FC: Privacy villain of the week: DARPA's gait surveillance tech (fwd)

[Bill Stewart]

[Sorry about any duplicated - lne.com spam-blocked me the first time.]

At 01:34 PM 10/27/2002 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote:
 >Advent of another technology wide deployment of which we must delay as
 >long as possible. ...
 >Unfortunately, brinistas welcome this development because they idiotically
 >assume that the technology enables symmetrically, or even assymentrically
 >in favour of the governed vs. the government. Their arguments sound
 >superficially convincing to those unfamiliar with the political process
 >and the logics of power flow. This is the reason they're doing the wrong
 >thing for the right reasons. Supply the missing part of the argument
 >whenever you see Brinworld meme propagating.

Sigh.  If people are going to beat up on BrinWorld, at least they
should get it right.  Brin's Transparent Society stuff makes two points
- Cameras, networks and similar technology are going to keep getting cheaper,
          so you're going to lose your privacy.  Give up on that now.
- Governments _are_ going to take advantage of this, like it or not,
          so what the public has to do is make sure that we're allowed to
          watch the government as well.

Brin may be naively optimistic about our ability to succeed on the second part,
but he's spot on about the asymmetry of power relationships,
and he's constantly making the point that we can only watch the government
if we force them to let us watch - the alternative is that they'll be
watching us and we won't be watching them.

Delaying technology?  It's easier to do on stuff that doesn't work well,
and it sounds like this doesn't - perhaps the way to do it is to
deflect the research away from surveillance into medical directions;
since Darpa's funding it, get them to look at how to help soldiers carry
heavy backpacks safely or spooks to carry dead bodies safely or whatever.