| > Their concerns aren't about freedom in the short term, but rather civil liberties in the long term. What's interesting to me is that with the right institutions, surveillance does not actually even diminish one's right to qualified privacy. It can be illegal to use identifiable data for various purposes, or illegal to use identifiable data in a non-fiduciary manner. With respect to abuses of the surveillance power, it can be employed against those in power as well, to prevent abuses of their power. e.g. police bodycam can work against abusive police if the laws should support it. So it's important to see surveillance as a sword that needs proper laws to use responsibly, that allows a society with proper laws to obtain better freedom from actual harm and also a better quality of life. If we should just bury our heads as the technology materializes, the abusers will be the ones to exploit surveillance infrastructure. In cautionary tales like Nineteen-Eighty-Four, Brave New World, or in the design of the Panopticon, the surveillance power was in the hands of a large power, not themselves held accountable by surveillance. But with the right laws, a citizenry can hold a government accountable and limit government and powerful offices by surveillance. These tales fail to see the how surveillance can help strengthen egalitarian institutions. They were more concerned with demonstrating just how powerful surveillance is, a reasonable point, than with how it could be employed to reinforce egalitarian institutions. |