[criddell]

I would love to have a contact lens that projected information about the people around me onto my retina. Serious question - what's dystopian about that? I realize there's often a fine line between utopian and dystopian and for me, facial recognition (especially as my vision deteriorates) seems solidly on the utopian side of the line.

[drdaeman]

I'm really lost on this debate.

Even though I'd really like to have control over the information that concerns me, I also find it highly morally questionable to restrict others ability to see, know or remember, either naturally or technologically assisted[1]. Even for those who are unfriendly or outright malicious. That just feels unnatural to me.

And if someone shares their knowledge[2], while I fully reserve the right call them assholes if what they do caused me grief or worse, I'm also not sure it's still morally right to demand for me that they shut up.

Still, if I can apply this sort of logic to myself (i.e. I surely can decide for myself that I can't complain if my photo was published and is a part of some database), it would be plain wrong and even inhumane to apply this to anyone else. Can't impose this sort of thinking on others, especially given that the general expectation and attitude seems to be drastically different with all those "right to be forgotten" and other privacy laws and stuff (which - I'll be honest - feel just unnatural to me, but, heck, I guess I can't really argue with majority).

This damned dilemma sucks. /rant

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[1] And where to draw a line? Glasses for poor eyesight? Pen-and-paper notetaking? PDAs (phones or whatever)? PDAs with cameras? Networked PDAs? Those sci-fi brain implants concepts that don't exist but would probably happen in the future?

[2] Given that it's about valid true facts that literally anyone who sees me in public can obtain. So this is drastically different from the restricting what others say when what they say constitutes a defamation.

[thingification]

Where to draw the line? How about "people you have seen"? But the line is less important than the reason for the line being where it is -- and that is about things like the principle of least authority, stability against tyrrany, whether progress is held back even a little by chilling effects, etc.

It isn't necessary to restrict others ability to see, know or remember per se, but only to prohibit the application of those powers -- by means of large computer databases collected by many people -- to particular purposes. In exactly the same sense, it isn't necessary to constrain people's ability to move their arms and hands in order to prohibit strangulation.

Perhaps your dilemma is caused by something along the lines of a tacit incorrect assumption that moral principles are not constrained by other moral principles. Can you think of a moral principle about freedoms that is not restricted in any way by harm caused to others and to society?

I think you are right to say that "it just feels unnatural" is not a good argument, but I don't think that's because you are arguing with the majority: the majority are often wrong.

[thingification]

I don't begrudge you projecting information on your retina about people you have seen before. The issue at hand is people you have never seen before, but whose faces have been been captured in a large database.

What's dystopian?

Mass surveillance grants power, to the public and to institutions, to control individuals. One consequence is 'chilling effects': good actions are not taken because of possible future consequences. Planning is hindered, because any action may have unpredictable consequences because of side effects caused by surveillance 'global state' (state as in data, not as in country).

I think there is a negative psychological effect on some (most?) people of being at all times under observation, retroactively, by all people.

Today's governments and today's public often err in their ethical judgements, and "the doctrine that the truth is manifest is the root of all tyranny". Some future ones may be worse. Such large databases (and the social/legal/technical all-seeing surveillance systems we are building) would make it easier to allow bad governments to lock themselves into power more firmly, and once in power to use it in very bad ways: this is Snowden's "turnkey tyrrany".

This kind of information reduces the scope for experimentation, error, and the correction of mistakes. Because that is the source of all knowledge, that is a problem.

Of course some uses of such data will be good. But, power should be localized to prevent it being abused (the principle of least authority). Some good uses (like helping your bad vision) don't actually require the "sudo" superpower to recognize every person on the planet. All others are not worth the costs (this is a hypothesis, as are all statements I guess).

[criddell]

Radical transparency could be a tool for or against oppressors. If I could know as much about my government as they know about me, I think I would feel a lot safer.

[thingification]

We have many institutions that have evolved over centuries to correct the mistakes of governments (including ones that involve malice). Radical anything risks destabilising that most valuable knowledge: incremental change has worked remarkably well in this sphere, given time. There need to be very good reasons to throw everything up in the air - especially given radical transparency is just worse than its absence in many ways (see my earlier comments) -- really the idea has come about not because people thought it was a good idea, but because they thought it was inevitable, which it is not.

I think there are good reasons to expect the current ongoing disaster that is computer security will one day be fixed. Then, radical surveillance will still be with us, but radical transparency will operate in one direction: from those in power to everybody else.

Until then, especially in a society that is showing signs of starting to lose the means for criticism of bad ideas, extreme surveillance does not imply that the same data will be collected and stored about everybody or every institution. The UK government has already introduced data transparency laws. It makes special exceptions for... government. Even though they might eventually be caught, your local population of bureaucrats, with easy access to every detail of your life, will have an asymmetric information and legal power advantage over you, and adding information amplifies that asymmetry. Massive data leaks are still surprisingly infrequent. If we had regular Snowdens across government, what makes us think we know that would be a net good, a general purpose cure-all nostrum for government?

Meanwhile, the rest of population, given data, are happy to "know" the moral truth as they see it about other people and impose their own tyranny without due process (see e.g. Jon Ronson's "So you've been publicly shamed"). And corporations -- but they are discussed often enough that I don't want to add anything now.

Not to speak of progress, planning, and the morality of imposing "radical transparency" on other people.

[centizen]

Nothing is dystopian about the idea, it's the execution that will be the important part. What information are you imagining these contacts will display?