>Hey, the truth hurts. You are willing to give up the right to privacy without firing a shot. That makes you a defeatist.
Callig me a defeatest was not childish. Calling me various other things was.
>Not necessarily true. If large numbers of people start to fear being snooped on 24-7 by their neighbors, then the demand for anti-surveillance equipment will skyrocket, thus driving innovation and quality and lowering prices?just as was seen in the realm of personal computers. Back in the day, the idea that the average person would be able to afford something 1000 more powerful then ENIAC that would fit on their desktop was considered outrageous and insane. And yet here we are.
It is wrong to compair computers to anti-survalence equipment for a great many reasons. For example, computers are not dependant on another market, as the anti-survalence equipment is dependand on the survalence equipment. Computers are very much multifunction devices that can do lots of different things for different people. Antisurvalence stuff can only do one thing: prevent survalence. Further, you can get obsolete with computers without a huge amount of trouble. You cannot help to be any less than cutting edge with the antisurvalence equipment or you might as well not be using any at all.
>See above. You are forgetting just how innovative and inventive the human mind can be when driven by strong motivations. And what about large corporations with millions to spend who don?t want to be the victims of ubiquitous industrial espionage? You think that market won?t drive the technology? Riiiiiight.
>Ever hear of reverse engineering?
The thing is that there is just as much innovation driving the survalence stuff simply to prevent it from being prevented. Because of the nature of product development, including reverse engineering, there will be a huge lag between when the survalence equipment comes out and when the antisurvalence stuff is effective at all. This lag is impossible to prevent, and the window created by it will be very significant. It is one of the main reason why it is impossible to stop survalence.
>AND, people don't want to spend money on this anti-survalence equipment anyway.
I would find it very hard to believe otherwise. The total cost of ownership of the equipment, including the continual upgrades and trouble it causes, will simply not be worth it to most people. I mean, look how cash strapped the American consumers are without having them throw down money on privacy protection. I have a very hard time believing that they would allow this extra expense with nontangible benefits to take money away from their already tight budgets.
>Not THAT tight. It depends on what the buyers priorities are. And what about a $500 or less system which is %100 percent reliable? Yeah, yeah, I know??that?s impossible, it?ll never happen," blah blah.
YES that tight. Go look at the percentage of Americans who have run up huge amounts of debt over the last number of years. Consider that the majority of Americans used their tax rebate checks to pay off credit card debt. The vast majority of people don't have $500 to lay down for something like this. And like I said, consider the cost and hastle of continual upgrades. It simply won't work.
>Ah, yes, the standard slashdot mantra??information wants to be free,? to which we can now add ?watching wants to be done.? By whom? And why? Says who? This is the typical closed-loop thinking of ?X is inevitable because it is.? To which I reply once again with: Destiny is what we make it.
Ahh, well then you do not fully understand why "information wants to be free" is axiomatic. It doesn't matter why or by whom, what matters is that it only takes one person slipping through the net to create a state where he can use survalence to cause major social change. "X is inevitable for all intents and purposes because the state that would mean that it has happened is probable to five nines." The amount of effort required to bring the probabilty down to zilch is simply not worth it or not possible.
>Umm. ..so? You could say that about freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, the rule of law or any of our other constitutional protections. We?re not all as eager as you are to toss our liberties down the commode, you know.
I could, and so could you. The point is that you seem to use the fact that it's in the constitutin to directly justify it. I don't believe that is a good argument. I also don't propose that we toss out things lightly.
>Walking down a public street? No problem! Cameras everywhere for all I care. But not in the privacy of my home. Clear?
Aha, we are agreed. I do not believe that we should force cameras into everyones' homes at all. You misunderstood if you believed so.
In fact, I thought this entire argument was about cameras being placed outside of the home, were you arguing from the point of placing them actually inside? I was under the impression that everything you were saying about financial/personal/etc privacy was about things outside of the home and records that could have been kept soley from their entrance into public space.
>No, not at all. If large numbers of people/corporations have good quality anti-surveillance equipment (again, see above) then this would-be Big Brother will be SOL. But you don?t want to believe that, do you?
Anti-surveillance equipment can never keep up with surveillance equipment because of the time it would take to reverse engineer, develop, and finally deploy.
>Wrong, pal. You?ve certainly given it the old college try, I?ll give you that, but I?ve blown apart every one of your fatalistic assertions multiple times.
We will have to disagree about that, then, because I don't think you have touched a couple of my assertions and I don't believe you have proven a single one false, much less blown a single one away. On the other hand, I believe that I have answered every challenge that you have presented to my arguments. Perhaps we disagree because we didn't know the other was talking abuot a different class of privacy (home/public)?
>Look who?s talking.
Point out where I am irrelevent or insignificant.
>To which I would reply, ?grow a spine, please.? Not everyone is as weak-willed as you. Some of us like to defend our liberties, as much as that irritates jellyfish such as yourself.
I would accuse you of being weak willed and bowing to the popular oppinion of forums such as this that are very biased in a certain direction, going against what I consider to be solid reason (and you obviously do not). It is understandable from my point of view that you are weak willed for not exploring alternate possibilities, while I am the one with spine for daring to form my own oppinion based on the information I see.
