[EA-3167]

That's a HUGE assumption about the ability of surveillance to succeed, and it goes against the evidence of the most surveillance-heavy states in the present and history. There are flaws in systems that go beyond collecting evidence, for example corruption can undermine any technical approach as we see in places like China where surveillance is omnipresent.

Hell if "total surveillance" was the secret to ending crime, prisons would paradise. The panopticon would have been a great success. In reality the only way to make it work is to assign people two-by-two to watch each other 24/7, and that only works if they're both honest, attentive, and incorruptible.

[dyauspitr]

Total surveillance would be watching people all the time, indoors too aka Fahrenheit. It would absolutely end 95% of crime.

[EA-3167]

Again by this logic prisons should be free of crime, rather than hotbeds of it. Insisting that something is true because it makes sense to you doesn’t make it true.

[dyauspitr]

Prisons don’t have cameras in cells where most “bad” stuff happens. It’s a also a manpower problem but that’s probably going to go away with LLMs being able to auto review videos at some point.

[EA-3167]

“Most bad stuff happens” in cells? That seems like it could use more than assertion, and in fact plenty of prisons have cameras inside of cells.

[halfcat]

> It would absolutely end 95% of crime

It might solve much of existing crime, but that’s not the same as a net reduction in crime.

Bribery, blackmail, and coercion would just fill the crime vacuum.

[ryandrake]

It would only solve crime if the police actually followed up on all areas where surveillance pointed out crime. Surveillance itself can't arrest a criminal.

[pibaker]

This assumes the people watching actually cared about stopping crime enough to step in and arrest the offenders.

To echo the topmost comment's point, you can't convince the public that law enforcement actually cared when the elites who flew on the Lolita express to the child rape island are facing zero consequences while urinating on the side of a highway gets you put on a list forever.

[picofarad]

I've heard the chances of being put on that list for that infraction is less that getting an STD from a toilet seat.

If you know people who say they've gotten put on a lost for peeing in public, you know someone who is a sex pest but won't admit it.

[antonvs]

You're describing a (dystopian) fantasy. We're taking about the reality of such systems when deployed in the real world and operated by real people.