Comment by simoncion
6 days ago
> time that anti-terrorist units use to track you down.
Speaking from the perspective of a USian, I wish Federal law enforcement was that hypercompetent. (If they were, perhaps folks would stop to question the ever-broader expansion of 24/7 surveillance of ordinary folks.)
The distressingly-complete Panopticon that has been built over the past several decades [0] makes it really easy for them to get you when they know to search for you, specifically. History (both recent and not-so-recent) has shown that if they don't know who they're looking for, or don't even know that they should be looking for anyone, they're just godawful.
[0] ...and whose continued construction is vociferously cheered on by folks on all sides of all of the aisles...
To play devil's advocate, it's not inconceivable that machine learning may eventually allow well-heeled governments to finally realize the dream of finding needles by building sufficiently large haystacks, or at the very least coerce otherwise unruly citizens into compliance based on the belief that it is able to do so.
> ...or at the very least coerce otherwise unruly citizens into compliance based on the belief that it is able to do so.
I would argue that that day is already here, and has been for quite some time. (What makes this worse is that some agents of the State also believe that they have this capability, which results in profoundly unjust and substantially damaging results.)
> ...it's not inconceivable that machine learning may eventually allow...
Sure. I agree. It may eventually allow. There's no question about that. The thing is that 'cowl' was referring to the situation right now, not the one in some unspecified distant future.
As to law enforcement policy; as we mechanize [0] our policing and law enforcement, we must put additional constraints on the people who police and enforce the laws to keep the harm they can do to uninvolved innocents to a minimum.
Our laws already recognize the need for this: ask yourself why -in the US states that have such laws- nonconsensual audio recording of telephone (and other such) conversations is not permitted, but taking notes by hand is always acceptable. [1]
[0] Electronic machines are machines, too, you know!
[1] "You can't prove that someone took notes by hand, so it's pointless to try to stop it." is not a counterargument... you can't prove that unless you find the notes, just as you can't prove that someone recorded the audio of the conversation without finding the recording.