[HN Gopher] The Rise of 'Luxury Surveillance'
___________________________________________________________________
The Rise of 'Luxury Surveillance'
Author : pseudolus
Score : 100 points
Date : 2022-10-19 02:23 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| [deleted]
| buildyourown wrote:
| As nerds we have an advantage here. We can use
| prosumer/professional oriented tech that respects your privacy
| more. Don't get a Ring. Use your own cameras and a Synology and,
| if you must, their e2e-encrypted backup solution.
|
| If there's no privacy-respecting equivalents, then... do without.
| WWLink wrote:
| Use your own cameras. Like the ones made by Dahua! I mean,
| that's bad so just buy the ones with the Amcrest sticker
| slapped on them that still runs the same firmware and has the
| same hardware. :D
|
| Source: I have a few Amcrest cameras and am sad at how much
| it'll cost to switch over to Unifi Protect.
| adolph wrote:
| I hope this doesn't get flagged, although I thought to flag it
| about a quarter of the way in. Essentially the thesis is that
| people opting into personal surveillance are changing norms,
| changes that will be misused by state and employer power against
| people who don't opt in.
|
| _Hidden below all of this is the normalization of surveillance
| that consistently targets marginalized communities. The
| difference between a smartwatch and an ankle monitor is, in many
| ways, a matter of context: Who wears one for purported
| betterment, and who wears one because they are having state power
| enacted against them? Looking back to Detroit, surveillance
| cameras, facial recognition, and microphones are supposedly in
| place to help residents, although there is scant evidence that
| these technologies reduce crime. Meanwhile, the widespread
| adoption of surveillance technologies--even ones that offer
| supposed benefits--creates an environment where even more
| surveillance is deemed acceptable. After all, there are already
| cameras and microphones everywhere._
| pooper wrote:
| I haven't read the article but I think the outrage is
| misplaced. There are people forced to wear a Islamic head
| dress. The solution is not to ban Islamic head dress. There are
| people forced into sex slavery and prostitution. The solution
| isn't to ban prostitution. There are people who are forced into
| an abortion. The solution is not to ban abortion.
|
| The solution to abuse cannot be curtailing of rights.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| It is shocking how much this extra level of discussion about
| values and policy is not addressed. Thanks for making it so
| succinctly.
| FredPret wrote:
| Pooper, you should run for office
| godelski wrote:
| I agree and disagree. As I see it, the solution is to use
| privacy preserving techniques. Federated learning would be a
| nice start but isn't good enough. Homomorphic learning would
| be the acceptable solution here as we could then preserve
| privacy and get the benefits (corporations would still profit
| from the data too). I'm honestly surprised that there's no
| big push for this by companies like Meta, Google, or Apple.
| You want to say you actually care about privacy? Put your
| money where your mouth is.
|
| I do honestly expect the first ad style company that is fully
| homomorphic will upset the balance that we have now.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| First of all, at least you are honest about commenting on
| something for which you have no basis to be commenting on,
| having not read the article.
|
| Second, the appropriate response may not be to ban all of
| those things outright, but comprehensive regulation is
| certainly within the best interests of society.
|
| Finally, the casual assertion of abortion as a right is noted
| and summarily rejected. I won't engage further though on that
| point, in an effort to not drag us off topic.
| godelski wrote:
| > as a right
|
| I just want to note that there are two types of "rights."
| There's positive and negative rights.
|
| Negative rights are the typical libertarian types of
| issues, namely that things cannot be taken away from you or
| rather that you do not have s specific duty. These are
| things like freedom of speech (no duty to regulate your
| speech), freedom of religion (no duty to have a specific
| religion), fair trial, life, the right to not be enslaved
| by another, etc. tldr: you have no duty to act (or not act)
| in a certain manner.
