Yes, it's all very poetic. Can you define it though?
What else did "we" do? Were "we" the nazis? Or were we the allies? Were we the indians or the europeans? Did we write "All along the Watchtower"? Did we invent the first digital computer?
There's a number of reasons to use "we" in this context.
There's the inclusive we, and the exclusive we. For example, "We defeated the Nazis in WWII" clearly means that the person talking considers himself part of the Allies, and excludes the Nazis from the group. "We fought in WWII", however, is inclusive, and includes all sides in the conflict.
So yes, "we wrote All along the Watchtower", as in, we as a human species brought ourselves to the point of being able to write that (or, one of the bazillion different ways of interpreting that sentence). And yes, "we invented the first digital computer," could mean that you refer to the assumed implication that (some of) the people reading this board are software engineers, and "we" refers to that professional group.
But it gets a lot more fun than what you imply: there's the editorial we ("We have always fought for free speech"), the author's we ("by combining the ingredients, we obtain a compound called..."), the dictatorial we (used by managers/team leads, quite often, "We have to finish feature X by Thursday").
>What else did "we" do? Were "we" the nazis? Or were we the allies? Were we the indians or the europeans? Did we write "All along the Watchtower"? Did we invent the first digital computer?
We should cut the BS, and stop bike-shedding on the use of "we", whose use has been accepted for millennia when one speaks of the collective whole that is humanity and its achievements.
Your comment-history doesn't seem to indicate a pattern of reading difficulties, so I'm going to assume you're either just trolling or way way too emotionally-invested in your original snarky reply.
Either way, that's up to you to solve on your own.
Yes nazis, allies, indians (both kinds, but one of those terms is pretty racist, so be careful with your terminology) and europeans. We wrote all along the watchtower and invented the first digital computer. There might be a few prickly edges around carthaginians, aztecs and other civilizations we eradicated. We hung on to trigonometry in spite of eradicating the babylonians.
In this case we means humans who are able to benefit from, or perhaps simply learn of, the discoveries of other humans.
I'm not sure what higher-level point the GP was trying to make[1], but I'm fairly sure they knew macOS doesn't run on mobile. Their implication is that were mobile devices included in the tally they would have contributed significantly to the denominator.
[1] I suspect it is that macOS + iOS would be a better numerator to pit against "Windows on all devices". However the GP having corrected themselves immediately means its not clear what the point is.
With no lack of empathy for the veterans (of all countries) and the horrible things they go through...
Don't you guys ask yourself how come you are always at war? Why you have "generations of veterans", even though you have by far the most powerful military force to ever have existed?
There is no credible conventional threat to the US, and there is no unconventional one that can be mitigated by fighting a war.
Not participating in unnecessary wars would help the mental health of soldiers much more than therapy or whatever else.
> Don't you guys ask yourself how come you are always at war?
Actually, I'm a veteran, son of a veteran, son of a son of a veteran, and we all served in between wars, so we're not exactly "always at war".
But all bullshit aside, why would you lay that kind of blame on the people who rolled the dice (choosing between enlisting and working at DQ to pay off their double-wide) and now have to go out and do the job, versus the people who are making a profit every time we shoot off a $200K TOW round? There are, like, half a dozen people in the Army who could raise their hand and say "let's have a war" and have it actually mean anything, but you're asking veterans why they fight wars.
Second: Your idealism is compelling, yet you overstate the facilities available to the common citizen.
Third: Pointing the finger at 'Americans' and saying 'Why don't you quit fighting so much?' only serves to feed the narrative that Americans are war-hungry.
Case in point: there is not a single military battle being fought on American soil. We, the 'war hungry' Americans, only commit to actionable defense of foreign states whose sovereignty is threatened by whatever forces are objectively creating a threat. We do so because we stand on the principle that it is better to stand up for the weak than it is to kowtow to dictators or totalitarian states. Now, we do this in a manner that is selective because geopolitics isn't a black and white decision matrix, and we have to pick battles that that we not only think we can win, but that won't serve to exacerbate the problems of totalitarianism and despotic rule.
