Even back when Snowden was current news, we'd reached the point where laser microphones could cover every window in London for a bill of materials* less than the annual budget of London's police force.
* I have no way to estimate installation costs, but smartphones show that manufacturing at this scale doesn't need to increase total cost 10x more than the B.o.M.
I’d definitely feel much better if most cameras in the world were replaced by LIDAR. I feel like it would be much tougher to have a flawless facial recognition program with LIDAR alone
People saying LIDARs can't recognize colors or LIDARs can't take pictures don't know what they are talking about.
They're just fancy cameras with synced flashes. Not Star Trek material-informational converting transporters. Sometimes they rotate, sometimes not. Often monochrome, but that's where Bayer color filters come in. There's nothing fundamentally privacy preserving or anything about LIDARs.
I don't know what I'm talking about, but isn't the wavelength of the laser pretty limiting to the idea of just slapping a Bayer color filter on? Like, if the laser is IR (partly so they're not visually disrupting all the humans around them), the signal you get back doesn't the visual spectrum sections that you'd need to get RGB right?
The minute internet became widespread it was game over.
Pros and cons. :/
It'll never happen, but we need a bill of rights for privacy. The laypeople aren't well-versed or pained enough to ask for this, and big interest donors oppose it.
Maybe the EU and states like California will pioneer something here, though?
Edit: in general, I'm far more excited by cheap lidar tech than I am afraid of the downsides. We just need to be vigilant.
Lidar doesn’t really give you much to “see”, just shape and distance…so I’m a bit confused how it can be used for invasive surveillance, do you mean when fused with vision input it somehow allows it to infer more privacy stuff?
Humanity has never known a world without surveillance. Responsibility cannot exist without being watched. Primitive tribes lived under the constant eye of the group, and agricultural eras relied on the strict oversight of the clan. Modern states simply adopted new tools for an ancient necessity. A society without monitoring is a society without accountability, which only leads to the Hobbesian trap of endless conflict.
Mass surveillance is a relatively recent development. Dense urban civilizations are not. And yet their denizens have not historically devolved into a “nasty, brutish, and short” existence. In fact, cities have been centers of culture and learning throughout history. How does this square with your theory?
The 19th century was the true cradle of mass surveillance. Civil registration, property tracking, and institutionalized police forces provided the systemic oversight required to manage dense urban life. These administrative tools served as the analogue version of digital monitoring to ensure every citizen remained known and categorized. Cities thrived as centers of culture only because these new forms of visibility prevented the Hobbesian collapse that anonymity would have otherwise triggered.
In my country it wasn't until the late 19th century that someone had the balls to stop going to church on Sunday. It was a huge scandal at the time but it all worked out in the end.
Humans have always done mass surveillance on eachother. You don't need technology for that.
This is a reduction to absurdity. Those old societies you cite didn't actively surveil with the goal of micromanaging people's daily lives the way that modern ones do.
Rural surveillance was far more suffocating because every single action was subject to the community gaze. This is exactly why classic literature frames the journey to the city as a liberation from the crushing weight of the village eye. The idea of the peaceful countryside is a modern utopian fantasy that ignores how ancient clans dictated every aspect of life including marriage and death. Modern Homeowners Associations prove that localized oversight is often the most intrusive form of management. Ancient society did not just monitor people; it owned their entire existence through inescapable social visibility.
Your reaction actually proves the point. Aggression thrives in anonymous spaces because the lack of oversight removes the weight of accountability. When people feel unobserved, they quickly abandon the social friction that once held tribes and clans together. You are essentially providing a live demonstration of why a society without any form of monitoring inevitably slides into the Hobbesian trap.
I think we’re well past the point where mass surveillance was a technical challenge. Mass oppression through autonomous violence however…
Even back when Snowden was current news, we'd reached the point where laser microphones could cover every window in London for a bill of materials* less than the annual budget of London's police force.
* I have no way to estimate installation costs, but smartphones show that manufacturing at this scale doesn't need to increase total cost 10x more than the B.o.M.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_(robot)
LIDAR would be preferrable to cameras when it comes to privacy actually
I don't think it makes a difference. Dense lidar goes you more information than 2d colour imagery.
