Comment by vjvjvjvjghv

5 months ago

"everyone knows your business all the time"

Not everyone. Only the people with access to the surveillance data. This asymmetry is a big problem.

7 comments

vjvjvjvjghv

Reply
EvanAnderson  5 months ago

The asymmetry bothers the heck out of me. I've been personally involved in investigations of law enforcement officers abusing access to privileged information. I don't get the sense that it's at all rare.

I sort of wish we could go full ADS-B[0] with cars and have public decentralized tracking (like [1]). Level the playing field for everybody.

Since I don't think we can put the genie back in the bottle I'd love to see what kind of useful applications could be created if everybody had access to the same surveillance data that government and large corporations have.

The "what about stalkers" argument always comes next. I suspect being a stalker would be more difficult if the victim (or their agents) had the ability to react to surveillance data about the stalker.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Dependent_Surveillan...

[1] https://www.adsbexchange.com/

ahmeneeroe-v2  5 months ago

I'd have to think about this. It doesn't seem true.

If you knew the location of every police car or city councilman's car, what would that change?

  • redserk  5 months ago

    I’d be willing to bet they would take privacy protections a bit more seriously.

    • potato3732842  5 months ago

      Or at the very least they'd think twice before grandstanding against the construction of a strip club or whatever when anyone can look back and see their patronage of such.

  • tremon  5 months ago

    1 - you don't actually have access to that information.

    2 - you're lowballing the problem. It's not just current location, it's your full movement history.