[carapace]

What I'm saying is that, if ubiquitous surveillance is inevitable (as I believe), then it behooves us to address the antagonistic relationship (to the degree that it exists) between our governments and ourselves.

- - - -

As for specific ways the idea applies to surveillance, I can only speculate. The essence would be that everyone is equally under the microscope including law enforcement officers and administration.

[harimau777]

That's a good point that I hadn't thought of much before.

One issue that I could see is that there would still be asymmetry in the ability to use the information from surveillance. Someone with access to lawyers, the media, PR people, lobbyists, etc. who knows your secrets is much more dangerous than the average person who knows their secrets.

[carapace]

Hmm. It reminds me of how Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan sued Gawker into the ground. The whole thing, from Gawker outing Thiel onwards, was sordid, but I feel that it was made much worse by Thiel acting in secret.

Maybe, if everything the powerful do is just as watched as the little people, that balances things out a bit.

I'm not postulating some utopia: I think what we'll get is what I call the "Tyranny of Mrs. Grundy":

> Mrs Grundy is a figurative name for an extremely conventional or priggish person, a personification of the tyranny of conventional propriety. A tendency to be overly fearful of what others might think is sometimes referred to as grundyism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs_Grundy

E.g. the Chinese "social credit" system. If that applies to the powerful communists as well as the masses then it might actually work, if not, it's the genesis of Morlocks and Eloi.

[harimau777]

Just to make sure that I'm understanding you: [1]

You are saying that there are two issues here:

1. A power inequality that would be created if the regular people's secrets are known but powerful people's secrets were not.

2. A lack of privacy would allow people's private actions to be judged and punished by society if they fail to conform.

You are then arguing that giving everyone access to the data/surveillance would solve the first problem but not the second.

If I am correct in my understanding, then I think that's a very reasonable argument. Although I'm concerned that even problem #2 alone could create a dystopia.

[1] I know intention can be difficult to read in text so I want to make clear: I truly mean this as confirming that I am following your argument, not as an indirect way to say that I think you are wrong.

[evgen]

Don't want to presume to answer for the prior poster, but one possible solution to the second problem on your list is to consider the second half of the assertion in the context of radical and ubiquitous observation.

Assume the dystopia: with my smartphone I can tap in to the network of smart dust that blankets the world and can view and hear anything that is happening anywhere. We tend to consider this from the viewpoint of the observed but invert it and consider the constraints upon the observer/judge. Imagine how difficult it would be for people to judge and punish you for this lack of conformity if it is trivial for you to show a similar collection of mistakes and 'bad' behavior on the part of those who would judge you and if you can know who is watching you at any time (because you can watch them watching you.)

It is not quite a complete solution, but it seems to me that people tend to focus on one side of an imagined power relationship without necessarily asking if that power structure could be maintained in the new environment.

[carapace]

The sci-fi novel "The Light of Other Days" explores a little bit the social mutation that might occur in the complete breakdown of privacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_of_Other_Days

[carapace]

Cheers!

Yes, you've got it.

(I don't know about giving everyone access, but the folks who do have access should be subject to the system in a way that is self-correcting.)

As for whether the result will be dystopian or otherwise, I have no idea, really. I once wrote:

> The true horror of technological omniscience is that it shall force us for once to live according to our own rules. For the first time in history we shall have to do without hypocrisy and privilege. The new equilibrium will not involve tilting at the windmills of ubiquitous sensors and processing power but rather learning what explicit rules we can actually live by, finding, in effect, the real shape of human society.

[leppr]

It's hard to imagine how a government set to police the minutiae of everyday life of pretty much a whole continent's worth of humans, can not be antagonistic with the majority of it. Even in such a uniform cultural environment as the US, local differences will "always" be too important to make such relations with a state-wide governing entity consensual. High-level principles and policies, sure, but low level policing and surveillance applied uniformly at such a scale can't be consensual.

[carapace]

> It's hard to imagine how a government set to police the minutiae of everyday life of pretty much a whole continent's worth of humans, can not be antagonistic with the majority of it.

Indeed! But I think it's important to try.

FWIW, I don't postulate that the ubiquitous surveillance is consensual at all, just inevitable. For a lot of people the amount and degree of casual surveillance is already becoming an issue.

I'm saying, if we have to have it, how do we want to manage it?

[BurningFrog]

One angle, which you may or may not have implied:

We can't stop Google or the government to cover the city with cameras.

But we can put up our own camera network!

[carapace]

You're still taking the stance of "us against them" in a context where "they" have much greater resources than "us". I think that's already a "failure mode" and we have to integrate society and government somehow (or fall into some techno-dystopia.)

[harimau777]

Is there a way that you can see that we might achieve that?

I ask because it seems to me that would require dramatic changes in government and society that are extraordinarily unlikely. I'm not even sure if such a system could be maintained without changes to basic human nature.

[carapace]

> Is there a way that you can see that we might achieve that?

Actually, yes. I think something like the "Core Transformation Process" could do the trick: https://www.coretransformation.org/

I can vouch from personal experience that it works and is pretty profound. I suspect that it could be adapted to work with pairs and groups.

> I ask because it seems to me that would require dramatic changes in government and society that are extraordinarily unlikely. I'm not even sure if such a system could be maintained without changes to basic human nature.

Ultimately, I think it all boils down to human nature. Technology is just an accelerator or amplifier. Then again, maybe this is the moment where our evolution transcends our baser human nature, eh?

"Interesting times."

Ciao.

[BurningFrog]

> in a context where "they" have much greater resources than "us".

It doesn't matter if Google can install 100 camera networks and "we" only 1. Both systems record the same data.