There are SLAM cameras that only select "interesting" points, which are privacy preserving. They are also very low power.
I’d definitely feel much better if most cameras in the world were replaced by LIDAR. I feel like it would be much tougher to have a flawless facial recognition program with LIDAR alone
Who needs facial recognition if you can identify people based on gait?
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People saying LIDARs can't recognize colors or LIDARs can't take pictures don't know what they are talking about.
They're just fancy cameras with synced flashes. Not Star Trek material-informational converting transporters. Sometimes they rotate, sometimes not. Often monochrome, but that's where Bayer color filters come in. There's nothing fundamentally privacy preserving or anything about LIDARs.
I don't know what I'm talking about, but isn't the wavelength of the laser pretty limiting to the idea of just slapping a Bayer color filter on? Like, if the laser is IR (partly so they're not visually disrupting all the humans around them), the signal you get back doesn't the visual spectrum sections that you'd need to get RGB right?
> LIDAR would be preferrable to cameras when it comes to privacy actually
Right, but how likely is it that there will be LIDAR and no cameras (especially given the low cost of the latter)?
The minute internet became widespread it was game over.
Pros and cons. :/
It'll never happen, but we need a bill of rights for privacy. The laypeople aren't well-versed or pained enough to ask for this, and big interest donors oppose it.
Maybe the EU and states like California will pioneer something here, though?
Edit: in general, I'm far more excited by cheap lidar tech than I am afraid of the downsides. We just need to be vigilant.
Lidar doesn’t really give you much to “see”, just shape and distance…so I’m a bit confused how it can be used for invasive surveillance, do you mean when fused with vision input it somehow allows it to infer more privacy stuff?
The EU already has. GDPR and the AI Act puts a lot of limits on what you can do in the open space, although it doesn't always go far enough.
And barely gets enforced
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Humanity has never known a world without surveillance. Responsibility cannot exist without being watched. Primitive tribes lived under the constant eye of the group, and agricultural eras relied on the strict oversight of the clan. Modern states simply adopted new tools for an ancient necessity. A society without monitoring is a society without accountability, which only leads to the Hobbesian trap of endless conflict.
Mass surveillance is a relatively recent development. Dense urban civilizations are not. And yet their denizens have not historically devolved into a “nasty, brutish, and short” existence. In fact, cities have been centers of culture and learning throughout history. How does this square with your theory?
The 19th century was the true cradle of mass surveillance. Civil registration, property tracking, and institutionalized police forces provided the systemic oversight required to manage dense urban life. These administrative tools served as the analogue version of digital monitoring to ensure every citizen remained known and categorized. Cities thrived as centers of culture only because these new forms of visibility prevented the Hobbesian collapse that anonymity would have otherwise triggered.
3 replies →
In my country it wasn't until the late 19th century that someone had the balls to stop going to church on Sunday. It was a huge scandal at the time but it all worked out in the end.
Humans have always done mass surveillance on eachother. You don't need technology for that.
1 reply →
This is a reduction to absurdity. Those old societies you cite didn't actively surveil with the goal of micromanaging people's daily lives the way that modern ones do.
Rural surveillance was far more suffocating because every single action was subject to the community gaze. This is exactly why classic literature frames the journey to the city as a liberation from the crushing weight of the village eye. The idea of the peaceful countryside is a modern utopian fantasy that ignores how ancient clans dictated every aspect of life including marriage and death. Modern Homeowners Associations prove that localized oversight is often the most intrusive form of management. Ancient society did not just monitor people; it owned their entire existence through inescapable social visibility.
2 replies →
That's an incredibly bullshit argument to defend the indefensible.
Your reaction actually proves the point. Aggression thrives in anonymous spaces because the lack of oversight removes the weight of accountability. When people feel unobserved, they quickly abandon the social friction that once held tribes and clans together. You are essentially providing a live demonstration of why a society without any form of monitoring inevitably slides into the Hobbesian trap.
3 replies →