>No, what you fear is that we?ll succeed, and you won?t get to live in your hive-mind collectivist fishbowl. Too bad.
I do not believe that a hive-mind collectivist fish bowl would be better than a world without access to the survalence stuff. However, I also don't believe a world without the equipment is possible anymore, and so there are two possibilities: one world with a very strict central control put in power by its access to these technologies, and another where the people all can control the technologies and use them to keep power in the hands of those who can weld it properly. The possibility of a world where the equipment is simply kept in check is so small that it is insignificant. The amount of effort required to bring it to significance would be tantamount lobotomizing a great deal of the population.
>Defeatism again. Man, the sheep-like mentality of some people never ceases to amaze me. As the technology advances and demand increases (which I'm betting it will, given current trends typified by this article) prices will drop and the quality/power of anti-surveillance equipment will increase exponentailly, just as with home computers. But I bet you don't believe that, either. Baaaaa.
Looking past the rather childish personal attacks...
Technology advances and demand increases will push down the cost of the survalence equipment itself, but the anti-survalence equipment will be just nearly just as expensive because it will be fighting a battle against the survalence equipment itself. It will have to continue to be the responding product, and so it will never drop in price as much. Plus, to stay ahead of the survalence equipment it will have to be exponentially better. Take the example of tempest: to guard against a doubling in the sensitivity of the tempest equipment would require a quadrupling of the cost of EM shielding. Or consider a physical net to keep out a flea sized camera. If the camera becomes half as big the net will have to become more than double as difficult to manufacture.
Plus, you would be assuming that the manufacturers of the survalence equipment are completely honest with the anti-survalence equipment companies as to what their stuff can do. This is not very likely at all considering their cost motivation.
AND, people don't want to spend money on this anti-survalence equipment anyway. Good luck convincing someone to install a $1000 system in their home that has to be rutinely upgraded and is not 100% dependable at the same time. People have tight budgets.
No, a simple analysis of the situation based on the various pieces such as the motivations of watchers, survalence equipment manufacturers, and watchees shows that it really is a loosing battle. Just as information wants to be free, watching wants to be done. Very similar reasoning, actually.
>Why? Because what happened to her is an unpleasent example of what a life constantly in the public eye is all about? Sorry to bust the bubble of your rosy fantasy.
Nope, because pointing her out only reveals a statistically insignificant event. A person can be found to be the poster child of just about any cause, not matter how obtuse. What happened to her may never be completely known, and is irrelevant to this conversation anyway (unless you'd care to specify, which you didn't).
>Too many to list here! There are a great number of reasons why people need the ability to keep some things secret. Financial, psychological, social, personal. ..also, I don't know where you live, but here in the United States there is an assumption in constitutional law that absent a valid warrant a person has the right to be secure in their papers, home, financial information, etc.
I live in the US. Just because there is a constitutional right to something does not mean that it was correct that that right be given. Additionally, times change and new technologies like the Internet make some things irrelevant. The right to privacy is up for debate just like everything else.
>Yes, if this infringes on the individuals right to privacy. But then I can see by your statment that you don't care much for the concerns of the individual.
You simply move it from "infringing on the rights of the individual" to "infringing on the rights of the individuals". So, who gave people the right to privacy anyway? The constitution? The whole thing is up for debate, not set in stone. I'd say people have just as much of a right to information that would be collected by the widespread adoption of survalence cameras. So which right is more important? My individual right to privacy walking down the street or a million individual peoples' rights to watch me.
>Oh, of course. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and all that. Collectivist twaddle.
Well of course the needs of the many are more important than the needs of a few. Why wouldn't it be? You call it twiddle but fail to say why it is.
>But not nearly on the scale that it would be otherwise. Imagine what the smog would be like in L.A., for example, if there had been no environmental laws in place for the past 30-35 years. Your argument is based on pure cynicism. And I'm still waiting for your evidence.
It only takes one person to become big brother. One intelligent person with enough motivation and resources would be able to bring himself to power chiefly through knowledge he gains from the cameras. That is why you have to stop every single person from getting the survalence equipment, and why you must have the agreements of everyone to work together to stop it. It simply won't happen. Take the pollution in LA, for example, or segregation.
As for Rand, you said she's just right *Snort*.
Now, I have answered your challenges much more fully than you have answered mine. I don't know where you get the nerve to suggest otherwise. Your answers have been meandering into irrelevancy and insignificancy, and yet I have answered those two as such. I direct you to the other posts under this topic for evidence as to what I'm saying; I have seen a whole lot of it and see no reason to recap and distil it for you.
Now, as for the personal attacks, all I can say is to grow up a bit. Perhaps if you would not be nearly so childish you would see that your point of view is tenuous from a systems point of view, and therefore no matter how many individual cases you throw against it, reality will firmly tell you that you are wrong.
I only fear that the fight for rights that you and people like you seek to lead will end up leading us all to the fate that you so ironically are trying to avoid.
The fight that you are joining is much like the fight against terrorism: it will never be won. It will simply never be won. That is where the similarities end, though.
The differences begin with the fact that yours is not worth fighting as the volleys that get through your net will alter the very structure of our society, while if you were to not fight and simply embrace the percieved threat instead, you would benefit on all real counts.
