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That doesn't mean its worth it. There is always a tradeoff and I would rather live in a world where I know I am free from surveillance than a world where I am .

That doesn't mean its worth it. There is always a tradeoff and I would rather live in a world where I know I am free from surveillance than a world where I am .000001% safer or criminals are caught 10% faster.

colanderman 7y ago
It's not just safety vs. privacy, it's safety vs. safety: pervasive surveillance can and does make us less safe due to the potential for a future, less benevolent, government to abuse it to oppress politically unpopular groups.
- joering2 7y ago
  Do you have any proof to backup your empty claim? It may discourage pocket picker at your local market.. when it comes to blowing up King Cross I bet you more survelieance the more incouraging to terror. These folls live for five minute survelliance video of one of their own walking down with backpack across few CCTV cameras on all national News Stations, so yeah I bet you its a one big fat encouragement to them to harm more.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    > pervasive surveillance can and does make us less safe due to the potential for a future, less benevolent, government to abuse it to oppress politically unpopular groups. Do you disagree that pervasive surveillance would make it easier for an oppressive government to collect data on their opponents and imprison or harass them? The East German Stasi didn’t have the advantage of universal surveillance and they did a great job of suppressing political opposition. Do you think their job would have been easier or harder with pervasive logging of all conversations conducted electronically or in public or private spaces?
  - colanderman 7y ago
    Did you mean to reply to someone else? My comment is also arguing against pervasive surveillance.
lenkite 7y ago
Well. Strangely I happen to be one of the folks in that .000001%, so I apologize if my opinions have been shaped differently. I lost one of my ex-school mates in an market-place explosion (2005 Delhi bombing). While the London Bombing suspects were identified, all suspects in the Delhi bombing that same year were released due to "lack of evidence". I am completely in favor of surveillance of public property.
- tclancy 7y ago
  But if we make a world safe from these .000001% events, what do you think that will look like? I can only imagine a dystopian/ Orwellian society where we are all encouraged to report any suspicious behavior and everything becomes a race to the bottom, a Prisoner's Dilemma where I feel pressured to rat out my neighbor for _something_ before he does it to me.
  - lenkite 7y ago
    Who's asking everyone to report suspicious behaviour ? You have raised a _strawman_ argument. Automatic surveillance of public property and public spaces is in my opinion necessary for analysis, investigation and prosecution of terrorists. This must be done by career intelligence folks not by amateurs.
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      Pervasive surveillance will inevitably lead to machine learning techniques being used to analyse the data which will massively increase the rates of false positives, people who aren’t a threat but who the system flags as potential threats. Freedom and security trade off against one another.
      - jedharris 7y ago
        Citation needed. You are making a strong statement about the inevitable future based on what? Sounds like evidence as strong as your claim would be worth some very interesting papers.
avery-dawn 7y ago
> That doesn't mean its worth it. Just the presence of surveillance alone discourages criminals from acting in the first place. Without any surveillance, I don't think criminal activity will increase by just .000001%.
- shrimp_emoji 7y ago
  In the case of (PUBLIC) meatspace, physical surveillance (e.g., cameras), I'm onboard with the Big Brother panopticon state. Bad, meaningful stuff happens in meatspace, like explosions. When it comes to cyberspace, digital surveillance, I fled Windows for Linux and read /r/StallmanWasRight. Bad stuff happens in cyberspace, but none of it is meaningful enough to me to warrant the limitations to privacy that we endure IRL. Does anyone else have this arbitrary configuration of opinions?
  - somebodythere 7y ago
    But the purpose of cyberspace surveillance is to collect evidence for crimes committed in meatspace.
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  > Just the presence of surveillance alone discourages criminals from acting in the first place. What's this based on? From a quick google, it seems there isn't a clear consensus that this is the case.
rangibaby 7y ago
In the grandparent comment’s specific example police stalked and killed a completely innocent man because they thought he looked like one of the bombers from their CCTV tapes
- colanderman 7y ago
  Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menez... Good god, reading that was horrifying. What a bunch of thugs on that police force. Absolutely disgraceful.