Since the War Powers Act, it's basically been the president who makes war. Congressional declarations are a formality. Many of the events that we think of as wars are "military actions"-- Korean "War", Vietnam "War", First Iraq "war", second Iraq "war", Afghanistan "war", Kosovo, Libya, etc
> Don't you guys ask yourself how come you are always at war? Why you have "generations of veterans", even though you have by far the most powerful military force to ever have existed?
We have the most powerful military ever because we've decided to take in the role of global hegemon. Now maybe that's a bad idea--but it's much bigger than just getting into specific wars that may or may not be particularly necessary. We live in a world order built on the American military maintaining the status quo.
I think the point is: if it's able to handle the data needs of one of the largest sites in the world do you really need to worry about it not being able to handle a pet app?
I don't think thats a good point.
I mean I can probably make a console application using .txt file on disk as the database and scale it to handle large websites.... if I had spent $100M on servers and 10 years of my life. Almost anything is possible with most of the technologies out there. But its about using the right tool for the job.
Stackoverflow is huge, its built with SQL server. If they had for example used mysql they would probably have had to hire 2x engineers + spent twice as much time tuning and tweaking.
All those top1000 mysql sites are heavily customized and tweaked to perform as well as they do. Using other modern technologies may had saved them 1000 of hours and money.
They are not paying for anything. No one entered an agreement or signed a contract. They are trying to exploit the content in a certain way, and the receiver of the content is free to take counter-measures.
Nope, they are not paying me for anything. Again, I did not enter into any agreement. I just clicked a link. They are expending their resources in an attempt to capture and profit from my attention. Those are very different things.
Many times they also payed to make it hard for me to get to the content that I actually wanted. This is commonly known as SEO.
The foundation of the Web - the Hypertext Transfer Protocol - is that I request a piece of data from a given address, while also providing relevant information about my capabilities and media I'm willing to accept, and then you send me back that data.
What I do with that data isn't up to you. That includes viewing all, parts, or none of the information I received from your server. That especially includes deciding about what code gets executed on my machine.
If advertisers want to control what I am doing with the content I get, please find yourself a new protocol and DRM it to your hearts' content. Just leave the Web alone.
>The foundation of the Web - the Hypertext Transfer Protocol - is that I request a piece of data from a given address, while also providing relevant information about my capabilities and media I'm willing to accept, and then you send me back that data.
So Facebook says that the foundation of the web is sending data to the server (such as cookies) and receiving information back.
Nowhere in the protocol does it say they can't track you. Ergo, tracking is perfectly legal and moral.
The foundation of the internet is that the server sends you data. Your browser happens to have a security hole and you got a virus.
Totally ethical and legal. Nowhere in the HTTP protocol does it say not to send viruses.
I was just responding to OP's claim that since the protocol doesn't specify that I'll be watching ads, it must be legal and ethical to block them and harass those who spend money on them.
> I was just responding to OP's claim that since the protocol doesn't specify
I know. The examples were still factually incorrect straw-men.
> it must be legal and ethical to block them
That's the point; it is legal and ethical to use data that was voluntarily given. If you want control over how things are used, stop sending to everybody freely and require a contract.
You are making people lose money (not the malware adnetworks, not the trackers, but the guy buying advertisement) to prove a point to the ad-network (which is actually making money off this), I consider it close to harassment.
No, the advertisers are choosing not to pay the content creators. By blocking or using auto clickers the users are only choosing to not reveal the personal information that is sold by the content creator to the advertisers(even if the content creators don't get to see it, or cant make use of it). On tv and in movies the prestige was what advertisers where getting from ads, they would pay to have the ads carried on the same networks as great content. They wouldn't stop me from talking over an ad or closing my eyes while one was on, and I wasn't "stealing" by doing so. My part of that system was buying the cable package or the movie ticket, funding the general delivery system. Whats happened now is that content creators have taken a bad deal and started selling our personal information rather then the actual prestige of being next to their content. This is perfect for advertisers as it then sets the fight up to be between content creators and their audience, when it should be content creators and their audience working for a better deal.
No, when you artificially click on a link, the original website pays the hosting website a bit and Google a bit.
