Posted by SanjayMehta 5 hours ago
Hopefully the absurdity of broad scale surveillance can't be so easily lost in hyperbole
The operating theory of all of these cameras is that anything happening in public sight is by its nature not private. The federal government is dumping millions and millions of dollars into grant programs for municipalities to buy it… It’s a giant federal surveillance program disguised as decisions made by individual police departments.
It’s hilarious and depressing to contrast the HN community reaction to Snowden versus the mostly meh response to flock.
Yeah, if you live in a tiny medieval village or a small town in the middle of nowhere in 1980 there was little "privacy" but Jeffrey Dahmer was fucking dudes (back when that wasn't ok) and eating people in his apartment for years before anyone caught on. In more suburban settings there truly was privacy to a large practical extent.
Furthermore, these argument lie through their teeth to portray privacy from those who you mostly voluntarily associate, vs privacy from government systems that can seek you out, have power over you and can fairly unilaterally screw you with little recourse and you cannot choose not to associate with.
Having people not associate with you in 1980, or 1280, because you did something sly or immoral is fundamentally different from being combed over by the government because you hit some unknowable proprietary criteria that triggered them to go over you with a fine tooth comb.
There's this insidious HN tendency to believe that "The Government" (whatever that means) is 100% malicious and Out To Get Us. The reality is far more nuanced, my friend. if "The Government" was truly out to get so many people, they would get them, and society wouldn't actually functoin. "The Government" wants people to work, and raise children and stimulate the economy; The Government likes when people are abled and working/supporting others, and paying taxes, and HNers seem to think "The Government" wants to perpetually interfere and intervene and trip us up. Just reading HN and /. and the other paranoia boards, I'd think that there are swat teams on every corner and black helicopters pouncing on every third hacker on a weekly basis, man.
The crazy thing is that this administration in the USA is gutting governmental apparatus, makign a "small government" and "drainining the swamp" that leftists love to hate on, but honestly a "smaller government" definitely for sure won't have enough ability to screw with the common man like y'all believe it would.
Sure, gov't can privatize a lot of stuff like handing over to Flock, but still, Flock's aligned with them, and (see Wings of Desire again) this is not malice and not naked malevolence. Sorry.
It's not like Red cities have flock cameras and Blue cities don't.
It's really just that the Fairness Doctrine [1] needed to apply to more than radio. If you can constantly just repeat your point and then deny an opposition time then of course you'll get your point through.
Although maybe if super-pacs got outlawed then the Equal-time rule [2] would suffice.
Now of course your narrative is rude and more entertaining but sadly far from the mark. Saying “that’s not what I paid for” is all fine and dandy but it’s cuts both ways.
How sure of that are you? I’m thinking it’s mostly a mix of indifference and ignorance. Has anywhere you know of voted specifically on these cameras?
Data centers seem to be widely unpopular on both the left and right, so I'm wonder where the representative democracy comes into play. More often than not local politicians approve these projects despite there being majority opposition from the public.
This includes "ancestry tests", security cameras with AI in them, upload IDs to "verify", and even social media where you are allowed to upload pictures with others in them.
And since we "supposedly" live in a democracy, we should be allowed to have a vote to decide on this, the group that wins is the majority, right? I don't understand why we're allowing our rights to erode before we have an informed election about this, in democracies.
Furthermore surveillance isn't just an all or nothing thing. For example, the government can record your activities in public without a warrant, but they can't subpoena your phone calls without a warrant. That degree of surveillance has more checks and balances.
How you somehow try to go from recording people in public to "ancestry tests" is a pretty nonsensical argument.
> And since we "supposedly" live in a democracy, we should be allowed to have a vote to decide on this, the group that wins is the majority, right?
No, you'd have to win much more than the majority to change the constitution, which defines a lot of privacy rights. But if you have enough votes, then sure you could change the constitution.
There is an expectation you are not constantly tracked everywhere you go by a nationwide surveillance apparatus, that your location is not constantly monitored, indexed and shared. Unless you expect to live in an Orwellian distopia.
Flock is a clever workaround that should be illegal, but before that can happens we can get them removed at the city council level.
Traffic cameras, by comparison, only record people's in public. A police officer isn't violating privacy laws by standing at an intersection and writing down the plates of cars passing by is he? Flock is just automating that task.
The whole reason why we have license plates is to facilitate monitoring cars. If we really think that people have a right to keep their vehicular activities private, then surely the bigger privacy violation is the fact that we require cars to display unique identifiers in a prominent manner?
No law is that simple. You can be photographed when you’re out in public most places, yet stalking is also illegal most places.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/vandals-strike-cut-flock-c...