colanderman 7y ago

It's not just safety vs. privacy, it's safety vs. safety: pervasive surveillance can and does make us less safe due to the potential for a future, less benevolent, government to abuse it to oppress politically unpopular groups.

joering2 7y ago
Do you have any proof to backup your empty claim? It may discourage pocket picker at your local market.. when it comes to blowing up King Cross I bet you more survelieance the more incouraging to terror. These folls live for five minute survelliance video of one of their own walking down with backpack across few CCTV cameras on all national News Stations, so yeah I bet you its a one big fat encouragement to them to harm more.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  > pervasive surveillance can and does make us less safe due to the potential for a future, less benevolent, government to abuse it to oppress politically unpopular groups. Do you disagree that pervasive surveillance would make it easier for an oppressive government to collect data on their opponents and imprison or harass them? The East German Stasi didn’t have the advantage of universal surveillance and they did a great job of suppressing political opposition. Do you think their job would have been easier or harder with pervasive logging of all conversations conducted electronically or in public or private spaces?
- colanderman 7y ago
  Did you mean to reply to someone else? My comment is also arguing against pervasive surveillance.

lenkite 7y ago

Well. Strangely I happen to be one of the folks in that .000001%, so I apologize if my opinions have been shaped differently. I lost one of my ex-school mates in an market-place explosion (2005 Delhi bombing). While the London Bombing suspects were identified, all suspects in the Delhi bombing that same year were released due to "lack of evidence". I am completely in favor of surveillance of public property.

tclancy 7y ago
But if we make a world safe from these .000001% events, what do you think that will look like? I can only imagine a dystopian/ Orwellian society where we are all encouraged to report any suspicious behavior and everything becomes a race to the bottom, a Prisoner's Dilemma where I feel pressured to rat out my neighbor for _something_ before he does it to me.
- lenkite 7y ago
  Who's asking everyone to report suspicious behaviour ? You have raised a _strawman_ argument. Automatic surveillance of public property and public spaces is in my opinion necessary for analysis, investigation and prosecution of terrorists. This must be done by career intelligence folks not by amateurs.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    Pervasive surveillance will inevitably lead to machine learning techniques being used to analyse the data which will massively increase the rates of false positives, people who aren’t a threat but who the system flags as potential threats. Freedom and security trade off against one another.
    - jedharris 7y ago
      Citation needed. You are making a strong statement about the inevitable future based on what? Sounds like evidence as strong as your claim would be worth some very interesting papers.

avery-dawn 7y ago

> That doesn't mean its worth it. Just the presence of surveillance alone discourages criminals from acting in the first place. Without any surveillance, I don't think criminal activity will increase by just .000001%.

shrimp_emoji 7y ago
In the case of (PUBLIC) meatspace, physical surveillance (e.g., cameras), I'm onboard with the Big Brother panopticon state. Bad, meaningful stuff happens in meatspace, like explosions. When it comes to cyberspace, digital surveillance, I fled Windows for Linux and read /r/StallmanWasRight. Bad stuff happens in cyberspace, but none of it is meaningful enough to me to warrant the limitations to privacy that we endure IRL. Does anyone else have this arbitrary configuration of opinions?
- somebodythere 7y ago
  But the purpose of cyberspace surveillance is to collect evidence for crimes committed in meatspace.
MaxBarraclough 7y ago
> Just the presence of surveillance alone discourages criminals from acting in the first place. What's this based on? From a quick google, it seems there isn't a clear consensus that this is the case.

rangibaby 7y ago

In the grandparent comment’s specific example police stalked and killed a completely innocent man because they thought he looked like one of the bombers from their CCTV tapes

colanderman 7y ago
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menez... Good god, reading that was horrifying. What a bunch of thugs on that police force. Absolutely disgraceful.