Switching gears

Sean Lynch seanl at literati.org
Mon Sep 26 12:40:22 PDT 2016


On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 10:01 AM, <xorcist at sigaint.org> wrote:

> 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.
>
>
>
This seems like exactly David Brin's proposal in The Transparent Society.

http://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety.html
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