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Anti-surveillance dogma is costing lives
2 points by chuckschemer 2617 days ago
There is video of the SL bomber who attacked the church. The ringleader of the attacks was an extremist known to SL intelligence.

In SV you pat yourselves on the back at your virtue when you block your employers from supplying surveillance technology, or undermine and refuse to work on projects that do.

What if you were as proactive as spreading security technology as you are at spreading your supposed values? What if SL already had face-recognition surveillance cameras and a system that linked targets to intelligence about threats and notified in real time of their movements?

Is it not conceivable that these attackers and their extremist links could not have been so spotted on their way that morning? And stopped?

When you talk about surveillance as an enabler of evil, are you quite sure you have your values straight? Or could it be you who has things backwards and, with your certainty of your virtue, costing lives by delaying and denying the spread of useful security technology?

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/04/25/sri-lankan-islamist-group-claims-bombing-mastermind-expelled-for-preaching-hate/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa-udwGUkp8

3 comments

> There is video of the SL bomber who attacked the church. The ringleader of the attacks was an extremist known to SL intelligence.

You said it yourself. For such cases, law enforcement could easily get warrants from judges. Most judges rubber-stamp most warrants anyway. You'll also find that in the vast majority of recent terrorist attacks, the people doing them were not only "known to intelligence agencies", but had previously been arrested, etc.

The issue many here have is with mass surveillance, which by definition means surveillance of innocents. Not only does this produce a very high "noise to signal" ratio (one of the reasons why the NSA is giving up on the phone records surveillance program now), making it more difficult for them to catch the actual bad guys, but it also sets up a system in which those having that power can easily abuse it.

high noise to signal seems easy problem for tech to solve.

you seem to say what I'm proposing wouldn't have helped. I think you don't care to see how it can.

these systems already work in places where people's values aren't backward.

you talk about abuse of power, but don't you think you're abusing the power you have by preventing these systems spreading.

I'm beginning to see that silicon valley is fine with surveillance as long as they hold the control themselves. when it comes to building systems for government, for all the countries, they lose their minds. I think because they are afraid they will lose control. when they build those information and control systems for themselves and to impose their values they're cool with that.

and they're cool with that even when it costs lives.

about morality? is just them hiding.

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -Benjamin Franklin
well he was saying that as representative of the new government that couldn't afford to safe guard its citizens yet.

but use a quote to end thinking always a good way to avoid dogma.

Why do people cite breitbart like it's an actual source of trustworthy information
confirmation bias in action.