A Surveillance Society Works Both Ways

[inibo.livejournal.com]

Comments

[madscience.livejournal.com]

I've always countered the "If you haven't done anything wrong" argument by saying that when governments go bad, good people have everything to hide. But that second panel makes me think about E. R. Sill's poem The Fool's Prayer. Forget the FBI keeping a dossier of our sins; it's our follies being posted on YouTube that we have to worry about now.

[inibo.livejournal.com]

YouTube isn't going put me in jail or kill me if I happen to have the wrong kind of plant or plant by-product in my pocket.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

No, but it might cost you your job, your relationships, and a lot of other things that matter.

[inibo.livejournal.com]

If these were my only two options I'd prefer public humiliation to a bullet or being buggered by Bubba on a nightly basis.

It seems to me if one avoids doing stupid things in public or acting a fool in front of some friend's camera about 95% of the YouTube threat is avoided. The FBI has the option of kick my door in any time they want.

You seem more frightened by freedom than you are of legal thuggery.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

Probably because I'd feel bad about shooting a kid with a camera phone.

[inibo.livejournal.com]

Then don't do it.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

Point is, I've already decided on the conditions under which I would spend my life to right a wrong committed by an authority figure. My conscience allows no such recourse against nosy kids.

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

Have you decided that you'd spend your life in those conditions to right a wrong by an authority figure, if that wrong entailed nothing more than recording something you did in public?

If not, then unless a kid with a cameraphone is going around incarcerating innocent people, this is a little bit apples and oranges.

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

The kind of punishment a government can give you is fundamentally different from the kind of punishment that the spread of information can give you.

If you haven't done anything to betray their employer relationships, personal relationships etc, yet the knowledge of what you've done in public jeopardizes those relationships, then those relationships were probably founded on bogus expectations.

I expect those expectations to change as this collaborative surveillance thing eventually fills every public space. Employers will eventually have to figure out that firing employees for what they do off-duty is not good for the company, because it destroys employee morale and loyalty. Spouses will eventually have to figure out that they both enjoy getting drunk and flirting with a stranger sometimes because it's fun, and that maybe facing that head-on and establishing fair expectations together is healthier than the more usual denial and downplay.