So now when you run this program, the two entities you're most against (Google for not having safe-ads) and the content website (for not working for free) are actually getting payed!
But but but! The entity that had created / placed the ad loses money! That's good, because it raises the costs for them, incentivizing rethinking of the marketing strategy. It also, over time, makes the hosting website get less money, as the quality of clicks is worse.
can we maybe make a new sort of Godwin guideline where we stop taking people seriously once they've shown they can't tell apart legal rights from moral rights?
So what you are saying is that, simply by clicking a link, I become obliged to execute whatever piece of code is served to me on my machine or render any media on my display without knowing in advance what it contains?
That is not how the web works, and that is not the social contract that it was built on. Sorry if it doesn't fit advertisers' needs, but that is really not my problem. Maybe advertisers and payed content could go to some other medium that accommodates all the restrictions you desire, and then we can all be happy?
What you said is not meaningfully different. You imply there is some implicit relationship between the person who clicks on a link and the person who made the content behind the link.
You are using the concept of "relationship" with two different meanings.
When I click a link, there is a relationship between me and some entity in the same sense that the term is used in computer science to describe relational databases.
This is not a relationship in the legal or ethical senses. By clicking a link, I did not agree to anything at all. All I did was react to an announcement that there is some resource somewhere, and deciding to take a look at it. If I decide to do it from a terminal and read the HTML directly without rendering, that is no one's business and my actions are not unethical in any way.
The advertisement industry is starting to behave like the music industry in the early days of the web. They are willing to destroy the best tool ever created for global human communication and knowledge sharing for the purpose of protecting an obsolete business model.
Because you want to consume what they've produced.
So I'm agreeing to the contract before even seeing the content? I guess you're fine with me having 30 days to return the content under the Consumer Rights Act (UK) if it's not as described and they'll refund me the advertising money they made from me, right?
Particularly, if you say it's a trade of content for attention, then:
For goods and services bought online, your rights are the same as if you'd bought them from a shop.
You can make a claim for a refund, repair or replacement when the digital content you've bought doesn't meet these three standards: [..]
Fit for purpose: You should be able to use it for what the seller says it will do (its purpose), whether that's their statement when you buy it, or an answer to your question. For instance, an audio track should play, and a game shouldn't infect your computer with a virus.
As described: It should match its description when you bought it. For example, a film should be in the format you chose when you bought it.
So an advert from CNN shouldn't infect my computer with malware, and a link which claims I "won't believe" something [2] should leave me in disbelief.
What is it with all the pretend lawyers in this thread bringing up their misunderstanding of contract laws? Do you not realise how silly you all sound? Why do you think this comment is relevant to the thread at all? I didn't say you were legally bound to watch the ads at any point. I said you were paid for your attention. So in that case the transaction would actually be the other way around. Should the site be able to ask for a refund on their content since you didn't provide what they expected(ad views)?
I get payed for my attention in euros, after signing a contract or entering an agreement. Maybe that sounds silly to you, but that is how I roll.
I assume that you are implying that I have some moral obligation to the people publishing publicly accessible content. If you are not implying that, then we are all in agreement and there is nothing further to discuss. We both agree that ad blockers are fine, case closed.
If you are implying that, you are wrong. The WORLD WIDE WEB was not built on that premise and we were here before the marketeers and advertisers arrived. If the former manage to make some money while providing people with something they want, that's fine. I have nothing against honest business. But don't try to pretend that I have any obligation to do anything just because I accessed a resource that you made public. If you want to charge for your resource, name the price and make it private. Maybe I'll buy it. I buy books all the time. But it's not my fault or moral failing if your business model doesn't work.
And I'm disagreeing, by analogy. That's how it's relevant.
Should the site be able to ask for a refund on their content since you didn't provide what they expected(ad views)?
Also valid, and also leads to the same conclusion: it's a nonsensical idea. Therefore one thing is not 'payment' for the other. There's one protocol that making a HTTP request returns content at the discretion of the server, and there's no advance agreement that the content has value, or that the client is agreeing to trade anything at all for the alleged value.
I didn't say you were legally bound to watch the ads at any point.
