Only read about 2/3rds through. Will read the rest later. Thanks for posting. EVERYONE should read this.
I see one potential upside to all the surveillance cameras everywhere, and all the digital tracking. It has become easier to prove your whereabouts if an alibi is needed. Police think you are good for a crime in one location, but you're on camera in a convenience store 300 miles away using your credit card to make a purchase.
I don't know whether I am a person of interest to any authority, but I do watch that US TV show 'Person Of Interest'. The future is coming, and we won't know what has hit us until it arrives.
It was a long read but worth reading. Maybe things will change when more and more people will realize this.
That was my thought too. I think better yet, the public should have their own cameras to watch the watchers. (Though seriously, I'm not beyond getting one for my car even). Pitting camera against camera, humanity will self-censor itself out of its humanity.
There's no "upside" that is a fair trade for my privacy, but any so-called "good side" is the very thing the PTB count on to condition the masses and push forward their hideous agenda of total control. I don't buy into it for a moment the lame excuses they use, like tailored advertising, and that that is all there is to this. If people can't see where this is heading they need to open their eyes.
Good Luck trying to obtain/subpoena that surveillance footage and trying to disprove that you had a friend use your credit card and the clerk didn't ask for a photo id. Good luck at the plea bargain negotiation with the prosecutor. Plead guilty to larceny with a 2 year term with a chance for parole after one year or risk a guilty verdict with a 5-10 year sentence, with no opportunity for parole. Sadly, most prosecutors are evaluated on cases processed, not Justice.
"In the future, will everyone be wearing body cameras?............. Just as we got used to cameras on buildings and cameras in everyone’s pockets, now it’s normal that there are cameras on bodies — taking photos every 10 seconds or so, in case the footage becomes useful later. This is the future as imagined by people who research wearable cameras, and what it means to record what you do all day everyday...... body cameras have the power to change the behavior of the people they are filming. And most studies of the subject show that they do........... 'This is not as distant a future as we imagine,' said Albrecht Schmidt, a professor of human interaction at the University of Stuttgart in Germany...' Schmidt is a researcher in a European Union-funded project on memory augmentation, or making it easier to remember things accurately............... There will, of course, be privacy concerns. But researchers such as Schmidt say that those will be worked out as the technology becomes more useful................." http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...4a3-11e4-b9b7-b8632ae73d25_story.html?hpid=z6
I heard about a RL incident where two schoolboys were having a scrap, and in order to keep order, the teacher pointed at a CCTV camera to say that they were being watched and would be judged from the footage. A more appalling dystopia I can't imagine, where meaning is swamped by data.
Judged as in who won the fight? Who had the best style? When I was a child, kids were encouraged to beat each other bloody. But no weapons
Most cameras aren't monitored. When I first installed cameras around my home/property I used to monitor them constantly. After a few weeks I installed facial recognition software, and other stuff, and watched them less.. After a couple of months I never watch them, and only review footage if there is a specific reason for it. This is the same with companies. After the initial 'thrill' of cameras fades, they languish in obscurity, only being examined if an incident takes place that needs to be examined. So it's not as bad as people think.. Our company officers can monitor the NOC all they want, watching us pick our noses. But the fact is it bored them, and they don't even keep the PIP on their desktops anymore.
I know of a story of a guy who stole a purse from a worker at a charity organization. When the police questioned him, they told him the charity place had cameras and if he didn't fess up it wouldn't matter cause they could just review the footage. So he fessed up. They were no cameras. That's still a funny story to me. Honestly the same tactics used there are done on a much larger scale, where the lack of being verified if you were indeed monitored, creates and controls a self censoring society. Either corporations, or government- the outcome is all the same. edit The psychological and behavioral effects it places on people are real though. Because you can never verify if you are being watched, you must assume you always are. I agree though that the reality is that they really don't monitor them unless there's a crime scene after. Same with store security cameras. I just wish the public could play the same game though. Cameras and the resulting video and pictures are great tools to expose corruption. The upside of having so many devices available to the public that have embedded cameras. edit2 Of course too, once the automation of facial recognization is bettered, then there won't be a need for actual people to sit through the footage.
"Video witnesses: Dual-camera systems making in-roads in fleet trucks" http://www.overdriveonline.com/video-witnesses-dual-camera-systems-making-in-roads-in-fleet-trucks/ I'm so glad I retired from driving before they came out with this. I could go with the camera on the road but not the one on the driver.
My concern with surveillance is that if you go back in time looking for evidence you could probably convict anybody of anything if you really wanted to. If I had the purchase history of somebody over the last twelve months I could easily figure a dozen different types of explosives you could make with them. You can twist anything if you really want to.
This is also part of the problem though - people are not terribly good at assessing false positive rates (and the forensic community has been disgustingly lax in doing so properly, lining their own nests). As we've seen with fingerprint and DNA tests which sometimes have good discrimination, the illusion of good diagnosis has to be taken with a large dose of salt, and a regrettably rare knowledge of Bayesian statistics, particularly when criminalising the population - which is exactly what mass surveillance does. As you say, the psychological effects of incessant surveillance are real and well documented (as well as being symptomatic of a nasty imbalance of power between governed and the elite).
Very good point deBoetie and thank you for pointing out the issue with DNA. One can imagine in the future that DNA sampling will be able to detect smaller and smaller amounts of DNA. Technology could have the opposite effects when it comes to DNA and also potentially to facial recognition. DNA Signal amplification is not far from the point where they could go and sample an area, requiring a single cell to get an answer. The problem at this point is you could use incorrectly because you could "prove" that anybody committed the crime. Facial recognition has some similarities and the potential for bias. If for example a theft at a convenience store was conducted. The store didnt get CCTV but some of the nearby streets did. Facial recognition identifies an individual who had a criminal record for a similar crime. Lazy police go after that person despite a lack of evidence. Imagine if they also sampled the store for DNA and fingerprints and found the individuals DNA and prints. What is the conclusion that a Jury will draw on this situation? Great technology but it is very easily abused.
I think those people are obsessed with bar graphs or something, but don't actual question the validity of what is on the graph to begin with. This was a article I read a few days ago that was basically saying that bad software makes for bad science: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-bad-software-leads-to-bad-science So we can imagine the software used by corporations and governments. Them being so caught up in getting data, they don't question anything else. Just the "legalities" of being caught themselves invading the privacy of others.
Yes, there's a fertile field for psychology in understanding how magnificent people are at self-justification, reputation management and "economy with the truth". The defence of the immoral and indefensible by the politicians and security services is nauseating. But, as the Stanford prison experiment showed, "normal" people are terribly good at it all, allowing them to take their salary, bonuses, and pensions, sleep nights, and act all patriotic with their friends and family.
Very apparent logical steps (justifications) can lead to the worst aspects of their behavior. No one questions themselves enough. Man it's refreshing to run into someone else that gets it.
Good point about DNA the criminal justice system considers DNA evidence as almost irrefutable proof of guilt and yet I can think of a multitude of ways to get someone else's DNA and plant it at a crime scene. Especially if I committed the crime.