Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gpm 3052 days ago
The proposal wasn't dragnet surveillance. It was everyone walking around with a rolling 30-second video buffer that they can chose to save. There is no giant record for someone to datamine.

Not living in the UK doesn't change much, it goes from "in public I'm always possibly on camera" to "in public I'm always possibly on camera" everywhere, not just the Uk.

My ability to influence society with a camera is far beyond "the DMV clerk being nicer". It's being able to hold the cop who pulls me over accountable. Being able to get video of the van that hit a parked car and sped off. Being able to submit proof that the person I saw trying to open the doors on a bunch of parked cars was actually trying to do that. The second two are real examples that have happened to me within the last 6 months, the first one is a real example that you can easily see the utility of via verifiable stories on the internet.

And even if you think my ability to influence society is minimal with it, that's fine, ability to influence society wasn't why people above were asking for it.

2 comments

>There is no giant record for someone to datamine.

It's laughable to think there won't be cloud integration. Having automatic or one click upload is probably one of the most powerful features. People want to be able to post stuff on snapchat, store it in drive/dropbox, etc. The data sets will be mined just like existing social media is mined.

>Not living in the UK doesn't change much, it goes from "in public I'm always possibly on camera" to "in public I'm always possibly on camera" everywhere, not just the Uk.

The UK goes particularly far (for a western country) when it comes to mining the data to recognize and track people. That's why I chose it as my example.

>My ability to influence society with a camera is far beyond "the DMV clerk being nicer". It's being able to hold the cop who pulls me over accountable. Being able to get video of the van that hit a parked car and sped off. Being able to submit proof that the person I saw trying to open the doors on a bunch of parked cars was actually trying to do that. The second two are real examples that have happened to me within the last 6 months, the first one is a real example that you can easily see the utility of via verifiable stories on the internet.

Same general idea, multiple implementations. All the things you listed are about on the same order.

>And even if you think my ability to influence society is minimal with it, that's fine, ability to influence society wasn't why people above were asking for it.

I agree. Having a "record the last 30sec of my life" button would be super useful. Every time I see something funny, I could scroll back , take a screenshot and post it online so my buddies can get a laugh. That's useful. I think it would also be incredibly dangerous at scale because it will be easy for the incumbents to use to influence society.

Basically everything I'm saying here has been said about Facebook/Google, etc. The difference I see in this case is that I think that by reducing the friction of recording/uploading to near zero the effects will be magnified.

> It's laughable to think there won't be cloud integration.

Doesn't matter if there is cloud integration, there won't be constant livestreaming simply due to bandwidth constraints. Occasional 30 second segments is not dragnet surveillance or substantially worse than what is currently available. People aren't going to be randomly uploading themselves walking down the street - because why would they. The location data android uploads by default is far worse.

> Same general idea, multiple implementations. All the things you listed are about on the same order.

A cop not beating someone up, illegally searching your car, illegally fining you, etc is not on the "same order" as "a DMV worker being nicer".

Stopping criminal behaviour is not on the same order as "a DMV worker being nicer".

I think one of the reasons people don't like the idea is this very reason.

It's coming from the position "someone is likely to do me wrong and I will be collecting evidence with that in mind". That in itself is a pretty aggressive position to take - but once you interact with someone it then says "_you_ are likely to do me wrong".

It's not a position of "someone is likely to do me wrong", it's a position of "someone is likely to do society wrong". Interacting with someone isn't an accusation...

It's a well supported position by the fact that I seem to witness theft (bikes, from cars, etc) in plain view on the street with a frequency of about once a year. Double that if you include things like hit and runs on parked cars that aren't exactly malicious but more crimes of opportunity.

I suspect that frequency is higher for me than for most people - simply because I walk a lot and I live downtown in a big city (Toronto). But if you change "6 monts to a year" to "3 - 6 years", applied over a city of a few million people that is still extremely significant.

I suspect things like police abuse of power are much rarer still, but the impact from them is so larger it's also a significant factor (why there is the huge movement for bodycams...).

I think whether that position is reasonable depends on whether you see people as trustworthy by default or not.

Most people would not have a problem having every minute of their workday recorded if their job was handling gold bars or diamonds or something really high stakes.

Having even the most trivial interactions between people subject to a recording is inappropriate overkill if you believe people to be trustworthy.

It's like requiring a notarized bill of sale for a used laptop.

If you believe people to be untrustworthy by default then you would consider everyone having the ability to discreetly record any interaction with anyone else to be a net positive.