I didn't say you said I was, only that content is not payment for watching adverts - and that it would be daft if that was the case.
I don't see how 1. applies. People using this plugin are not securing any gain and no one is being deprived of any right -- unless you use it on a website that first makes you explicitly accept to be tracked and served ads in exchange for the content.
I find it extremely creepy to visit the UK because of all the cameras, sometimes actively pointed at me. It is one thing to not expect privacy in the public space, in the sense that others can see you. It is another to be actively targeted by a gigantic network of cameras connected to who knows what -- in an age where automatic face recognition is becoming trivial.
I would like to ask people who make the "you have no expectation of privacy in the public space" claim if they wouldn't mind if I hired a guy to follow them everywhere they go and then report to me.
In the end, I am aware that this is a losing battle, and that people who feel as strongly as me about not being constantly under surveillance will have to move out of big cities. Big cities are becoming highly controlled environment, where one doesn't feel like a sovereign human being anymore. In a sense they are an externalisation of corporate culture.
Regarding automatic face recognition: I believe most US/European citizens, at least those who travel on airplanes, are in the facial recognition corpus of the intelligence services by now. What they do (I'm guessing) is use the cameras at passport checkpoints in airports. There they get many thousands of frames of your face from various angles, and due to the strict ordering in the queue they can match all those to your ID when your passport is scanned/entered into the computer.
Yes, I think modern airports are a good prototype for the sort of dystopian environments we can expect in the future. It will only get worse until the entire thing collapses, as it always does -- Stasi, McCarthyism, Gestapo, you name it. This time it's more scary because the technology is sci-fi compared to the previous iterations.
I am more and more convinced that the cyberpunk guys got it right in terms of predicting future trends :(
As a relatively new cyberpunk fan, let me give you a few points:
(1) Cyberpunk is very much about being realistic about human nature. Some of us (like me) assume malice by default. You might not believe me but I get saddened every time I am proven right. This is coming from a 36-year old programmer supporting his mother and girlfriend.
(2) We don't assume altruism by default because (2.1) history is [mostly] not on the side of this sentiment and (2.2) we are touched by ambition and greed ourselves and we realize that we could become just as bad (if not worse) given the same power as the current spy agencies / corporate hires / whatever else.
(3) We understand that "pure capitalism" and "corporatism" leads to the 0.5% having 95% of the capital, assets and anything else valuable. So when you see a dark art piece on DeviantArt showing people miserable on the streets while a high-tech shiny vehicle surrounded by police-men passes by, and a few huge adverts are glowing in the background, don't be quick to say "2edgy4me". ;)
(4) We also know technology is seen as a way of gaining an unfair advantage over everybody else -- and most of the time technology is not used to the majority's advantage. If somebody invents AI by themselves, do you think they'll just share it with the world? LOL no. The "Transcedence" movie script is the most likely scenario -- the AI becomes sentient, escapes to the internet to evade attackers, and then talks to you through a smartphone or a tablet.
===
The general cyberpunk audience is wide and interesting but it mostly boils down to two types:
(1) Rebelious teenagers who would give everything just to prove the bad adults that if their thoughts and feelings are ignored, the world is gonna go to shit (and to be fair, they might have a point). Some of them are toxic, some are not -- but they're mostly an okay bunch. Still, I give them kudos for going outside the typical teenager boxes. Getting engaged in cyberpunk fandom consciously implies some level of critical thinking, IMO.
(2) A group of rather dark-souled adults who stopped believing in the "bright future" a long time ago. Again, we're touched by greed and ambition ourselves, we're very conscious about the balance of power around the world and we don't kid ourselves.
I hope this helps you understand the cyberpunk bunch a bit.
EDIT:
As mentioned by @Fnoord a few comments below, "Ghost in the Shell" is your absolute Bible of a starting place in the cyberpunk genre. The anime movies and the series touch on a plethora of problems that don't even exist yet but are extremely likely to exist pretty soon. And they are a masterpiece in exposing the corruption which all of us would be vulnerable to.
Not sure if manga qualifies as reading but for manga/anime cyberpunk I can recommend Ghost In The Shell. It deeply touches these subjects, from multiple angles.
