[HN Gopher] The Banality of Surveillance ___________________________________________________________________ The Banality of Surveillance Author : commonreader Score : 28 points Date : 2022-09-29 20:45 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (bostonreview.net) (TXT) w3m dump (bostonreview.net) | Joel_Mckay wrote: | Despotism is lucrative for those on the right end of the | information asymmetry. | | Fundamentally, the phenomena occurs in cycles in areas where | communities lack mutual respect, income inequality is high, and | regulatory capture of information is monetized/weaponized. | | The networks simply made it cheaper to squeeze the vulnerable, | and extend the cycle by a few decades. | | While unsustainable sociologically or economically, every | individual must make a conscious decision at some point... to | serve a king... or walk to a better life someplace less foolish. | pessimizer wrote: | > Despotism is lucrative for those on the right end of the | information asymmetry. | | Everything is lucrative for those on the right end of | information asymmetry. It's really the fundamental theory of | capitalism. | Joel_Mckay wrote: | Which monopoly character told you that? ;) | joe_the_user wrote: | The US might well not be a "real" democracy by some measure but | it's not a despotism by any means - a variety of powerful | forces are contending against each other. | | I mean, the US has surveillance, had surveillance in the 1960s | when income inequality was relatively low and it had | surveillance in the 1920s, when income inequality was more | similar to today. | | This stuff isn't a recipe for some _future_ dictatorship, it 's | part and parcel of the way power works right now and has worked | for a while. | Joel_Mckay wrote: | As a foreigner doing business in the US, one needs to | understand there is zero protection under the laws for non- | citizens. If you have something someone wants, than you must | expect professional thieves will show up before any division | head. | | One can't take it personally, as the price of admission is | high for that show. | | I find it amusing that you thought I was alluding to the USA, | as the work was based on another historical democratic | republic. | tuatoru wrote: | > to diffuse a bomb | | If even the Boston Review's subeditors don't know the difference | between "diffuse" and "defuse"... well, English is going to | change a lot in the next couple of decades. It will get a lot | more ambiguous. | gumby wrote: | Technically, wouldn't detonation of a bomb "diffuse" it? | | I hope that's not what they meant, though! | reidjs wrote: | In the context I think it's clear what they mean. | pessimizer wrote: | In contacts, it's probably pretty clear what I mean here, | too. A lot of incorrect things become interpretable when | viewed in contacts. | BLKNSLVR wrote: | Your loosing you're mined. | karamanolev wrote: | Does it matter with regards to the above comments? In this | context, right now, it's clear. As we start losing track of | the precise meaning of words, we'll get an increasing | population size that doesn't even know the alternative | exists. It's inevitable to then start using them in contexts | where both spellings/meanings are valid and using the wrong | one results in confusion. | pkage wrote: | I'm not sure pearl-clutching about losing the meaning of | words is appropriate, it seems like a small mistake from | the editing team slipped through. | giraffe_lady wrote: | They're phonetically identical in most dialects so no | meaning was confused here, it's a simple transcription | error. | | The way you say "spelling/meaning" implies you think | they're the same thing but they just absolutely are not, as | much as that pains pedants sometimes. | | If you think otherwise you're mistaken about very basic and | long-confirmed foundations of linguistics, like whether | meaning derives from the spoken form or the writing system. | BalinKing wrote: | That's just how languages evolve; there's nothing | particularly dangerous about it. (Besides, I really doubt | there are many scenarios where "diffuse" and "defuse" could | reasonably be confused.) | BLKNSLVR wrote: | Devolves. If meaning is abstracted by multiple words | spelt different ways and context specific understanding | is required, then there will be a greater cognitive load | to reach 'understanding' and the language will move away | from it's goal of conveying meaning. | | This is a long tail, but it's not like we've only just | started down it. | | I actually find misspelling and bad phraseology to judge | how seriously I should take a person's opinion, though | factored in amongst other things (if it's obvious that | English is their second language, or if their field of | expertise may be one that eschews language skills, for | example). | giraffe_lady wrote: | There is no language that isn't effective at conveying | meaning, because doing that is fundamental to what | language _is_. | | People have been complaining and worrying about this | since, literally, the beginning of recorded history. Our | language is much "devolved" specifically in the ways many | of them were worried about, and yet we are still having | this conversation in it. You