The thing is I think if you give people the choice between a 0.001% chance of getting murdered on the street or a 100% chance of being surveilled 24/7 you will find that people will take their chances with the murderers
0.001% chance of being murdered is 1 in 100000 which is about the murder rate of the UK. That does not seem to stop the UK from wanting more surveillance.
The problem with murder rate is it doesn't matter what the actual numbers are. Just bombard people with bad news 24/7 and they will believe the sky is falling and murderous mobs are roaming the streets.
I think people are for surveillance under the presumption of it catching major criminals. But once it's introduced, they realize its main purpose isn't to nab murderers, but to punish them (the people who voted for it).
Surveillance everywhere means you can't park in a no parking zone for 3 minutes just to drop something off real quick. You'll get a ticket mailed to your door. You can't go 5 mph over the limit when nobody is around. You can't slow down at a stop sign without stopping for a full 10 seconds without risking being busted. You can't sneakily sample a grape before deciding whether they taste good enough to buy. You can't not tip a bad restaurant without them plastering your picture on the walls to embarrass you. You can't say a mean thing to an annoying person online in the heat of the moment. Half the people on earth cheat on their spouses while pretending they never would and anyone who does should be imprisoned, and soon they'll have their secret revealed and regret their words. You can't trip and fall in a goofy way without your video being a global meme for a whole month.
All these pop into people's heads and make them think "screw that" after at first thinking it's great.
Unfortunately evidence suggests that people want the opposite, or at least surveillance for everyone else. And not just over murder, over petty crime. Nextdoor is full of people who want to be a surveillance network of humans.
I'm not sure we know what people want though. After terrorist attacks politicians seem to decide what people want, tell people what they want, but rarely, if ever, offer a referendum on the subject. And on this alone they also get bipartisian support because nobody dares look weak on terrorism, so there's no possible vote against it.
Reality shows otherwise. Take a look at Google and free-for-ads-and-surveillance everything. People are willing to make compromises on privacy for less important things than the change of them or their loved ones getting murdered, as mentioned as an example.
But back to Flock: public cameras are not 24/7 surveillance, as those don't surveil people at home.
ps: I'm not for a panopticon, enforcement needs to come with surveillance also, otherwise it will just be an anarcho-tyranny. So common in the developed world. And enforcement of law must also apply to companies, even (and especially) to vendors of the law-enforcement.
The main problem with these arguments, which are common and we also see in a lot of free-market discussions, is that they assume that every person has perfect knowledge all the time. Including knowledge of changes that might have just occurred.
That's... an extremely difficult claim to make, and one that people largely make for free, unchallenged. I'll challenge it: most people have absolutely no idea what's going on.
When you sign a terms of service, do you read it in full? When you get what feels like a weekly email saying the TOS has changed, do you read it in full? And, to be clear, you auto-consent when the terms of service changes, they don't pretend you have to read it.
This is by design. It's not a coincidence the TOS is extremely long, extremely vague, and constantly changing. And, it doesn't matter anyway. There are no competitors. Because guess what - they have the same TOS. And the TOS doesn't mean anything, anyway. Because the majority of the rights they explain they can exercise in the TOS, they never do. So you can't even use that as a baseline for "what is this company doing".
So not only are people not knowledgeable in practice, but they also face many barriers, by design, to being knowledgeable. And, one further, they actually CAN'T be knowledge even if they dedicate their entire lives to it, because the knowledge does not exist and is not available.
People do not "want" the surveillance state. Rather, they submit to it, under lies, omissions, and asymmetric power. This includes me and you.
aye, the average joe has no idea wtf data mining is, or how its risky for them
my educated, medical professional in-laws have some vague idea about it but love their instagram and lose chasing the related trends. they have no real, direct understanding as to how this could impact their privacy, or how marketing works, or how propaganda is similar to marketing, etc.
So the argument here is that people are too stupid to realize that they are being manipulated into being controlled, therefore it’s ok?
Sit someone down, a normal average person, and explain to them the actual implications and then do you think they will agree? Reality shows that when people actually understand what surveillance means they reject it wholeheartedly
No, they don't reject it. The realize they hate it, but make a compromise.. and use the free gmail, the ad ridden internet, etc., because they have no real alternatives. Rejecting surveillance capitalism is only realistic for the poorest and the richest. The average people must accept it.
The problem with murder rate is it doesn't matter what the actual numbers are. Just bombard people with bad news 24/7 and they will believe the sky is falling and murderous mobs are roaming the streets.