|
| Positive rights are typically left leaning and are
| entitlements. As an example, you have the right (you are
| entitled) to an attorney. Others include public education,
| national security, and a minimum wage. People are
| advocating for other things like the right to clean water,
| fair housing, higher education, health care, internet
| access, etc. tldr: you do have a duty to act (or not act)
| in a certain manner (often in the form of taxes).
|
| I bring this up because people often talk past one another
| because they just say "rights" and are using different
| definition. So I believe this causes a lot of fighting
| rather than productive conversation as people just embed
| the idea that "rights are rights." It is also a good
| example of where communication breaks down because what is
| obvious to one party is not obvious to another party and
| they are operating in completely different frameworks,
| refusing to recognize that the other party is operating in
| said framework.
|
| As for abortion (maybe I'm maybe sidetracking) it is often
| considered a negative right because one (the state) needs
| to take action to stop a specific action (abortion). Though
| it can also be framed as a positive right if either 1) the
| fetus is viewed as a human, and thus they are being
| deprived of their rights to life through the action of
| another or 2) one is forcing physicians to perform
| abortions.
| DennisP wrote:
| What about my neighbor's Ring doorbell, pointed at my front
| door from across the street?
| Xylakant wrote:
| Rules in germany are that you can have video surveillance,
| but it must not cover public spaces. A ring doorbell
| monitoring your porch is fine, recoding the sidewalk not.
| Now, enforcement is another issue, but the rules make
| sense.
| sneak wrote:
| I'm torn on this one; as a photographer and videographer I
| find the right to shoot or film anything I can see from a
| legal vantage point very near and dear to me.
|
| We should always be legally allowed to film public places.
| Europe's legislative approach to this is wrong, I think,
| but I see the problem. Perhaps we need different societal
| norms.
| unreal37 wrote:
| That is illegal in some countries. For instance in
| Portugal, you can't film roads or other people's private
| property. So "car dashcams" are illegal. And any
| surveillance cameras you have on your property cannot be
| pointed at someone else's property.
|
| https://europe-cities.com/2022/09/12/the-use-
| of-%E2%80%B3das...
| tetromino_ wrote:
| I don't know about you and your neighbor. But my neighbor
| (a black man, fyi) was very happy that my Nest camera's
| field of view was just barely wide enough to include his
| door and window, and recorded video of the dude who climbed
| through his window and stole his kid's MacBook.
|
| A couple days after that, my neighbor got a camera of his
| own. I'm happy that he did so; my camera made his home
| safer, and his makes mine safer.
| kgwxd wrote:
| The camera was there but the crime still happened so it
| didn't make anything safer when it was most dangerous.
| Was the dude ID'd and arrested?
| tetromino_ wrote:
| As far as I know, the dude has not been arrested. Thanks
| to the video though, the probability of the burglar
| eventually being arrested is at least slightly higher
| than zero.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The point is, he didn't opt in to being surveilled by
| Amazon. That it had a positive outcome is irrelevant to
| the point. It's a strange anecdata.
|
| What's the difference between what you wrote and
| responding to someone who is in favor on limits of
| publicly brandishing guns with: _I don 't know about your
| neighbor. But my neighbor (a black man, fyi) was very
| happy that I sat on my porch with a loaded shotgun every
| evening, and shot the dude who climbed through his window
| and stole his kid's MacBook._
| kritiko wrote:
| To be a bit of a pedant, one's porch wouldn't be public,
| would it?
| tetromino_ wrote:
| The difference is that your example is made-up while mine
| is true, recent, and (I believe) representative of normal
| people's attitudes. Normal people love cameras because
| normal people much prefer being surveilled by Amazon (or,
| in most cases, by Amazon's cheaper and less secure
| Chinese competitors in the camera business) vs. having
| their home broken into and their pawnable electronics
| stolen.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > and (I believe) representative of normal people's
| attitudes.
|
| So you're not against making things up if you can make
| this up, so why not go along with the hypothetical?
| adolph wrote:
| Shotgun on the porch isn't exactly made up, it has
| happened before.