And before you pick your next battle of wits, learn something about what is material and what is not in a debate. Princess Di is not.
You're right that I was being insensitive, I was rushed with the post and perhaps came off wrong.
My point is still completely valid. If I and my family was brutally murdered and we happened to be the only crime that didn't get recorded when hundreds were every single day, then guess what? My case would still be statistically insignficant. I should not be considered when deciding what to do with the cameras.
In this crazy world people can be found to be paraded out to prove just about ANY point. Unfortunately there is only so much to go around and someone will end up getting shafted. We can only do our best to help as many people as possible.
I can say a lot more than "that case is statistically insignificant", but it would not be relevant to the point I am trying to make.
>Oh, of course not. It's totally hopeless. That's why companies such as The Counterspy shop, [counterspyshop.com] Advanced Electronic Security [bugsweeps.com] and Spyquip World [spyquipworld.com.au] (to name just 3) don't sell any countersurveilance/anti-bugging equipment at all, because it's useless, right? And the technology will never advance to cover the microcams of the future, right? And simply passing laws against it with draconian penalties/fines for violating people's privacy, well, that's a total non-starter, eh? Whatever.
So, you have a place whereby rich get to try to pay to top the antisurvalence equipment bought by the poor. Gee, wonder who will win that one. And you can only fine/penalize people you can catch. Rich trying to get past the equipment of the poor once again.
> Ask Princess Diana how that feels--oh, I'm sorry, you can't. She's dead.
Wow, what a nonsensical, irrational, irrevelant appeal to emotion.
>Well, I do. But then again I'm one of those wacky civil liberties nuts who values their privacy and doesn't believe that everyone has the right to know everything about me and what I'm doing at all times. I'd rather not live in a fishbowl, thanks.
Congradulations on feeling that way. Care to give any reasoning behind your feeling? Because you feel that way the rest of us are ot be denied the benefits of widespread camera coverage?
>Got any evidence to back up this statement?
Reasoning plus empirical evidance. What could be better? Just look at other posts under this same article talking about how the cameras in the UK help a great number of people every year (ignore the ones that say that they didn't help individuals, that is irrelevant)
>Why would you have to organize everyone on earth? Did everyone on earth have to be organize in the fight against de jure segregation or pollution or Indian Independance from Britain or any one of a hundred other causes? I'm not following you.
Many people say these things are still going on. Not officially, perhaps, but unofficially they are. I don't argue that we can't pass a law against survalence, but unofficial segregation and pollution are still happening everywhere.
I don't know what Rand based her thought on, but I thinkn she's flat out wrong.
People give governments and corporations power. If the people had the ability to hold them to a higher level of accountablility, they would be able to more forcefully and more correctly influence them.
The ruling of the MA supreme court was wrong. I think it was also a ruling based to a large extent on the attitude of people like those on Slashdot who want to hold personal privacy against the good of the whole as well as the good of the individual. It's further evidance as to what I'm saying in that the harder people fight against the cameras, the less of the benefits they get to reap.
The main problem in 1984 was that the government was allowed to set the social rules that you talk about. THIS is what we all need to watch out for. The cameras can be used for good or bad just like everything else, but a government setting the social rules (see certain middle eastern countries) is definately repressive and just plain bad. THAT was what was wrong in 1984. Not the cameras.
How do you expect to resist it? I mean come on, propose a solution that would be able to stop a flea sized camera from entering your house. You can't stop it from being manufactured; somebody somewhere can set up a factory to churn the things out. You can't stop someone from buying it if they have enough money. And you can't stop them from using it once they have it.
I don't consider it a rape of freedom at all. The fact that there is a camera watching me does not change what I am allowed and not allowed to do at all.
Don't fight it because things will actually be better than they are now this way.
What I'm spewing is "it's unstoppable, now let it make the world a better place like it wants to. Why would you resist anyway?"
You would have to organize every single person on earth to stop survalence. This is simply not goign to happen.
Which would be impossible if the system was not closed circuit like it should be. Any public intrest group could keep their own backup copies of the tapes.
More cameras means more accountability for the police, you realise. More cameras would actually cut down on the amount of police brutality and help get bad cops off the streets.
The cameras aren't the problem in the things you described. If the things you mentioned went on, the problem would be the lack of checks to prevent the actual happenings. The fact that there are cameras and the reactions of the camera watchers are two completely different topics.
Your envelope analogy is good, but not in the way you meant it. There are strict laws against opening an envelope, just as there should be strict laws against doing the things you describe. Don't ban letter openers just because they can be used to open other peoples' mail....
Not only is the paranoia unjustified, it means that we will be completely unable to gain any of the benefits of having these cameras around, and there are certainly a great many benefits.
Yes, we've all read the book. Thanks for adding nothing to the debate.
I must say that I think 1984 has done more damage to society than good. It has made us paranoid to certain technologies and in the end that paranoia will, ironically enough, bring about the very state that 1984 warned about.
By not accepting cameras into our daily life we insure that only the rich and powerful will have them. The technology is unstoppable, the only way to put a positive spin on it is for us all to embrace it and use it to watch the watchers.
There is no way that we can stop the cameras. No amount of legislation will be able to stop the march of technology, as you Slashdotters should all know. The rich and powerful will always be able to put cameras everywhere no matter what the law says.
