[ExI] Gov surveillance here to stay
Anders Sandberg
anders at aleph.se
Fri Jul 6 05:16:27 PDT 2012
On 06/07/2012 09:06, BillK wrote:
> Why do you think your lovely smartphone includes unique ID, GPS,
> camera and microphone?
Because the consumers really want it. The fatal mistake of thinking it is
because "They" put it there misses the far more unsettling aspect that *we*
are voting with our wallets to produce a transparent, trackable world with
smart gadgets.
Some of that is an accidental side effect (consider EFFs interesting
demonstraiton that our browser customisation makes us identifiable:
https://panopticlick.eff.org/ ) - many of these side effects suprise the
Powers That Be too (consider all leaks due to improper redaction of PDFs).
But I think what most people honestly do want is a world that has "magical
properties" of transparency and services for them that also produce
transparency for others - and they are not willing to pay much money or
effort to reduce this information leakage.
If it was just They who did things, we could in principle stop Them. But
now it is *us* who are doing it, and we are unlikely to stop ourselves.
> The future is here already. You must assume that every use of your
> phone, or internet access is recorded and scanned for possible threats
> to the state.
> If you are not plotting, then it will be no immediate inconvenience to you.
At least that is the common assumption. Given the growing number of more
or less embarassing mistakes, there is a realy issue of false positives.
Plotters are rare: people looking like plotters are far more common.
> Supercomputers and unlimited data storage enables the state to treat
> everyone as a potential criminal, so everything they do or say, every
> place they visit and every person they contact is now regarded as
> potential court evidence.
The really interesting thing is when this ability percolates downwards.
Right now companies like Acxiom and Facebook are using similar methods. In
a few years it will be feasible for smaller groups and individuals to do
big data mining too.
I suspect the best strategy is to get people aware that we are careening
into the transparent society, that we better get ultra-tolerant, and that
we better get strong accountability measures into place to keep
governments and other concentrations of power safe and sane.
--
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University
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