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by krspykrm
1968 days ago
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> We can’t avoid that any more than the government can avoid criminals having unbreakable encryption. I mean, we can; we just don't. It's not like there's something baked into the laws of math that says your society is required to be a surveillance state (unlike encryption, where the laws of math do say this is always possible). It is absolutely within the realm of technological possibility to build a society with largely decentralized infrastructure that doesn't constantly phone home to report on you to the Great Eye. We don't live in that world because normal people are kinda retarded. In the words of the creator of the Great Eye itself: "They trust me. Dumb fucks." |
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Indeed we could, as you say, construct societies without that capacity — Amish, etc. already do so — but such a society is outcompeted by every society which embraces tech, and any society with tech at the level of the Stasi (i.e. both old and the wrong side of the Iron Curtain) can surveil whoever it wants whenever it wants.
Now? Now it doesn’t matter if you decentralised all the infrastructure, the tech is too cheap to avoid total surveillance.
Now, laser mics are school projects, and the hardware cost for pointing one at each and every window in London 24/7 is significantly lower than the annual cost of the Metropolitan Police Service in the same city.
Now, your WiFi can be converted into a wall-penetrating radar, do pose detection, heart rate and breathing detection.
Now, my wristwatch knows when I walk past the charging station to turn on its screen and remind me of its existence. I don’t even know how it knows when I’m walking past.
Now, I have an IR camera that can see through some opaque-to-visible-light materials for no good reason and at pocket-money prices.
“Centralised” has its problems, but getting rid of centralisation isn’t enough.