The answer is more cameras and more access to them. Allow the common citizen to access the pictures caught by the cameras, restoring the balance. Then put cameras everywhere, especially in police stations and legislative offices, so that the common citizens can become the watchers of the watchers.
This is the only way to put a positive spin on a trend that is unstoppable.
Yeah, knee jerk reactions really suck. Take, for example, the one on Slashdot. You are all too worried about jerking to attention to defend privacy at all costs to consider whether or not this is actually a good thing. I have never seen any good debate on the topic on Slashdot, only debate over how to secure more of it for individuals.
Well guess what: it's not a black and white issue. One of the main side effects of increased privacy is decreased accountability, which is itself a factor that could actually stop quite a large amount of negative things that happen today.
At the same time stop and consider what privacy you really have and where it might go. With technology today you can already plant all the listning devices and cameras you want undetected, assuming you have the money to pay for it. No amount of laws will stop this; if it's undetectable who is going to be able to file suit?
So throw all this privacy legislation stuff out the window. As Larry Ellison (I think) said, "You have no privacy, get over it." Focus instead on shaping who gets to do the watching, as information is power.
Do you want only the people with money and those already in government being able to watch everyone without the cameras being turned on themselves too? Well that's where things are going now with all of the footdragging people like those in this community are doing. A much better state of affairs is one in which the whole population embraces the cameras and is able to gain their benefits, such as monitoring those who are already in power. Just imagine what could happen to police brutality if at any instant someone could tune in to the camera in the police officer's car.
Everyone, I'm sure, would agree that cameras could cut down on activities that are frowned upon by society. Well, if you have just the powerful watching the cameras you'll have a very few people dictating what's frowned upon. This only increases their power and control. If, on the other hand, you get cameras to be a part of everyday life things will be very different. A whole new level of respect will be reached for each other as people can figure out that we're not all that different and we all have faults. Of course there will still be the issues about people leaning away from social norms, but this is much easier to fight when there is no driving force behind it.
In any case it's an all around better situation than allowing the rich and powerful to monitor us all without the recprocation, which is where it's goign right now.
I realise this post is not very structured or well supported, I'm just throwing it off the top of my head. The supportive reasoning is definately there to back it up, though.
Wouldn't this be considered collecting information? And isn't it illegal to collect information from children under 13, even by accident? So wouldn't any site using this be opening itself up to lawsuits?
Perhaps as long as there's some doubt as to whether or not "good" users are being kept out everyone can go ahead and complain that they WERE seeing the banner adds and that there is something wrong with the technology.
It's just like everyone returning their copyprotected CDs saying the copy protection interferes with listning normally even if it really doesn't. It'll be a black eye for the copy protection.
The companies that designed the voting machines used all over the US were very clear themselves that they had very large margins of error. The split was lower than these margins of error. Therefore, there is no way of knowing who won the election.
You overlook an important fact: disallowing monitoring will take away rights from the employers. Employees are not forced to work there, therefore monitoring them while they are working there does not take away any actual rights. Disallowing monitoring does actually take away rights.
The rest of your spiel doesn't make any concrete argument. You throw around the term "Orwellian" and use other language that is very much incendiary without real content or constructive argument, and expect it to fly. Why is it so bad to monitor people? In and of itself it is not a bad thing, and in fact does a lot of good. It leads to increased accountability and very good arguments will state that this is the way to go.
In fact, you want to disallow monitoring, but you have to realise that it will happen anyway. With the diminishing cost of survalience equipment those who can afford it WILL afford it and the monitoring will go on anyway. THIS is where the true "evil Orwellian" world will come from, when all of the survalence equipment is in the hands of the already powerful.
So let's keep it all legal and out in the open. That way we can ALL harvest the good that can come through monitoring and the Orwellian state will be averted. Judges are just a start: they need to be monitored and the whole public needs to see the records. Keep the records sealed until the cases are over, just like other information related to the cases, but set it all free afterwords. Then we will all be able to see what really went on.
Lock the judges' monitoring data collections until the cases are over, just as you would do with other information in the cases. Then you'll know a lot more about what lead to the decisions the judges might have had and even be able to appeal based on bad information the judge might have gotten on a website.
The key is to let the entire public access this information. They are accountable to us all, after all.
I want the general public to know what judges do online. The government would have to collect the data, but allow the general public to have easy access to the raw information. After all, we employ these people (in theory), and we should be able to see exactly what they're doing on "company" time if we so choose.
Monitoring leads to increased accountability, and that's always good when dealing with people with a lot of power, like the federal judges.
Monitoring has its uses, and to say don't monitor because you are afraid of what might come next is a very stupid thing to say. It completely rules out the positives of monitoring because of the negatives not of monitoring itself, but of some potential thing.
Work to prevent the potential thing. Allow the positive thing.
Slashdot Mirror
>Hey, the truth hurts. You are willing to give up the right to privacy without firing a shot. That makes you a defeatist.
.so? You could say that about freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, the rule of law or any of our other constitutional protections. We?re not all as eager as you are to toss our liberties down the commode, you know.
Callig me a defeatest was not childish. Calling me various other things was.
