Comment by sandworm101
1 month ago
Many worry about how these tools will be used to persecute people such as women seeking reproductive medical services. That is a problem. But what will people think of those same tools being used to enforce protection orders, to spot parole violators? I know where my opinions fall, but I also realize that the bulk of the population would trade in their privacy for any perception of increased safety.
> But what will people think of those same tools being used to enforce protection orders, to spot parole violators?
If only our society had some orderly process to balance privacy with public safety - such as by having the cops explain to a judge why they need to track a given person, for how long, and so on.
Perhaps also some rules about what counts as a good enough reason, and telling judges they can't grant overly broad, blanket permission.
Someone should put something in the constitution about that.
Counterpoint:
> One DEA official had told Reuters: "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day. It's decades old, a bedrock concept."
Constitution or not, they're doing it.
They're also using these tools to stalk women[0]
[0]: https://theweek.com/speedreads/651668/hundreds-police-office...
If I were in law enforcement, had no morals, and just wanted to convict as many people as possible I'd build a system that automatically assembles a virtual dossier on everyone using these data streams. Then I'd implement detection heuristics that look for interesting dossiers. These could be used as the "classified" component of a case built by parallel construction[1].
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
Not even. It's worse. They aren't even useful for that.
They've tried that approach but it's actually less efficient than "good old fashioned police work" because it turns out that 99/100 of your hits are gonna be lawful weirdos, 1/100 is gonna be a petty drug dealer and the career advancing prosecution you actually wanted would have been much easier to find by using normal methods like inferring that a dealer has a supplier, a spy has a handler, etc, etc and trying to suss out who those people are. The NSA figured all this out post 9/11 when they were building data haystacks in search of terrorists.
What the data haystacks do get used for is dragnet policing wherein an agency picks some crime they're gonna go hard on, pulls up a bunch of results of people who probably did it, tosses all the people who are likely to pose any risk to them (e.g. you don't see the ATF knocking on doors asking about Temu glock switches in bad parts of Detroit) and kicks in the doors of whoever's left.
The data haystacks are also really useful for witch hunts when they get egg on their face and need to make someone pay, like that time they prosecuted anyone and everyone who they could construe as having done anything to help the kid who bombed the Boston Marathon, and the January 6 people of whom a great number were certainly just hapless.
And this is in addition to the usual "opposition research" like the FBI bugging MLK and all that sort of crap.
If you had a location that was a known drug hot spot, you could use this data to see who frequented that location. Using that info, you could use "good old fashioned police work" to contact each person and get them to roll on someone else. That's much easier than sitting in a stakeout trying to ID those that come and go.
5 replies →
Any references to back up the suggestion that a data driven approach doesn’t work?
Not being skeptical, but curious
Surely ML is better than that? Otherwise no targeted advertising would work.
1 reply →
You can do things far more interesting than that with the dossiers on everyone that absolutely exist right now and that algorithms are constantly being run over. You can frame people for crimes for which you know they will have no defense, exactly like the Stasi did, and privately confront them about it. As they plead their innocence, tell them that you want to believe them, and if they can do a little work for you, they'll not only be arrested, but be rewarded! How would you like a job at Mother Jones, or the Guardian?
The U.S. Government is purchasing tools like these and using them: https://www.404media.co/inside-the-u-s-government-bought-too...
This has been a widespread problem for the better part of at least half a decade, likely much more.
To do it on their own would be illegal. To buy it from a commercial vendor is an easy contract to write. Quite something. Perhaps we should write a new law making it illegal.
They managed to outsource it on accident just because of a shared need with advertisers to target people.
if you have a legal reason to track someone, make them wear a tracker. don't make everyone else lose their privacy and freedom to move without government oversight
[dead]
> the bulk of the population would trade in their privacy
i think most people are on the fence / undecided, and the few that do "pick a side" only do so based on their personal life experiences (which includes family and community influences)
First, it's not a binary choice. It depends on the circumstance.
Also, people are influenced by what other people say, especially people in tech. You can see people on HN saying how hopeless it all is. People on HN and your social circle are listening to what you say.
No they're not. You preaching against tech just comes across as wack job crazy to those that don't care or already disagree. Maybe they aren't as far as thinking you're a wacko, but they've definitely grown tired and calloused from the non-stop and probably at least ignore it. Evidence by all the people continuing to use social media.
Convenience wins out for the vast majority of people. People just want to be left alone and have nice things. As long as it is just advertisers knowing everything, the masses just won't care. Even if the state starts to take action, as long as it doesn't happen to them, they won't care either.
2 replies →