[roel_v]

Privacy is dead, has been for a decade policy-wise, it's just the implications are ramping up the last few years. Nobody except some fringe groups does anything more than pay lip service tot the concept. I say this as someone with an IRL reputation of rambling about the privacy implications of using electronic payments (well I used to, I gave up years ago when I realized and came to terms with the fact that privacy is dead). The cat is out of the bag people, and there's no putting it back in. Surveillance tech is just like mp3 to the music industry - except this time, 'we' are on the receiving end.

[f_salmon]

If organizations such as the NSA continue to be allowed to exist, then you are certainly right. But as long as you live in a democracy, you have the "obligation" to elect the people who will represent your will, that is your responsibility.

[roel_v]

If you think the NSA is our biggest problem, you need to wake up and smell the roses. Literally hundreds of parties track various parts of your whole life, online and offline. 'Democracy' can't help us, it's uncontrollable, that's my point. It's emerging behavior, call it the social or political equivalent of Smith's invisible hand.

I'd happily settle for a situation where national intelligence agencies try to collect everything they can about everybody. But it's not just that, it's dozens of government agencies at various levels and with various levels of competence, plus hundreds of private actors who have some way of tracking something about you.

NSA shmaNSA - I'm much more concerned about the traffic cams in my city, installed by I-get-paid-by-the-hour consultants or barely competent public servants, who are supposed to follow all the so-called 'laws' and 'procedures' when it comes to storage time frames, access control etc.; let alone the fact that we're being watched 24/7 by itself. In 5 years time, HD cams will be so cheap that it becomes feasible for a private party to plaster a whole city with them (and many parties will do this). Slap on some facial recognition, boom we have untrackable private parties keeping logs of where every single person walks in all public spaces. And hey, storage space is cheap, let's keep all that data.

That is the real, practically relevant threat, not a government agency stepping out of its bounds. And the scary thing is that there is no realistic way to avoid that situation. Some legislation can keep it at bay for a decade maybe, but long term - we'll have to adapt to the fact that 'privacy' as it existed in the past is gone.

[aragot]

It's forbidden to walk on the street with 10 grands. It should be forbidden to put more than X records of data in a database without a third-party certification for every order of magnitude your database size is.

And that power has to raise aside from the governments agencies. I know it might affect startups too, but the people who have gathered data until now haven't stuck to enough ethics. The danger that data collection represents is proportional to the square of the size of the db, or of the compatible systems the data can be bound to.

Right, it's gonna be the theme of the decade.

[lyagusha]

I'm no tinfoil theorist, so I wonder. If a city is plastered with HD Cams (solar power, etc), would it make sense to go places at night then if you don't want to be seen? Or is infared really easy to add and would defeat those efforts?

More importantly, wait until these HD cams and other video cameras are hacked so that someone else besides the consultants, government, and myriad other actors has complete control. Straight out of a dystopia trope.

[visarga]

Are you living in a fantasy? It's not just the NSA - all governments do electronic surveillance. And even if USA didn't, there would still be surveillance on the American public by other powers.

Besides states, there is a growing number of companies that engage in surveillance - search engines, social sites, defense contractors, companies supplying MPAA IP addresses to sue, etc.

We are in a world where there are many parties doing surveillance. The cat is really out of the bag.

NSA can just say: ok, suppose we stop surveillance - then we can't defend you against other countries doing surveillance on us. It's an arms race and it doesn't matter who started it.

[aragot]

Electronic payments? Banknotes have a number and in France they are probably renewed after 2 payments in average. If you take cash from an ATM and use it to pay a criminal, but the number will be traced.

[grkvlt]

> Banknotes have a number and in France they are probably renewed after 2 payments in average

France is a Euro area country, and only withdraws notes after they are too dirty or damaged to be usable, in line with ECB policy.

> If you take cash from an ATM and use it to pay a criminal [...] the number will be traced.

I very much doubt this.

[aragot]

But they loop back through the bank in between. They usually go from the ATM to the bakery, who gives them back to the bank. It's only after many cycles that they're retired.

[roel_v]

I'm not sure what your point is? Are you saying electronic payments are less anonymous, and the tracking of them less privacy-invading, than cash?

[aragot]

I mean any kind of payment is traceable (except at HSBC), so nothing to focus on about 'electronic'. If you want privacy, you need laws to prevent data collection and use, and you need that law to come from an alternative power from governments. Hard problem.

[roel_v]

Are you seriously going to claim that electronic payments are just as anonymous as cash?

"If you want privacy, you need laws to prevent data collection and use"

No. You need to create a situation where it's exceedingly hard to track things you want privacy about. 'Laws' can't stop a societal tidal wave.

"and you need that law to come from an alternative power from governments."

Then it's not a law, is it? I'm not even sure what direction you're thinking in, what sort of power could enforce something like that? Are you saying the checks and balances in the trias politica aren't strong enough?