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by cm2187 1368 days ago
Though I am not sure I understand the case against either, what you say in a bus can be overheard by anyone, it's not really a private conversation, and if you accept the concept of video surveillance, having also audio is a small incremental step.
1 comments

Being 'overheard', especially by those in your immediate view, is significantly different from being recorded and then overheard by unseen unknown strangers indefinitely.

There is also a potential difference between camera and audio surveillance. Not that I approve of either, and I acknowledge the extreme but less common abilities of camera technology (IR, microexpression, iris analysis, etc), but having one's relatively statiic shell filmed could be perceived as less personal than eavesdropping on a much more dynamic and varying aspect of self than a bad hair day. After all, when we go out in public, most healthy people don't believe they're invisible. We have much more discretion over who hears our thoughts than who sees our faces. Audio is more intrusive in this way. Standard images of our physical appearances don't quite compare to the enormity of subject material, moods, and mind that the funkiest wardrobe simply couldn't articulate.

From the perspective you present, shouldn't anyone in public be perfectly content with mind-reading, or interrogation where the former fails?