| HN Mirror

Yes, the biggest risk is abuse of the data- but the basic mission of monitoring is also an unacceptable risk. To me, this is similar to the notion: "Yeah, we're building a nitrous fertilizer bomb in the shed, but the _real risk_ is if our neighbor tosses a smoldering cigarette butt into the yard. The grass could catch fire!"

I also respectfully disagree. I'm a sincere egoist, so I say that: no, public safety is not a "higher priority" than _my_ rights, nor is it of a higher priority than any individuals' rights.

I think the solution to bullying, and generally the unwelcome encroachment of others into our spaces, is some ability to rebuke the interlocutors' access to our space entirely, permanently, and even prematurely. You'll notice that the goal of surveillance is antithetical to this, entirely; I take it to mean that the possibility of bullying is endemic to surveillance. You can not have surevillance without the opportunity for gross abuses.

Don't get me wrong, I do care for public safety and the collective well-being. But that is because I choose to care, because I choose to sacrifice of my means and materials in the times and places that I find necessary. The goal should not be, that we allow people their freedoms except where it is inconvenient to the collective purpose. The goal should be, to empower upright and moral citizens to understand their innate ability to make the world better.

Yes, this is an imperfect solution to the collective well-being. There will often be times where such individuals do not understand or accept their privilege to enrich the world of themselves; and, at the end of the cultural moment when the cards are dealt and the pot is dealt, we might find that such an approach is utterly immeritous toward the goal of preserving our common heritage. If this should happen, then that will be a great tragedy indeed; yet it won't be so great by half as the tragedy of even a single human being denied the full fruit and art of living with their full power.

EDIT: Also, I'd like to draw a line between privacy and anonymity. Privacy means I ought to have a space where nobody can exfiltrate resources from. This does not enable bullying, because bullying requires some degree of interconnection, whereas privacy must be specifically preserved where intercomnectivity is the state of business. Anonymity, I grant you, does allow bullying (to the degree that anonymity allows you to interconnect while refusing to allow other parties to identify you.) I will entertain conversations about the dangers of anonymity, because I think there is a happy middle between "don't track me" and "interact with me as a known quantity."

Surveillance is antithetical to both privacy and anonymity. To the degree it is antithetical to privacy, I will fight it tooth and nail, and forever condemn the sniveling ne'er-do-wells that think themselves privileged in _my_ spaces.