[somenameforme]

One of the biggest 'culture shocks' I had when first moving to Asia, that eventually I'd see in numerous places, is visiting a food court during business hours. There's people shoulder to shoulder, so everybody goes to claim a table before getting their food. They do this by leaving various things, including their purses, on tables while they went to go queue up to get some food. There wasn't a camera anywhere. That is a high trust society, and it's amazing. What you're describing here is the opposite of a high trust society - when you have a camera on every person for fear they might do something bad, it's a 0, if not negative, trust society.

Your perceptions of other peoples' views are also off. Even with the current scope of government surveillance, 66% of Americans say that the potential risks outweigh the potential benefits. [1] And laws would not be what limit freedoms. Government and authority is not some abstract holistic entity. It's made up of people, like you and I. Would you feel comfortable with me being able to surveil every moment of your life? The difference between me and the person who would end up doing so is not this great gulf you might imagine.

For instance Snowden revealed that NSA officers would regularly collect and trade sexually explicit media obtained from surveillance. [2] They'd also use their position to spy on their love interests to the point it gained it's own little sardonic moniker 'LOVEINT'. The people that would be looking through those cameras are just people. And the government leadership overseeing these groups would include those prone to go off to an island to screw minors, or more upstanding fellows like Eric Swalwell, cheating on his wife with a Chinese spy while serving on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that oversees the entire US intelligence apparatus, and would oversee this sort of surveillance.

We're all just people, warts and all.

[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/11/15/key-takea...

[2] - https://time.com/3010649/nsa-sexually-explicit-photographs-s...

[charcircuit]

>What you're describing here is the opposite of a high trust society

In such a society, people don't steal because thieves have been removed from society. You can trust others because they have proven through their life that they are trustworthy. By trust I was talking between the people in society and not about the government trusting that people would not break laws. Humans are not perfect, so it's a bad assumption to assume that citizens will not break laws.

>66% of Americans say that the potential risks outweigh the potential benefits

The article you linked was about the current benefits. This is different than what I am talking about where laws are able to be effectively be enforced.

>Would you feel comfortable with me being able to surveil every moment of your life?

What do I get in return from you? Nothing? Then I have no reason to do so.

>NSA officers would regularly collect and trade sexually explicit media obtained from surveillance.

This should be made an instantly firable offense, like it is in the tech industry for accessing personal data of users. There should be alerting when such data is accessed to ensure that systems are not being abused.

[somenameforme]

The article was specifically and explicitly speaking of potential benefits, not present. The problem with systems made up of people is that you can't just have turtles all the way down. Let's say that retaining sexually explicit media of surveilled individuals is indeed grounds for instant dismissal. Who enforces this? Okay, the person above the people doing surveillance, who's somehow going through the entirety of said surveillance. And what happens when he is the one saving such media? Is it then overviewed by another person above him? And so on.

You can't really have endless redundancies and, at scale, this becomes even more true where the vast amount of data and processing becomes ever less viable to filter. And when you had 24/7 footage of everybody at every moment, that takes scale and ups it to an inconceivably vast level. More generally I think removing thieves from society, with extreme prejudice, is a far more pleasant path forward for everybody than treating everybody like a potential thief.

[jappgar]

> In such a society, people don't steal because thieves have been removed from society. You can trust others because they have proven through their life that they are trustworthy.

This is a very "Star Trek" view of the future and even Star Trek repeatedly demonstrates that the perfect society is an illusion.

[somenameforme]

I don't think it's necessarily an illusion, but rather its repeatedly demonstrated that it requires measure that some might not like. In "Asia" (quotes as it feels odd to characterize an entire continent of dozens of different countries, yet there is often a widely shared ethos on many topics) criminals tend to be largely ostracized from society. And it's not just the criminals, but also their family and relations. This is probably somewhat more akin to what Western society was in the past with things like pillories where the punishment wasn't just the humiliation, but everyone knowing that you were a criminal.

Even the justice systems tend to be different. For instance in the US you're expected to plead not guilty, even if you're guilty - and then work from there. In "Asia" 'falsely' pleading not guilty is often seen as a lack of remorse and generally results in far harsher penalties than pleading guilty. And when one pleads guilty, they're often even required to do things like reenact their crime and generally cooperate with the government in every single way. It's just a very different approach towards criminality.