>Not necessarily true. If large numbers of people start to fear being snooped on 24-7 by their neighbors, then the demand for anti-surveillance equipment will skyrocket, thus driving innovation and quality and lowering prices?just as was seen in the realm of personal computers. Back in the day, the idea that the average person would be able to afford something 1000 more powerful then ENIAC that would fit on their desktop was considered outrageous and insane. And yet here we are.
It is wrong to compair computers to anti-survalence equipment for a great many reasons. For example, computers are not dependant on another market, as the anti-survalence equipment is dependand on the survalence equipment. Computers are very much multifunction devices that can do lots of different things for different people. Antisurvalence stuff can only do one thing: prevent survalence. Further, you can get obsolete with computers without a huge amount of trouble. You cannot help to be any less than cutting edge with the antisurvalence equipment or you might as well not be using any at all.
>See above. You are forgetting just how innovative and inventive the human mind can be when driven by strong motivations. And what about large corporations with millions to spend who don?t want to be the victims of ubiquitous industrial espionage? You think that market won?t drive the technology? Riiiiiight.
>Ever hear of reverse engineering?
The thing is that there is just as much innovation driving the survalence stuff simply to prevent it from being prevented. Because of the nature of product development, including reverse engineering, there will be a huge lag between when the survalence equipment comes out and when the antisurvalence stuff is effective at all. This lag is impossible to prevent, and the window created by it will be very significant. It is one of the main reason why it is impossible to stop survalence.
>AND, people don't want to spend money on this anti-survalence equipment anyway.
I would find it very hard to believe otherwise. The total cost of ownership of the equipment, including the continual upgrades and trouble it causes, will simply not be worth it to most people. I mean, look how cash strapped the American consumers are without having them throw down money on privacy protection. I have a very hard time believing that they would allow this extra expense with nontangible benefits to take money away from their already tight budgets.
>Not THAT tight. It depends on what the buyers priorities are. And what about a $500 or less system which is %100 percent reliable? Yeah, yeah, I know??that?s impossible, it?ll never happen," blah blah.
YES that tight. Go look at the percentage of Americans who have run up huge amounts of debt over the last number of years. Consider that the majority of Americans used their tax rebate checks to pay off credit card debt. The vast majority of people don't have $500 to lay down for something like this. And like I said, consider the cost and hastle of continual upgrades. It simply won't work.
>Ah, yes, the standard slashdot mantra??information wants to be free,? to which we can now add ?watching wants to be done.? By whom? And why? Says who? This is the typical closed-loop thinking of ?X is inevitable because it is.? To which I reply once again with: Destiny is what we make it.
Ahh, well then you do not fully understand why "information wants to be free" is axiomatic. It doesn't matter why or by whom, what matters is that it only takes one person slipping through the net to create a state where he can use survalence to cause major social change. "X is inevitable for all intents and purposes because the state that would mean that it has happened is probable to five nines." The amount of effort required to bring the probabilty down to zilch is simply not worth it or not possible.
>Umm. .
I could, and so could you. The point is that you seem to use the fact that it's in the constitutin to directly justify it. I don't believe that is a good argument. I also don't propose that we toss out things lightly.
>Walking down a public street? No problem! Cameras everywhere for all I care. But not in the privacy of my home. Clear?
Aha, we are agreed. I do not believe that we should force cameras into everyones' homes at all. You misunderstood if you believed so.
In fact, I thought this entire argument was about cameras being placed outside of the home, were you arguing from the point of placing them actually inside? I was under the impression that everything you were saying about financial/personal/etc privacy was about things outside of the home and records that could have been kept soley from their entrance into public space.
>No, not at all. If large numbers of people/corporations have good quality anti-surveillance equipment (again, see above) then this would-be Big Brother will be SOL. But you don?t want to believe that, do you?
Anti-surveillance equipment can never keep up with surveillance equipment because of the time it would take to reverse engineer, develop, and finally deploy.
>Wrong, pal. You?ve certainly given it the old college try, I?ll give you that, but I?ve blown apart every one of your fatalistic assertions multiple times.
We will have to disagree about that, then, because I don't think you have touched a couple of my assertions and I don't believe you have proven a single one false, much less blown a single one away. On the other hand, I believe that I have answered every challenge that you have presented to my arguments. Perhaps we disagree because we didn't know the other was talking abuot a different class of privacy (home/public)?
>Look who?s talking.
Point out where I am irrelevent or insignificant.
>To which I would reply, ?grow a spine, please.? Not everyone is as weak-willed as you. Some of us like to defend our liberties, as much as that irritates jellyfish such as yourself.
I would accuse you of being weak willed and bowing to the popular oppinion of forums such as this that are very biased in a certain direction, going against what I consider to be solid reason (and you obviously do not). It is understandable from my point of view that you are weak willed for not exploring alternate possibilities, while I am the one with spine for daring to form my own oppinion based on the information I see.
>No, what you fear is that we?ll succeed, and you won?t get to live in your hive-mind collectivist fishbowl. Too bad.
