[jsonderulio]

I think you mean "Pre-crime"

[williamtrask]

i think you're right

[jsonderulio]

The dog argument was cute. But the dog also doesn't make a searchable, indexable list of all your personal information.

Someone will inevitably make this though, and it will inevitably be abused.

Plus what if I start switching search parameters from say, 'planning a terrorist attack' to, likely to to vote one way, believe on thing, or be of a certain religion.

We will trade all our privacy and the nefarious people will switch to a new method of comms...like they always do.

[williamtrask]

So part of what makes this work is that it's not an index. As opposed to doing general storage of people's data, this restricts a surveillance operation to only be able to identify specific concepts.

[jsonderulio]

The software itself would have access to the index. So it would still exist.

Keep in mind the extents governments and other private enterprise would go to get their hands on this.

You will have created a clean super-weapon.

Or 'the dark mark' for those biblical folk out there.

Can you imagine what that would do to your life as well? Even if you couldn't access the information.

Half the governments of the world would torture you just to double-check.

[pc2g4d]

"the dark mark"

I think that's from Harry Potter, not the bible. Maybe you meant the mark of the beast?

[williamtrask]

that's strange, i would have assumed that they would be averse to a tool that doesn't give them un-restricted access to the data. right now, the dialogue is "privacy vs security... take your pick" but this breaks that rhetoric... showing that it's a false choice.

[williamtrask]

Far from it, this tool prevents the need for us to give up our privacy. (not sure why HN isn't giving me a "reply" button to your posts)

[jsonderulio]

This tool assumes we've already gave up our privacy.

Its just a smart way to comb through all the data you've extracted.