Then, since you specifically said read, there's Philip K. Dick, who wrote loads of books on this genre. When people think of Blade Runner they don't even know its based on a novel by him [1]
If you're referring to a book which studies cyberpunk as a genre from a documentary PoV then I wouldn't know.
Apologies, not yet (correction: see my edit in the parent comment). It's a newfound "love" of mine only for 2-3 months now (and I am a busy guy). I am just getting immersed in the art and short comics aspect for now. I haven't gone to reading the Blade Runner fanfics just yet. ;)
FWIW, Tumblr and DeviantArt have a lot of art and fanfic work in the cyberpunk genre. Pinterest too, to a lesser extent. You should start there.
> Select travel procedures and biometrics to learn more about the Department of Homeland Security’s program at U.S. ports-of-entry, which verifies the identity of the traveler using the electronic fingerprint data and digital photographs.
I would love to know the rationale of greater scrutiny of PR's - I suspect it would be quite hard for someone to forge a "green card" (it has a lot of obvious security features built in) and it needs to match your passport anyway. It's not a big deal but it always stuck me as a waste of time.
Here's a terrific-terrible idea: let's create an open network of surveillance cameras with facial recognition. Permanent logs, free access to all, an easy search function, plot all events on a map with timestamps. Should kick up a storm.
That is a great idea, but it will not work. People will say that only the government and big corporations can be trusted with that data, because of reasons.
I think it's a terrible idea. If I decide to call in sick and go lamp shopping, there's a vast difference between the FBI or Google being able to track me, with some effort, and my boss being able to idly hit a web page and see where I am. At the end of the day most of us are hiding trivial, below-the-radar infidelities, not dragging dismembered bodies around in suitcases or plotting revolutions.
I entirely sympathize. Over time, I've gradually come to the same conclusion as Bruce Schneier in Data and Goliath: regulation and legislation are the only way to make sure that surveillance works in the interests of the people, not against them. It should be possible for a society to decide what its surveillance is and is not used for.
The problem that we currently have in the US and the UK is that there is a total breakdown of trust between the state and the citizenry. The government does not trust the people it obstensibly serves, and lies to them. Many people generally are apathetic and disorganized (proud individualists). It's the latter part that means that decisions are likely to go against the interests of the population, and this problem extends well beyond surveillance.
I should have originally mentioned, it's possible for CCTV -- without good legislation -- to have almost no utility for individuals. This is what the linked article demonstrates; corporate surveillance protects corporate interests.
All this said, I remain optimistic about the prospect for change. 2016 beat the political apathy out of me.
I've never understood this "UK is creepy cos of all the cameras they have". Yes, there are a lot of them in the built up cities, most are privately owned and a lot are probably directly controlled by the government (and related agencies as well).
The large paranoia towards the UK probably stems from "The UK has more CCTV cameras per person than anywhere else in the world" but no ones knows this to be true for certain[1][2].
It may well be true, but don't think that you're being filmed any less in any other first world country. Also worth noting that most of the statistics are based on "per person". There may well be countries with a much higher population and much higher CTTV camera count.
> It may well be true, but don't think that you're being filmed any less in any other first world country.
In Germany there are strong laws against CCTV proliferation. They exist mostly in public transportation, and their presence has to be clearly advertised. You can even order Google to blur your house on street view. Try it in a German city, and you will see how common it is.
And yet, Germany is one of the safest countries in the world.
I think Germany being safe is a result of culture, not anything with cameras. Many, many modern problems are fundamentally cultural issues and things like CCTV cameras are either masking or exhibiting their symptoms.
I agree with the parent r.e. safety concerns though. It's a cheap, easy way to provide a relatively sure record of truth for public spaces. It helps prosecute people who enact violent or other crimes, and reduces the number of those in the first place.
Do you disagree with that, or value being invisible in public higher?
I agree that more authoritarianism leads to less crimes. This is a well-known fact. But at what cost? Historically, we have been through all this before.
Notice that it's never just the cameras. You also have to make it illegal for me to hide from them. No face camouflage, for example. And even if you don't make it illegal, you will immediately single me out and pay close attention to me. Not in the old sense of having some police officers "keeping an eye on me" but in the new sense of using the full power of all of our current technology to track me.