I do not believe that a hive-mind collectivist fish bowl would be better than a world without access to the survalence stuff. However, I also don't believe a world without the equipment is possible anymore, and so there are two possibilities: one world with a very strict central control put in power by its access to these technologies, and another where the people all can control the technologies and use them to keep power in the hands of those who can weld it properly. The possibility of a world where the equipment is simply kept in check is so small that it is insignificant. The amount of effort required to bring it to significance would be tantamount lobotomizing a great deal of the population.
>Defeatism again. Man, the sheep-like mentality of some people never ceases to amaze me. As the technology advances and demand increases (which I'm betting it will, given current trends typified by this article) prices will drop and the quality/power of anti-surveillance equipment will increase exponentailly, just as with home computers. But I bet you don't believe that, either. Baaaaa.
.also, I don't know where you live, but here in the United States there is an assumption in constitutional law that absent a valid warrant a person has the right to be secure in their papers, home, financial information, etc.
Looking past the rather childish personal attacks...
Technology advances and demand increases will push down the cost of the survalence equipment itself, but the anti-survalence equipment will be just nearly just as expensive because it will be fighting a battle against the survalence equipment itself. It will have to continue to be the responding product, and so it will never drop in price as much. Plus, to stay ahead of the survalence equipment it will have to be exponentially better. Take the example of tempest: to guard against a doubling in the sensitivity of the tempest equipment would require a quadrupling of the cost of EM shielding. Or consider a physical net to keep out a flea sized camera. If the camera becomes half as big the net will have to become more than double as difficult to manufacture.
Plus, you would be assuming that the manufacturers of the survalence equipment are completely honest with the anti-survalence equipment companies as to what their stuff can do. This is not very likely at all considering their cost motivation.
AND, people don't want to spend money on this anti-survalence equipment anyway. Good luck convincing someone to install a $1000 system in their home that has to be rutinely upgraded and is not 100% dependable at the same time. People have tight budgets.
No, a simple analysis of the situation based on the various pieces such as the motivations of watchers, survalence equipment manufacturers, and watchees shows that it really is a loosing battle. Just as information wants to be free, watching wants to be done. Very similar reasoning, actually.
>Why? Because what happened to her is an unpleasent example of what a life constantly in the public eye is all about? Sorry to bust the bubble of your rosy fantasy.
Nope, because pointing her out only reveals a statistically insignificant event. A person can be found to be the poster child of just about any cause, not matter how obtuse. What happened to her may never be completely known, and is irrelevant to this conversation anyway (unless you'd care to specify, which you didn't).
>Too many to list here! There are a great number of reasons why people need the ability to keep some things secret. Financial, psychological, social, personal. .
I live in the US. Just because there is a constitutional right to something does not mean that it was correct that that right be given. Additionally, times change and new technologies like the Internet make some things irrelevant. The right to privacy is up for debate just like everything else.
>Yes, if this infringes on the individuals right to privacy. But then I can see by your statment that you don't care much for the concerns of the individual.
You simply move it from "infringing on the rights of the individual" to "infringing on the rights of the individuals". So, who gave people the right to privacy anyway? The constitution? The whole thing is up for debate, not set in stone. I'd say people have just as much of a right to information that would be collected by the widespread adoption of survalence cameras. So which right is more important? My individual right to privacy walking down the street or a million individual peoples' rights to watch me.
>Oh, of course. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and all that. Collectivist twaddle.
Well of course the needs of the many are more important than the needs of a few. Why wouldn't it be? You call it twiddle but fail to say why it is.
>But not nearly on the scale that it would be otherwise. Imagine what the smog would be like in L.A., for example, if there had been no environmental laws in place for the past 30-35 years. Your argument is based on pure cynicism. And I'm still waiting for your evidence.
It only takes one person to become big brother. One intelligent person with enough motivation and resources would be able to bring himself to power chiefly through knowledge he gains from the cameras. That is why you have to stop every single person from getting the survalence equipment, and why you must have the agreements of everyone to work together to stop it. It simply won't happen. Take the pollution in LA, for example, or segregation.
As for Rand, you said she's just right *Snort*.
Now, I have answered your challenges much more fully than you have answered mine. I don't know where you get the nerve to suggest otherwise. Your answers have been meandering into irrelevancy and insignificancy, and yet I have answered those two as such. I direct you to the other posts under this topic for evidence as to what I'm saying; I have seen a whole lot of it and see no reason to recap and distil it for you.
Now, as for the personal attacks, all I can say is to grow up a bit. Perhaps if you would not be nearly so childish you would see that your point of view is tenuous from a systems point of view, and therefore no matter how many individual cases you throw against it, reality will firmly tell you that you are wrong.
I only fear that the fight for rights that you and people like you seek to lead will end up leading us all to the fate that you so ironically are trying to avoid.
The fight that you are joining is much like the fight against terrorism: it will never be won. It will simply never be won. That is where the similarities end, though.
The differences begin with the fact that yours is not worth fighting as the volleys that get through your net will alter the very structure of our society, while if you were to not fight and simply embrace the percieved threat instead, you would benefit on all real counts.
And before you pick your next battle of wits, learn something about what is material and what is not in a debate. Princess Di is not.
You're right that I was being insensitive, I was rushed with the post and perhaps came off wrong.
My point is still completely valid. If I and my family was brutally murdered and we happened to be the only crime that didn't get recorded when hundreds were every single day, then guess what? My case would still be statistically insignficant. I should not be considered when deciding what to do with the cameras.
