On Wed, 21 Sep 2016 17:01:51 -0000 xorcist@sigaint.org wrote:
I ventured the idea that the only way to combat it, is for citizens to put web cams in their windows, in their cars, have body cams.. whatever.. and have a distributed system where we can live stream that stuff up. Open source surveillance, if you will.
Surveillance of what?
The idea scared the hell out of him, and rightly so. My take on surveillance tech is that it is like nukes. The only viable strategy is deterrence. The genie is out of the bottle, the tech isn't going anywhere, and so if we're going to preserve freedom, the technology needs to be under our control.
So, once you have everything recorded and available to anyone, including your enemies, what, exactly is left under your control?
Open source surveillance is a monster, but its a monster that would bite police and agents of the state as easily as us.
No it won't?
Rather than the government/media being able to selectively pick-and-choose which camera angles, and which clips to release, we'd have to ability to check, and disprove.
I don't like what it means, in terms of enabling stalkers, but perhaps that is mitigated by the ability to catch those fucks on camera?
I'd love to hear reactions and thoughts on this. It's not something you're going to catch me truly arguing for, its really more of a devil's advocate type thing.. like I say, I just see it mostly as a fucked strategy for dealing with a fucked situation.
Surveillance is an intrinsically bad activity. To 'open source' it is like 'open sourcing' any other facet of the police state. If your goal is an 'open source' police state, then go for it. Otherwise... Also, this seems like an example of why 'competing' with the state, copying the shitty or outright criminal 'services' that the state provides isn't a good idea.