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The Upsides of a Surveillance Society
theodp writes Citing the comeuppance of ESPN reporter Britt McHenry, who was suspended from her job after her filmed ad-hominem attack on a person McHenry deemed to be beneath her in terms of appearance, education, wealth, class, status went viral, The Atlantic's Megan Garber writes that one silver lining of the omnipresence of cameras it that the possibility of exposure can also encourage us to be a little kinder to each other. "Terrible behavior," Garber writes, "whether cruel or violent or something in between, has a greater possibility than it ever has before of being exposed. Just as Uber tracks ratings for both its drivers and its users, and just as Yelp can be a source of shaming for businesses and customers alike, technology at large has afforded a reciprocity between people who, in a previous era, would have occupied different places on the spectrum of power. Which can, again, be a bad thing — but which can also, in McHenry's case, be an extremely beneficial one. It's good that her behavior has been exposed. It's good that her story going viral might discourage similar behavior from other people. It's good that she has publicly promised 'to learn from this mistake.'"
There's a difference between a "surveillance society" which is where a small class of people or organizations owns or has access to all the surveillance, or just a "public society" where lots of private individuals have cameras, phones, etc., and decent means of communication. In the latter case, it's the people (society) who actually have the power. It's much more democratic, i.e. "I'm publicly shaming this person because the vast majority of people feel their behavior is unacceptable." In the former, it's about centralized power, i.e. "Make this person's life miserable because they're a threat to my power." I'm all for distributed cameras and communications, I just wish people would keep the data local by default, and not provide it so willingly to 3rd parties to aggregate it.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
... from Robert Heinlein. In both cases, the consequences of rude behaviour are much greater.
I worry most about the years-later consequences of surveillence on politicians and other leaders. They all seem to have sordid episodes, and this leaves them highly succeptible to hidden blackmail/pressure by data-holders. We will never know how they are manipulated and abuse their wide discretionary powers.
Not to protect "the little children" but to protect "the pervy pols."
TL;DR: The upside of being under continuous surveillance is that everyone else is too. It is the same argument as, "Because terrorists might get caught."
Here's just one example of the downside: Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and similar will all have zero attendance as soon as employers stop hiring people who have been seen at an AA/NA meeting. That will be a reality within ten years, as private license plate tracking databases come online.
Doubt it? Ask yourself this: Would a typical "profit over everything" manager hire someone he knew was in NA? That guy is going to abuse these databases as they come online. That is reality.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
It's nowhere close to as nice as OP portrays.
The example brought up- the ludicrous cuntly behavior of Britt going off on some poor schmuckette- is gratifying because she's "getting hers". But, lets consider a few things:
1- Britt had no reason to suspect she was being recorded (beyond the general assumption that any building or person in America *could* be "taping" you now). She acted based on assumptions that weren't true.
2- Britt has a job where public relations are extremely important, and is a celebrity (not "was", I'm certainly a lot more interested in someone who openly shits on tow companies, notoriously sketchy organizations that damage vehicles and will tow legal vehicles if they can claim that the little whatever that lets you park legally could be argued to not be perfectly visible, or if can be dislodged in towing- so if she pops up and rants about stuff, hey, I'll watch)
3- Who controls the cameras is the big deal. What if, in addition to the rant delivered by her, we saw EVERYTHING that happened in that business, from the cabs of the tow trucks to the office politics in the back to their normal customer relations? By selecting just what your foes do at a specific time, you obviously gain a great deal of control, because your shit is flushed and theirs is on youtube forever.
The medium benefits of cameras seem to be what we see in Russia from dash cams- inability of insurance companies to welch on payments, and greater evidence of actually criminal dealings on the road.
The biggest benefits of cameras will be their effect on law enforcement, and if we want to actually reap those benefits (instead of just making people who can have a short temper unemployable in even more jobs than they already are), we'll need protections for the numerous police who routinely order people to stop filming (this should not ever be something a policeman can say), attack people legally and extralegally for putting up their crimes, and actually hold them accountable for the absurd beatings that they suddenly started dealing out to poor people and anyone who wouldn't normally be believed in court- beatings that seemingly began the moment that everyone got cameras. Probably those two related, hrm, what's that correlation...
So it doesn't matter that some hot tempered cutie with a media job went off on some random people. That's not really helping society that she can't keep her ESPN job.
The workaround for (1) is that people will act like they are being recorded, which naively means that they will switch from aggression to bating and passive aggression. If they ALSO have cameras (and hidden cameras are cheap, and will become moreso), then the goal becomes to bait the other party to either committing a crime (easier in some situations than others) or crucifying themselves in the court of public opinion. We can laugh at the people who haven't adapted to this new ruleset fast enough, but it's STILL a game, and it will still be won by the same sociopaths that always are good at these games.
(2) is an issue because more and more jobs will fall into this category, resulting in minor altercations yielding a harsh streak of unemployment into a society already hellbent on assuming that ability is immediately rewarded with steady employment. While celebrities have a huge amount of support systems to fall back on ("celebrity does a heel-turn" is not a death knell by any means to their public life), many people do not. The natural assumption of the video seems to be that if someone is caught doing something on tape, that this is representative of their entire life, a brief 30 second temper tantrum serving as a summary of their entire life. This background assumption is based on what USED to be the truth, and the same logic that the legal system uses to dole out large punishments for minor violations- that cameras (observing agents in general) were so rare that if someone got caught ranting on camera (or speeding on some empty highway) that it serves as a *representation of tha
Not even 'kinder' really, just more passive aggressive. This makes the abuse that much worse...assuming of course that it is abuse and not just valid criticism. There's a lot out there making the same arguments because they want the chance to shame valid criticism they don't like or is not in their interest.
To be fair, her car was towed by a company that has a reputation for illegal towing. I had this happen to me once and I wanted to burn down the business with everyone inside.
Having you car towed illegally is a pretty disturbing experience. You know it wasn't parked illegally, yet it's gone. Was it stolen? You call the police, they show up hours later only to tell you it was towed and then leave. You are out hours of time and then you get to the tow company and they want hundreds of dollars. No one in authority cares about it because you got it back and no one was hurt. Let's just call this a "micro-agression"
Fuck them and fuck the attendant, who is probably complicit in the scheme.
What? There are upsides to everything! "Excuse me, Office of the Panopticon! How does this outfit look?" "It's okay, but your shirt is untucked in the back. I'm not a big fan of the yellow, but historic data seems to show that your style works for you. Good luck on your third date tonight! You might want to pick up the tab tonight, though. Your intended has told her friends that you might be a cheapskate."