In this crazy world people can be found to be paraded out to prove just about ANY point. Unfortunately there is only so much to go around and someone will end up getting shafted. We can only do our best to help as many people as possible.
I can say a lot more than "that case is statistically insignificant", but it would not be relevant to the point I am trying to make.
>Oh, of course not. It's totally hopeless. That's why companies such as The Counterspy shop, [counterspyshop.com] Advanced Electronic Security [bugsweeps.com] and Spyquip World [spyquipworld.com.au] (to name just 3) don't sell any countersurveilance/anti-bugging equipment at all, because it's useless, right? And the technology will never advance to cover the microcams of the future, right? And simply passing laws against it with draconian penalties/fines for violating people's privacy, well, that's a total non-starter, eh? Whatever.
So, you have a place whereby rich get to try to pay to top the antisurvalence equipment bought by the poor. Gee, wonder who will win that one. And you can only fine/penalize people you can catch. Rich trying to get past the equipment of the poor once again.
> Ask Princess Diana how that feels--oh, I'm sorry, you can't. She's dead.
Wow, what a nonsensical, irrational, irrevelant appeal to emotion.
>Well, I do. But then again I'm one of those wacky civil liberties nuts who values their privacy and doesn't believe that everyone has the right to know everything about me and what I'm doing at all times. I'd rather not live in a fishbowl, thanks.
Congradulations on feeling that way. Care to give any reasoning behind your feeling? Because you feel that way the rest of us are ot be denied the benefits of widespread camera coverage?
>Got any evidence to back up this statement?
Reasoning plus empirical evidance. What could be better? Just look at other posts under this same article talking about how the cameras in the UK help a great number of people every year (ignore the ones that say that they didn't help individuals, that is irrelevant)
>Why would you have to organize everyone on earth? Did everyone on earth have to be organize in the fight against de jure segregation or pollution or Indian Independance from Britain or any one of a hundred other causes? I'm not following you.
Many people say these things are still going on. Not officially, perhaps, but unofficially they are. I don't argue that we can't pass a law against survalence, but unofficial segregation and pollution are still happening everywhere.
I don't know what Rand based her thought on, but I thinkn she's flat out wrong.
People give governments and corporations power. If the people had the ability to hold them to a higher level of accountablility, they would be able to more forcefully and more correctly influence them.
The ruling of the MA supreme court was wrong. I think it was also a ruling based to a large extent on the attitude of people like those on Slashdot who want to hold personal privacy against the good of the whole as well as the good of the individual. It's further evidance as to what I'm saying in that the harder people fight against the cameras, the less of the benefits they get to reap.
The main problem in 1984 was that the government was allowed to set the social rules that you talk about. THIS is what we all need to watch out for. The cameras can be used for good or bad just like everything else, but a government setting the social rules (see certain middle eastern countries) is definately repressive and just plain bad. THAT was what was wrong in 1984. Not the cameras.
How do you expect to resist it? I mean come on, propose a solution that would be able to stop a flea sized camera from entering your house. You can't stop it from being manufactured; somebody somewhere can set up a factory to churn the things out. You can't stop someone from buying it if they have enough money. And you can't stop them from using it once they have it.
I don't consider it a rape of freedom at all. The fact that there is a camera watching me does not change what I am allowed and not allowed to do at all.
Don't fight it because things will actually be better than they are now this way.
What I'm spewing is "it's unstoppable, now let it make the world a better place like it wants to. Why would you resist anyway?"
You would have to organize every single person on earth to stop survalence. This is simply not goign to happen.
Which would be impossible if the system was not closed circuit like it should be. Any public intrest group could keep their own backup copies of the tapes.
Great book. I read it and it completely summed up what I've been thinking for years.
The problem then is the handling of the cameras and lack of enough of them, not the cameras themselves.
Plus, your two singular examples are statistically insignificant.
More cameras means more accountability for the police, you realise. More cameras would actually cut down on the amount of police brutality and help get bad cops off the streets.
The cameras aren't the problem in the things you described. If the things you mentioned went on, the problem would be the lack of checks to prevent the actual happenings. The fact that there are cameras and the reactions of the camera watchers are two completely different topics.
Your envelope analogy is good, but not in the way you meant it. There are strict laws against opening an envelope, just as there should be strict laws against doing the things you describe. Don't ban letter openers just because they can be used to open other peoples' mail....
THANK YOU!!!!
Not only is the paranoia unjustified, it means that we will be completely unable to gain any of the benefits of having these cameras around, and there are certainly a great many benefits.
Thank you for posting.
Yes, we've all read the book. Thanks for adding nothing to the debate.
I must say that I think 1984 has done more damage to society than good. It has made us paranoid to certain technologies and in the end that paranoia will, ironically enough, bring about the very state that 1984 warned about.
By not accepting cameras into our daily life we insure that only the rich and powerful will have them. The technology is unstoppable, the only way to put a positive spin on it is for us all to embrace it and use it to watch the watchers.
There is no way that we can stop the cameras. No amount of legislation will be able to stop the march of technology, as you Slashdotters should all know. The rich and powerful will always be able to put cameras everywhere no matter what the law says.
