is sent to the American 'Gestapo' and tortured until a permanent cripple.
It's easier to spy on the populace when the elite control the means of doing so: That means technology to leverage the power of the spies over the citizens. To that end, Mr Orwell didn't want to invent new technology like iris scanners or RFId implants. He wanted a future where 1940s technology like televisions, newspapers and microphones would exist. Turning 1948 into 1984, for a difference of 36 years, seemed to fit that need.
...is alive and kicking. After they have royally fucked Russia, they now aim for the U.S.
And no, this is not a left/right issue. Most "righties" are Spartians deep down.
People openly TELL corps like facebook in less time more than an agent could get spying on them. You can fool some of the people ALL THE TIME! You only need to appease and distract a majority, they won't care about small groups unless they get a ton of positive media attention.
Monitoring all you technology data is passive and unobtrusive but when people just volunteer everything without any thought... growing up tweeting their every shallow vapid thought... to gain some kind of validation; as if they didn't have a family life or community for that (and it would seem many don't! an the technology tends to make what they do have further away, not closer.)
Companies actually engineer FOOD so it loses taste quicker because you are not eating it fast enough! I'm NOT kidding! It's to the point where experts actually have to tell the public to CHEW YOUR FOOD for your own health! Not to mention all the addiction related things they do on purpose-- causing people the most exposed to have weight problems. Eventually, they'll figure out how to get those thin people too...(or create exercise freaks; not that thin people are healthy, they overeat bad food too.)
Perhaps when the robots kill most jobs that will be the solution! The marketing economy -- for eating and weight loss! robots can't do that for us; just everything else.... until they master marketing... then all we are is PETS to the system of machines. Eat and crap while the "master" can take care of us (and train us using marketing) to gain some bit of purpose. Sorry, pet owners.
Everything seems to be way too complex just to provide sugar to our bacterial majority living in our gut. Wouldn't that be funny, we evolved by random chance for the sole purpose of housing our bacteria; who are the actual god favored lifeforms?
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People openly TELL corps like facebook in less time more than an agent could get spying on them. You can fool some of the people ALL THE TIME! You only need to appease and distract a majority, they won't care about small groups unless they get a ton of positive media attention.
Monitoring all your technology data is passive and unobtrusive but when people just volunteer everything without any thought... growing up tweeting their every shallow vapid thought... to gain some kind of validation; as if they didn't have a family life or peers or community for that... (the technology tends to make what they do have further away, not closer... plus it makes all the interactions easily recordable.)
Companies actually engineer FOOD so it loses taste quicker because you are not eating it fast enough! I'm NOT kidding! It's to the point where experts actually have to tell the public to CHEW YOUR FOOD for your own health! Not to mention all the addiction related things they do on purpose-- causing people the most exposed to have weight problems. Eventually, they'll figure out how to get those thin people too...(or create exercise freaks; not that thin people are healthy, they overeat bad food too.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I think we need to spy on our government. They are so secretive and who knows they are really up to. While citizens will not usually for fear of getting caught, government bureaucrats and politicians, lie with impunity. You cannot believe any
of them. They are professional liars. They conspire, scheme, and commit atrocities through action or inaction. Their power through the media is unchecked, and many believe they serve the interests of the global elite. They are the ones who require surveillance.