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Discussion (37 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
>We can turn that conventional wisdom on its head, by reframing it as a question: is it possible to do surveillance and consequent policing in a way that is (a) compatible with or enhances liberal values, i.e., improving the welfare of all, except those undermining the common good; and also (b) sufficient to prevent catastrophic threats to society? I call this possibility Provably Beneficial Surveillance. It's a concept expanding on an old tradition of ideas, including search warrants, due process, habeas corpus, and Madisonian separation of powers, all of which help improve the balance of power between institutions and individuals. In particular, all those ideas help enable surveillance in service of safety, while also taking steps to prevent abuses of that power.
1. https://michaelnotebook.com/optimism/index.html
Every single person in the US's future, safety, rights and freedom is currently at stake. There is no more time left to wait and see how things play out.
And over the domestic surveillance, that had some complaints back in that time, there is the point of foreign surveillance and intervention, that had no slowdown back then, so you can figure out where that should be today. At least Americans have some saying on their government and policies, but for the rest of the world is just the new normal.
The ethos of this website is mostly just anarcho-capitalist but lacking in any foundation of even the most basic understanding of ideological concepts.
The time to resist the next crop of policies and technologies is today.
And I disagree the ground was more fertile for action in Covid. The silver lining to the AI companies’ PR and political ineptitude is that there is widespread, bipartisan pushback against tech in all stripes.
As the founding fathers intended.
Sure Flock, we buy your safety pitch. We just don’t trust you.
This is the worst of all worlds. Actual criminal investigations get thwarted or the reporting requirement gets diluted to the point of being useless (“someone looked for something today!”). And a burden of vigilance shifted onto the public.
Or the other guy's community network idea but it would have to also publish the realtime activities and whereabouts of all politicians who voted against making this illegal.
Much like the law that stopped video rental companies from telling what their customers were renting, that passed after some politicians had their video rental histories leaked.
They’re above the rules for a political cycle because we’re shifting to a system of spoils. That doesn’t change that everything they’re doing right now is legal. (Outside ICE. They’re a warren of criminality right now.)
https://reclaimthenet.org/senate-panel-backs-guard-act-ai-ag...
And the ever increasing desire to break encryption.
And the increase in technology companies who have metadata about us citizens becoming offense and defense contractors.
And... The list is so long.
I'm dead serious.
- Addendum: People generally don't resort to petty crime for no good reason. They do it because some need is not being met, or they have become socially outcast due to some systemic failure. When people feel they have little autonomy to exist in a meaningful way, and even being poor is expensive and criminalised, of course you'll see petty crime everywhere. Cracking down on the "undesirables" won't make them go away, it'll just make the issue more pronounced.
I would literally buy you a bicycle to change your mind. Or sit down and review countries where theft is minimal so we could brainstorm real solutions.
The 20% of the country that thinks that shoplifting is the real problem are a problem. They will always vote for the biggest liar.
I'm right now imagining a counterfactual world where there is no property crime or physical assault, and petty reactionaries are demanding surveillance in order to keep people from swearing.
Wage theft (minimum wage violations, forced off the clock work, withheld pay, etc) dwarfs robbery, burglary, and auto theft alone in dollar value. And that's just one kind of white collar crime.
We also have market manipulators, embezzlers, cons selling "wellness" bullshit, companies like Flock and Palantir conspiring to break constitutional amendments, Polymarket grifters, what have you.
I'd be happy with unlimited bike theft if those fucks all ended up in prison, but realistically it would lower the bike theft.
As it turns out, society is a lot more fun when there is just a bit of risk of crime. I'll 1000000000% take the additional freedom to do "stupid shit" in the USA over living in one of these boring dystopias.
This is a vanishingly-rare hypothetical in America.