I'll tell you what the cost is: spontaneity, randomness, street-level interaction, the right to be WEIRD. All this while crime rates have been naturally going down for decades. None of this stuff is about crime for the politicians, it's about control and business deals (I promise you someone sells all those cameras and related equipment to the cities, and it's not you or me).
I am not that old, but old enough to already see that historical lessons don't last long, and everything has to be learned over and over again :(
Lots of CCTV isn't government-run. Some is, like local parks or whatever, but most is run by businesses who want to be able to catch folks who have broken in. In order to get access to the footage, police generally need a warrant.
I guess I disagree that "camera == authoritarian", but I totally get your concerns. I'd be more worried about the secret courts(US) and super-injunctions(England) that mean we can't talk about things, than I would about being on camera.
I have no problem with businesses having CCTV inside their premises -- as long as this is clearly advertised, so that I can decide if I'm ok with it or not. But I don't think they have the right to point the camera to the public space outside and film me without my consent.
Cameras are a tool of authoritarianism because they tell you in no uncertain terms that someone is watching. Pointing a camera at a space changes how people behave in it. There is no way around it. Maybe you don't value what they destroy, but it is hard to deny that something is destroyed.
Imagine kids playing. Do you think they behave the same when no adults are watching? And do you think it is good for mental health to have zero "unsupervised" time?
And then, let's not be naive. After Snowden we know that the reach of the government knows no bounds. Every private camera is potentially public. Everything that is recorded is potentially recorded forever, and sifted through by increasingly powerful algorithms. In this realty, one less camera is always a little bit more freedom for everyone -- to do both good and bad things, of course, but I would rather live like a free adult than as a constantly supervised child, always submissive to Society with a big S.
>Cameras are a tool of authoritarianism because they tell you in no uncertain terms that someone is watching. Pointing a camera at a space changes how people behave in it.
Not really? I don't look for cameras and I legit don't see them pretty much anywhere. I know they're in all the tube stations, but it doesn't make me wary?
I'm sure cameras mean you're less likely to do things which are not allowed - but guess what, I actually would rather have less vandalism, less assault, etc etc. Now if you want to straw man and say "well they can make anything illegal and use the cameras against you" - well sure. Come back to me when they do that, until then I'll keep enjoying lower crime rates.
> Not really? I don't look for cameras and I legit don't see them pretty much anywhere. I know they're in all the tube stations, but it doesn't make me wary?
Are you saying or are you asking?
> I'm sure cameras mean you're less likely to do things which are not allowed - but guess what, I actually would rather have less vandalism, less assault, etc etc.
Yes, and you are also less likely to do things that are allowed, but that could still harm you depending on who's watching. Kiss your girlfriend. Do a silly dance. Participate in that protest. Use that t-shirt with the political message. Hold hands with your gay lover. The public space changes when you point a camera at it.
Don't worry too much about arguing with me -- I will lose this argument. Every day that passes, fewer people will remember what a world without constant monitoring looked like. You can't miss what you never experienced.
> Now if you want to straw man and say "well they can make anything illegal and use the cameras against you" - well sure.
A strawman is when you attack a claim that was not actually made by your opponent. Maybe the expression you are looking for is "slippery slope"?
> Come back to me when they do that,
"They" have already done that over and over in analogous historical situations. I can show them to you, but you will probably just say that I am exaggerating and that this is a different situation. Just as people did back then.
> until then I'll keep enjoying lower crime rates.
Crime rates have been going down for decades, long before all this new tech. The perception of crime rates has been going up, because of many things including the lowering standards of journalism. I live in a very safe big city where CCTV cameras are mostly illegal.
Which is precisely what proceeded to happen: "I don't believe any of your suggestions are true in a way that don't apply to public spaces in general. I wouldn't do "thing x" in case the wrong people saw, but that includes the possibility of a friend of my boss seeing me making out with his wife so I'm not going to do that where I might be seen."
I'm not asking, I'm telling but with a questioning inflection to reflect the absurdity of the statement.
