Switching gears

[xorcist at sigaint.org]

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.