|
| _The Joe Horn shooting controversy occurred on November
| 14, 2007, in Pasadena, Texas, United States, when local
| resident Joe Horn shot and killed two burglars outside
| his neighbor 's home._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Horn_shooting_controver
| sy
| josters wrote:
| This is definitely a point the author could have touched on
| more.
|
| How will environments without this purported widespread
| adoption of surveillance technologies react to an increase of
| these 'luxury surveillance' items? Will they also gradually
| accept more (government-imposed) surveillance into their lives?
| Maybe even demand it? Or is acceptance of surveillance
| culturally biased?
| adolph wrote:
| I think the thesis is that positive consent of less-privacy
| leads to less-privacy for people who have less power of
| consent, possibly because the expectation of privacy is a
| social construct of the more powerful and influential.
|
| To respond to your thought-question about adoption of surv-
| tech in places where it isn't common: Taken outside a privacy
| context, in many small towns locking the doors to one's car
| or house is not a norm. I grew up that way. When I visited my
| big city cousins the emphasis on locking doors struck me as
| odd. If one lives in such fear then one has a larger problem
| than locking a door or not.
|
| Another privacy
| infogulch wrote:
| > The difference between a smartwatch and an ankle monitor ...
|
| The real difference is _who can access and control the
| generated data_. An ankle monitor 's purpose is explicitly to
| send your location history to the government. A smartwatch's
| purpose is _ostensibly_ to help you record your activities so
| you can analyze and optimize your life, which on its own is not
| unreasonable, but in reality there is little separating the
| government from that data so it 's practically the same as an
| ankle monitor.
|
| The solution here isn't more regulation, it's _individual
| sovereignty over data you generate_. Maybe that means software
| goes back to being software and the market for a 'data service
| provider' is squeezed out.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm having a hard time drawing a conclusion of "practically
| the same" for a device you're free to remove at any time
| without consequences versus one that gets you sent back to
| prison for a parole violation if you voluntarily remove it.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| It's not even close to practically the same. What is the
| actual rate at which the government subpoenas smartwatch
| location history and the probability it will happen to you?
| This is like saying the fact the government has the
| capability to imprison or shoot you at any time and you would
| not be able to stop them is exactly the same as actually
| being imprisoned or executed.
|
| But yes, clearly the best way forward is individual data
| sovereignty. The reason intelligent personal digital
| assistants that knew you intimately didn't seem dystopian
| when they were in Star Trek is because nobody then envisioned
| that the software and data would be running on corporate
| servers. We envisioned these things being more along the
| lines of trusted friends in their own right, with a clear
| data boundary at the physical limit of the sensing devices
| they used, not that they would be perpetually networked and
| owned by third parties like Amazon. They weren't supposed to
| share information with anyone but you.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > A smartwatch's purpose is ostensibly to help you record
| your activities so you can analyze and optimize your life
|
| It's an additional megacorp data collection tendril that they
| let you use a fraction of.
| wnoise wrote:
| I don't see a feasible way to ensure individual sovereignty
| over data you generate, without more regulation.
| ewzimm wrote:
| If there were an Amazon Prison option, I wonder how many people
| would choose it. Need to serve time? Skip the cell and stay home
| with a robust suite of real-time behavior analytics to ensure
| compliance. Conversations are processed locally and scanned for
| restricted subjects with advanced AI. A special Amazon Prison
| store offers a full suite of approved products with automatic
| payments, accessible with Alexa, and customized meal plans are
| optimized by biometrics. Need money? Work is available on
| Mechanical Turk at reduced rates for store credit only. Now
| available for undocumented immigrants awaiting processing!
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Why would you not choose this over what prison is currently
| like?
|
| This is like asking whether people would prefer home
| confinement to being in a prison cell
| pwinnski wrote:
| You're halfway there. Now consider: why are people paying to
| put themselves in a light-security prison?