The answer is more cameras and more access to them. Allow the common citizen to access the pictures caught by the cameras, restoring the balance. Then put cameras everywhere, especially in police stations and legislative offices, so that the common citizens can become the watchers of the watchers.
This is the only way to put a positive spin on a trend that is unstoppable.
Yeah, knee jerk reactions really suck. Take, for example, the one on Slashdot. You are all too worried about jerking to attention to defend privacy at all costs to consider whether or not this is actually a good thing. I have never seen any good debate on the topic on Slashdot, only debate over how to secure more of it for individuals.
Well guess what: it's not a black and white issue. One of the main side effects of increased privacy is decreased accountability, which is itself a factor that could actually stop quite a large amount of negative things that happen today.
At the same time stop and consider what privacy you really have and where it might go. With technology today you can already plant all the listning devices and cameras you want undetected, assuming you have the money to pay for it. No amount of laws will stop this; if it's undetectable who is going to be able to file suit?
So throw all this privacy legislation stuff out the window. As Larry Ellison (I think) said, "You have no privacy, get over it." Focus instead on shaping who gets to do the watching, as information is power.
Do you want only the people with money and those already in government being able to watch everyone without the cameras being turned on themselves too? Well that's where things are going now with all of the footdragging people like those in this community are doing. A much better state of affairs is one in which the whole population embraces the cameras and is able to gain their benefits, such as monitoring those who are already in power. Just imagine what could happen to police brutality if at any instant someone could tune in to the camera in the police officer's car.
Everyone, I'm sure, would agree that cameras could cut down on activities that are frowned upon by society. Well, if you have just the powerful watching the cameras you'll have a very few people dictating what's frowned upon. This only increases their power and control. If, on the other hand, you get cameras to be a part of everyday life things will be very different. A whole new level of respect will be reached for each other as people can figure out that we're not all that different and we all have faults. Of course there will still be the issues about people leaning away from social norms, but this is much easier to fight when there is no driving force behind it.
In any case it's an all around better situation than allowing the rich and powerful to monitor us all without the recprocation, which is where it's goign right now.
I realise this post is not very structured or well supported, I'm just throwing it off the top of my head. The supportive reasoning is definately there to back it up, though.
Think about it.
Wouldn't this be considered collecting information? And isn't it illegal to collect information from children under 13, even by accident? So wouldn't any site using this be opening itself up to lawsuits?
Perhaps as long as there's some doubt as to whether or not "good" users are being kept out everyone can go ahead and complain that they WERE seeing the banner adds and that there is something wrong with the technology.
It's just like everyone returning their copyprotected CDs saying the copy protection interferes with listning normally even if it really doesn't. It'll be a black eye for the copy protection.
The companies that designed the voting machines used all over the US were very clear themselves that they had very large margins of error. The split was lower than these margins of error. Therefore, there is no way of knowing who won the election.
Agreed completely.
That's one reason I voted for him.
There is no way to ever know who won the popular vote. The split of the vote was less than the margin of error in the voting tabulation methods.
Therefore, it is incorrect to say that anyone won the popular vote.
I think people in power, such as these judges, SHOULD be monitored, and the public should have access to the records.
Anything that will increase accountability is a good thing, and all of the negatives of watching them are already prevented by other legislation.
You overlook an important fact: disallowing monitoring will take away rights from the employers. Employees are not forced to work there, therefore monitoring them while they are working there does not take away any actual rights. Disallowing monitoring does actually take away rights.
The rest of your spiel doesn't make any concrete argument. You throw around the term "Orwellian" and use other language that is very much incendiary without real content or constructive argument, and expect it to fly. Why is it so bad to monitor people? In and of itself it is not a bad thing, and in fact does a lot of good. It leads to increased accountability and very good arguments will state that this is the way to go.
In fact, you want to disallow monitoring, but you have to realise that it will happen anyway. With the diminishing cost of survalience equipment those who can afford it WILL afford it and the monitoring will go on anyway. THIS is where the true "evil Orwellian" world will come from, when all of the survalence equipment is in the hands of the already powerful.
So let's keep it all legal and out in the open. That way we can ALL harvest the good that can come through monitoring and the Orwellian state will be averted. Judges are just a start: they need to be monitored and the whole public needs to see the records. Keep the records sealed until the cases are over, just like other information related to the cases, but set it all free afterwords. Then we will all be able to see what really went on.
Lock the judges' monitoring data collections until the cases are over, just as you would do with other information in the cases. Then you'll know a lot more about what lead to the decisions the judges might have had and even be able to appeal based on bad information the judge might have gotten on a website.
The key is to let the entire public access this information. They are accountable to us all, after all.
I want the general public to know what judges do online. The government would have to collect the data, but allow the general public to have easy access to the raw information. After all, we employ these people (in theory), and we should be able to see exactly what they're doing on "company" time if we so choose.
Monitoring leads to increased accountability, and that's always good when dealing with people with a lot of power, like the federal judges.
Monitoring has its uses, and to say don't monitor because you are afraid of what might come next is a very stupid thing to say. It completely rules out the positives of monitoring because of the negatives not of monitoring itself, but of some potential thing.
Work to prevent the potential thing. Allow the positive thing.