Comment by TZubiri

I know government spying ranks very high in the list of concerns for a lot of people here. Personally I feel that crime and disease are a very concrete and current real threat, while government spying is a very abstract potential risk that ranks quite low for me. I'm more likely to work in someplace like Flock to solve crime, or to found a company that measures the spread of infectious disease through such 'spying' mechanisms.

I understand that we live in peace times and that there might exist authoritarian regimes in the future that could misuse government powers, is that what it comes down to? We should keep governments weak so that they cannot hurt us in case they go rogue? Reducing crime and disease is a goal that needs to be resigned to in order to avoid paying the apparently worse price of government abuse?

I'd rather we join forces by agreeing that the ideal is an all-seeing system that doesn't abuse their powers, can't we have the cake and eat it too? Or in the inverse, I'd rather we join forces on the basis that governments that abuse their powers are an enemy of crime and disease reduction, because they give a legitimate reason to destroy these powers that could be used for good.

There's a lot of talk about mission-driven companies to avoid future corruption. I'd be more than willing to fight for some mission driven protections that would avoid a company subverting the original mission of a company. But it's really hard to define what that corruption would be and even harder to make something that would be resistant to the government that charters the company itself, I think the bottom line is that I have a base feeling that pathogens and criminals are a greater threat than police and government, which feels like a huge political divide that is hard to surmount, but hopefully there's a way to keep the conversation open rather than pretend half of the world is the enemy of each other.