I'd like to bounce an idea around. At the outset, I'm going to say that I don't really like the idea. Like getting a root canal, I'd rather not have a some guy drilling around in my jaw, but what can you do? Some years back, maybe 8 years ago now, prior to the Snowden revelations, a Kiwi buddy and I were discussing the arising surveillance state. 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. 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. Open source surveillance is a monster, but its a monster that would bite police and agents of the state as easily as us. 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.