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by _Nat_ 924 days ago
Seems inevitable enough that we may have to accept it and try to work within the context of (what we'd tend to think of today as) mass-spying.

I mean, even if we pass laws to offer more protections, as computation gets cheaper, it ought to become easier-and-easier for anyone to start a mass-spying operation -- even by just buying a bunch of cheap sensors and doing all of the work on their personal-computer.

A decent near-term goal might be figuring out what sorts of information we can't reasonably expect privacy on (because someone's going to get it) and then ensuring that access to such data is generally available. Because if the privacy's going to be lost anyway, then may as well try to address the next concern, i.e. disparities in data-access dividing society.

3 comments

> we may have to accept it and try to work within the context of (what we'd tend to think of today as) mass-spying.

We do have to live in the nightmare world we're building (and as an industry, we have to live with ourselves for helping to build it), but we don't have to accept it at all. It's worth fighting all this tooth and nail.

even by just buying a bunch of cheap sensors and doing all of the work on your personal-computer.

The cynical response: you won't be able to do that, because buying that equipment will set off red flags. Only existing users -- corporations and governments -- will be allowed to play.

Living off-grid is how I'm dealing with the whole situation nowadays.
How's it working out for you? I have similar plans and have most of the big pieces budgeted / ideated. But realistically I'm still 1 to 2 years out.
Except for the posting on HN?