might not like how it tastes | in your mouth but it'll still work fine for the needs we | have of it, as all languages always have. | smolder wrote: | People say this evolution thing about language frequently | but not all changes are positive for a languages utility, | clearly. It can get better and it can get worse. When | words start meaning their opposite and then consequently | nothing, like with "literally", that's evolving away from | usefulness. | jjulius wrote: | Stuff happens, people make mistakes, innocuous stuff like that | slips through sometimes. I really don't know that I'd take this | long-term view of the English language based on a single typo | in the Boston Review, but then again I'm also not sure if that | comment is missing a "/s". | IntFee588 wrote: | > During World War II military scientists invented the | transistor, a semiconductor device that paved the way for | miniature recording devices smaller than sugar cubes and thinner | than postage stamps to flood espionage markets. | | This goes against common knowledge (that the FET was first | invented by Lilienfeld in the 1920s, and that the germanium | transistor was invented by Bardeen and Brattain at Bell Labs in | the 1940s). Points to anyone that can produce evidence to support | this claim that it was invented during WWII. | | Friendly reminder that nothing sent over public internet | infrastructure without additional security measures is truly | private. Also, pardon Snowden. | verisimi wrote: | > The protagonists of state-sanctioned surveillance are | cybersecurity experts hacking into smart phones' operating | systems from a suburban office park, Microsoft engineers refining | a biometric camera's algorithm from their home office, and plain- | clothes soldiers parsing through geolocation data for someone | else to carry out a drone strike. | | I think it's more banal than that - Google, M$, Facebook etc | probably allow direct access to whatever agencies, no tinkering | required. Let's not forget Google was funded by inqtel, and | Facebook started the same day Darpa's Lifelog ended. | paganel wrote: | WhatsApp's acquisition by FB (which seemed over-priced at the | time, mind you) involved a boutique investment bank called | Allen & Company, which acted as an advisor for FB [1]. That | bank had as a managing director back in 2008 a certain George | Tenet [2], a former director of the CIA. From that same wiki | section, and related to the topic at hand: | | > Tenet is also on the boards of directors of L-1 Identity | Solutions, a biometric identification software manufacturer. | | [1] | https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303636404579397... | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Tenet#Later_life | joe_the_user wrote: | It seems very likely that surveillance involves both talking to | Facebook and hacking on one's own these days. If a local police | department (or an obscure agency or a contractor) can | successfully hack someone's phone, such action has the | advantage that neither the Feds nor Facebook or whoever has to | know about it. | | It's reasonable to say that surveillance channels are power and | by that token, everyone wants a channel that's as much under | their sole control as possible. And no one wants another | Snowden, even if Snowden probably didn't change things | fundamentally, he gave the NSA a big black eye and I'd suspect | image is important to these agencies as well. | fsflover wrote: | Not sure why it's downvoted. They are all a part of PRISM, | according to Snowden revelation. And they collect too much | data. | gnopgnip wrote: | The stored communications act prohibits companies from sharing | email and similar messages without a warrant, and prohibits | sharing information from remote computing services without a | subpoena. This is not to say that it never happens that | information is shared illegally, but the US is one of very few | countries where illegally collected evidence is inadmissible, | and so is "fruit of the poisonous tree", any other evidence | collected based on this illegal evidence. | uoaei wrote: | It is possible there are secret dicta that supercede | legislation, and anyway, laws are only as good as their | enforcement, so there are many ways for the government to act | as if that law doesn't exist and face zero pushback or | repercussions. | | It is not in your best interest to assume good faith on the | part of potentially bad actors. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | You are being downvoted, but I will give an example that is not | controversial, is ( or at least should be ) openly known and | currently in operation. In Canada, which does have much | stronger privacy protections than US, RMCP can get information | directly from Fintrac under the umbrella of partnership. | | While there is no direct evidence that Google et al, allows for | the type of access you describe, I find it less and less | unlikely these days. | naithan wrote: | Yeah, I rely on a Chromebook for most of what I do, and I | sometimes wonder if US spy agencies have backdoor access to | Google servers or even their mobile operating systems. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-29 23:01 UTC)