I don't believe any of your suggestions are true in a way that don't apply to public spaces in general. I wouldn't do "thing x" in case the wrong people saw, but that includes the possibility of a friend of my boss seeing me making out with his wife so I'm not going to do that where I might be seen.
Claiming that surveillance is bad because oppression is bad is a Strawman. It's the process of taking any position (the GP stating public cameras are fine) and then introducing your own version of his claim (Cameras=Oppression) and then arguing against oppression.
>"They" have already done that over and over in analogous historical situations.
This argument sits in the box with my father who was eternally upset because we didn't have the military to fight a war and we'd regret that because ~World War 3~. He may indeed end up being right, but to pretend that nuclear proliferation hasn't changed the face of war seems ludicrous to me.
It all depends on your model of who is on the other side of the camera. If you think the entity on the other side is on your side, you probably have fuzzy feeling about cameras. If you don't think that the watcher is someone like you, it feels creepy.
Again, historically, people who had comfortable positions in an oppressive regime tend to sincerely claim that the abuses being attributed to secret/political polices are an exaggeration. They are usually not lying, they had a nice position in society, so those that protect the status quo feel benevolent to them.
Most people on this site have a very nice situation in live compared to the remaining 99% (to be conservative) of the world. So I take any "doesn't bother me" uttered here with a grain of salt. Also, many here have a vested interest in the expansion of the global technocracy.
When I go to the UK I feel oppressed, even though I have no intention of breaking the law. You can argue that I am crazy and should take some meds, but this is how I actually feel. Judging from art that I see (for example from Banksy), I don't think I'm alone in feeling like that.
>When I go to the UK I feel oppressed, even though I have no intention of breaking the law. [..] Judging from art that I see (for example from Banksy), I don't think I'm alone in feeling like that.
I very much doubt you're alone, and I am more than happy to concede that my perceptions and your perceptions are both valid. When you start saying that the current UK government is oppressive though, i'm liable to get a bit fractious about the meaning of words. They are not, on any realistic measure, an oppressive regime.
Unless you live in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Japan, or Singapore, it's unlikely you'll have lower crime rates than Germany.
Yet, Germany has close to no surveillance of public spaces, at all, as private surveillance of public space is banned, and public surveillance of public space is very strictly regulated.
There's plenty of spontaneity, randomness and street-level interaction occurring in the cities of the UK. I see this every day. I don't think CCTV is stopping this.
There's no point arguing over something we can't measure. Instead let me give you a scenario:
Behaviour X is illegal. "No expectation of privacy in the public space" people argue that, well, stopping illegal behaviours is great, don't you think? There will always be an implicit shaming: surely you are not up to something questionable, right?
Time passes and now 75% of the population believes that behaviour X is fine and should be legal. Nobody will ever rebel and do X in public, because they could go to jail. Civil disobedience is over.
No, we have total order and we should go through the "proper channels" to change the law. Like Snowden should have done. Like homosexuals should have done, instead of throwing the reality of their existence in everyone's face, in the public space.
Don't you see how much power this apparatus of surveillance represents? Don't you read enough history to know how much power corrupts, and how no human being can be trusted with it?
How the fuck can anyone believe that politicians care about crime? Crime has been going DOWN, consistently, for decades. Do you ever see politicians pointing that out? No! They want to give you more "solutions" for a problem that appears to be solving itself. Why? What is in it for them? Ask yourself that.
Want to save people? Show them how to eat better. Improving nutrition would be orders of magnitude more effective in saving lives. Can't be done though, because it would interfere with too many corporate interests.
TLDR: The value and effects of CCTV cameras are very much context-dependent. Also, nearly half of the research in this are was deemed too unreliable by the authors.
> I would like to ask people who make the "you have no expectation of privacy in the public space" claim if they wouldn't mind if I hired a guy to follow them everywhere they go and then report to me.
I wouldn't mind.
My life is divided into public and private spheres. If you try to invade my private space (spy inside my home, ban encryption, etc.) then you will have rigorous pushback.
My public life is public and open to inspection. I'll gladly provide you with a list of everywhere I ever go if you like.