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Because they don't recognize it will become a prison, or
| even if they do, they rationize it by saying it's not
| currently a prison.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Interestingly the state has an incentive to take this
| approach too: it's much cheaper. If you can monitor & enforce
| confinement without actually building any prisons, you don't
| need to budget for prisons, you don't need to operate prisons
| (or contract out to them), and you can avoid the political
| blowback of the prison/industrial complex.
|
| The limiting case for this is the Matrix or Metaverse, where
| everybody voluntarily confines themselves to their home and
| interacts with each other only according to the rules of the
| governing software. No possibility for crime because there
| are no unmediated interactions, and the state has total
| control.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| The state, unfortunately, does not have a great incentive
| to reduce costs; especially since a lot of prisons are run
| by for-profit entities.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| ...that are paid by the state.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| ... and who pay politicians large sums of money to keep
| it that way.
| colpabar wrote:
| The state is just people though, and people like money.
| It's pretty naive to think that the politicians in charge
| of this stuff don't get huge kickbacks from private
| prison operators.
| ericmay wrote:
| This is just called house arrest. It's not really prison or
| punishment if I'm comfortable at home.
| noduerme wrote:
| It's still punishment to not be allowed to leave your
| home. Not as uncomfortable as prison, obviously. But this
| gets into whether the main goal of prison is to cause
| physical discomfort as punishment or to protect society.
| When you look at the routine nature of beatings and rape
| in prisons, whether or not you are okay with people
| receiving that as punishment you have to admit that those
| aren't the punishments prescribed by law. The law doesn't
| say that a prison must make the prisoner suffer
| physically (in fact, it mostly says the opposite, but
| that's generally ignored). And one man's punishment is
| another's delight. There are criminals who thrive all too
| well in prison at the expense of others less well
| connected. For them, being locked at home might be the
| greater punishment.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| House arrest serves one of prison's purposes, reduction
| of danger to others. It may also be a suitable place from
| which to rehabilitate.
| devteambravo wrote:
| Compared to a typical US prison, that sounds like a sweet deal.
| Y'all, we made Black Mirror
| glitchc wrote:
| You need to define home here. I sense an implicit assumption
| that this is a single family home with more than one bedroom.
| What is home for an undocumented migrant?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| We like to pick on Amazon disproportionately I think. At least
| in my situation, Apple and Google know far more about me in the
| most terrifying ways than Amazon. Apple has access* to my
| entire Phone and over 12 years of phone backups on iCloud. My
| most intimate conversations, photos, medical and biometric
| data, etc. Amazon has access to purchase history, not much more
| since I don't use Alexa.
|
| * I understand its all encrypted but we're wearing tin foils at
| the moment.
| dpflan wrote:
| Maybe "Amazon Prism" (a "Prime" members' version of "prison")
| has a catchier ring to it...
| goodpoint wrote:
| It's already happening. Surveillance using modern technology
| e.g. GPS ankle bracelets, voice recognition, facial recognition
| is being widely deployed.
|
| For decades surveillance has becoming cheaper and therefore
| more pervasive and more socially accepted.
|
| We are building platforms that can enable turn-key
| dictatorship.
|
| Something that will be extremely difficult to overturn.
| noduerme wrote:
| That basically describes my pandemic year.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If I had the choice to serve a sentence in real prison or
| Amazon Prison, I'm 100% on Team Jassy.
| [deleted]
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Almost anything would be worth it to avoid prolonged contact
| with other prisoners and prison guards.
| tomcam wrote:
| I have been incarcerated, and that is a yes from me as well
| slt2021 wrote:
| Then prison as a punishment will stop becoming a punishment
| and will reduce incentive to abide by laws
| yamtaddle wrote:
| You think... the threat of abuse and assault by inmates
| and guards is something we should keep around _on
| purpose_?
| slt2021 wrote:
| yes because there are always will be some criminals in
| population, and you want to keep the system bad so that
| others' wont ever think of committing crime, especially
| juveniles and first time offenders
| monetus wrote:
| I've always called this the "head on a pike" rationale.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| If how terrible prison is what backs your incentive to
| abide by laws, I'm worried.
|
| Criminals generally don't expect to be caught, the
| quality of prison doesn't matter much if you're not
| planning on going there.
| slt2021 wrote:
| there is always risk/reward calculation.
|
| if you replace prison time with home arrest, then you
| remove downside to being caught. Especially for
| second/Nth time offenders.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| If you're good with risk/reward you generally don't do
| crime (at least, not the kind that doesn't already leave
| you in the kind of minimum security-style prison being
| proposed here).
|
| In 2015 the average robbery netted less than $2,000 while
| the average sentence length was almost 10 years.
|
| Risking 10 years of your life for $2,000 isn't something
| that people who understand risk/reward will do, how bad
| things are while you spend those 10 years is basically a
| rounding error compared to just how terrible of an idea
| it already is.
| fhcjcgcych wrote:
| Benobba wrote:
| Disappointed that the author went straight to the cliche:this
| technology is bad because isn't perfect and here and can be used
| in nefarious ways.
|
| His argument has been tackled extensively by academics, techies
| and journos. The author's opening but could be classed as
| plagiarism in an academic setting for how familiar its beats are.
|
| There are many critiques of Amazon survelliance/tracking products
| and wish the authors would've engaged them.
|
| Hopefully the author gets feedback and grows from this
| philsnow wrote:
| > this technology is bad because isn't perfect and here and can
| be used in nefarious ways
|
| Did you click through to the wired article ([0]) about the tech
| disproportionately making false positive identifications of
| black people?
|
| The thesis is not, "surveillance can be misused by authorities
| / corporations", but rather "surveillance technology as it
| currently exists is killing and/or ruining the lives of,
| specifically, falsely-accused black people".
|
| > Hopefully the author gets feedback and grows from this
|
| [0] https://www.wired.com/story/wrongful-arrests-ai-
| derailed-3-m...
| Havoc wrote:
| People desire the sensors and metrics and integration etc...not
| the Amazon overlord part.
|
| The article pitches it as something people willingly embrace
| which doesn't seem correct to me. Its more like reluctantly
| accept due to the benefits.
|
| I'm personally hoping that a lot of this becomes more accessible
| via the Matter protocol
| [deleted]
| john-doe wrote:
| https://archive.ph/OYgjc
| anigbrowl wrote:
| slightly off topic, but:
|
| _Growing up in Detroit under the specter of the police unit
| STRESS--an acronym for "Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets"_
|
| ...am I the only one heartily sick of propagandistic backronyms?
| The branding of public policy is a disturbing (and long-running)
| symptom of institutional capture. This example is particularly
| totalitarian, inflicting a reminder of STRESS on an entire
| community.
|
| Of course, the excuse is that 'it's just meant to create stress
| for the criminals.' We should be looking at outcomes, since
| intentions are unfalsifiable.
| Animats wrote:
| The Detroit PD STRESS unit was disbanded after, through
| miscommunication and trigger-happiness, they got into a
| shootout with Wayne County sheriff's deputies.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.robertankony.com/blog/the-rochester-street-
| massa...
| pugworthy wrote:
| Reading that intro it really reminded me of the old Apple
| Knowledge Navigator video...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ_ul1WK6bg
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "What does it mean when one's life becomes completely legible to
| tech companies?"
|
| Does it mean something different than if one's life becomes
| completely legible to a government.
|
| If yes, then why.
| dnissley wrote:
| More fundamentally, does this tech actually make one's life
| completely legible to tech companies?
| wcarron wrote:
| We are rapidly approaching Fahrenheit 451. I was about to
| purchase a COROS fitness watch to track and aid my return to
| distance running. This article reminded me why I should not.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-19 23:00 UTC)