When does the state's surveillance end? \ stacker news ~tech

2760 sats \ 16 comments \ @k00b 12 Oct 2023 tech

People often ask this rhetorically, but rhetorical questions are sometimes fun to answer because sometimes they're rhetorical for the wrong reason - we don't accept the right answer.

I'd guess it's when the surveillance directly harms ~20% of normal people, directly harms an indiscriminate minority of ~5% of people, ie affects many politically powerful people, or in some other way interferes with a government's political and financial incentives.

My 20% number is pulled out of nowhere, but I'd guess that's the number of normal people that'd need to be affected by a single issue to alter a political outcome.

5% is based on LGB surveys. LGB rights continue to show up in political conversations despite a small number of people being affected by LGB policy. I'm guessing it's because folks are LGB at random and politicians are also affected by infringing on LGB rights.

Realistically, when do you think it ends? Does it ever? What motivates political change?

This post was motivated by a description of Project Atlas that I found on bird app.

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662 sats \ 0 replies \ @NeuroNinja 12 Oct 2023

I think states are meant to keep identities at every step - ID cards, social security number, KYCs, passports etc.

So, state's surveillance never ends until we snatch away the freedom in form of new protocols like matrix, nostr, simplex. or If govt. is wise enough to understand and employ people like Snowden to make policies for their citizens which is highly unlikely.

It's not about government hoarding our data, it's more about state failing to protect our data which it hoarded and use it in indiscriminate ways. As said by Snowden, in Citienfour:

Um, I'm comfortable in my technical ability, uh, to protect them. I mean, you could literally shoot me or torture me, and I could not disclose the password if I wanted to. Um... You know, I... I have the sophistication to do that. There are some journalists that I think could do that, but there are a number of them that couldn't. But the question becomes, can an organization actually control that information in that manner without risking basically an uncontrolled disclosure?

517 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bitman 12 Oct 2023

“First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me”

German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)

560 sats \ 4 replies \ @blocktock 12 Oct 2023

I don't believe it is political. I believe it is about accuracy in the data.

Data is super valuable

They will continue to surveil whilst they have the tools and capacity to do so. They are not going to give it up, when data is more valuable in the future than any commodity.

Logical Reasoning

I believe it ends, when they can't trust their own data for any logical reasoning, because the data has been so conveniently de-anonymized or encrypted as a digital blob. And because more individuals or small businesses are making their own hardware & software, due to nanotechnology. Which the majority of people in their communities day to day are using. It needs to be meaningless for them to surveil any longer. And so I would gauge that the threshold is higher at say 40%.

People know

I would also guestimate 10% of the world already knows that surveillance is an issue. That it is injust and indiscriminate. But the vast majority of those people think it is 'always going to be that way' and that there's nothing to do about it.

Easy to Govern right now

To get to this position, Governments have only had to put the boot on the neck of so many large corporates. To legislate, regulate and build standards that enable their influence to continue & even grow. To let them grow and succeed.

Most people in the Western world are all onboard with the climate debate and willing to build the walls to their own shoe box. To track their own energy expenditure with smart metres, to read their own carbon usage on train or plane tickets, to pay without cash or to be watched by 5,827 hideous city cameras pointing in their face, or sticking Ring doorbells & cams not only on their front-door but their fences and garages, and even inside their homes etc.

It's been happening for over a decade now and we have likely only just got started. Big Governments have buy-in. So I don't believe this ends anytime soon.

What's Next

I think we'll see other cracks in the system appear on the world stage first. Surveillance will not be one of them. The exception or wildcard to this would be if the entire suite of Facebook databases is dumped on the black market tomorrow. Then you may see some level of political change. But I suspect people eat it. And this is not in Government interests as they would then have no riches to exploit. If data is indeed the new oil, it should continue to be drained until those reserves run out.

My money is on us living in our sovereign bubble for a few decades yet...

76 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b OP 12 Oct 2023

I believe it ends, when they can't trust their own data for any logical reasoning, because the data has been so conveniently de-anonymized or encrypted as a digital blob.

I share this as the primary escape route for general surveillance too. They will always seek surveillance powers because the nature of a state is to seek power (not always for mischieve but nonetheless). We can politically prevent this or that form of surveillance but only temporarily. The only permanent solution is to make surveillance more effort than it’s worth.

15 sats \ 0 replies \ @blocktock 12 Oct 2023

The only permanent solution is to make surveillance more effort than it’s worth.

Well put. Much more succinct than my "chapter". Curious as a follow-up, how you would define harm in your original post?

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 12 Oct 2023

An uncomfortable (probably) counter to this is that beliefs about what's reasonable change. Your grandpa would probably have been outraged at the idea that people would listen to his private conversations, and yet now my greatest joy would be if I didn't have to listen to people's private fucking conversations at every moment in every public space.

What feels oppressive is very much a question of culture and that's always moving.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 12 Oct 2023

That's a really interesting point. What we'd like to keep private does change. It doesn't seem to change dramatically very often but it's not static either.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @Sourcewire 14 Oct 2023

My gut response is when the state can no longer afford to suveil.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 12 Oct 2023

Another complication is that you have to define what exactly constitutes surveillance.

If you throw out that term, and instead consider a continuum where on one side you have total obliviousness (state isn't aware that you exist at all) and on the other total panopticon-ness (state has total awareness of you in every moment) then it starts to feel tractable.

Although then you have the same issue with what constitutes "the state" which is easy to talk about and less easy to define, esp now. Given that the degree of being surveilled is split across innumerable entities, with various levels of influence on your life and that interact in complicated ways --

that's why I find this rhetorical question hard to think about, anyway. You can't pry the elements apart.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @mallardshead 12 Oct 2023

Good question. This guy tells me 99% of classified data is useless; but it's classified because of the way it's collected. If China is almost good enough to surveil a jaywalker and have the fine come out of their account before reaching the other side, I'm really bullish on censorship resistant money to start. Like if we look at what casinos can already do, or how effective Bellingcat is with OSINT, then consider government, with all their data, various databases, behavior algos, camera patching, then it feels despairing, cuz Ai can collate all that into neat squares tucked away to be recalled as circumstances demand, ie, whenever you show up on a public camera. It's like Minority Report stuff. But if it's out of sight, server-side, and privileged, then we're like a bunch of conspiracy theorists. We need whisteblowers, and federal laws, and likeminded supreme court justices, and education, and FOSS. 20% sounds pretty good, whatever the hell it takes to form a durable coalition.

87 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 12 Oct 2023

Not states are watching you... corporations are doing all that.

So act accordingly. Everything in this world is driven by contracts. Send them the bill to pay.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undergotten 12 Oct 2023

Nothing to add, just heartily agree. zap zap zap.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @SpaceHodler 12 Oct 2023

Any state activity will end when it becomes unprofitable. Profitability also depends on the target individual, e.g. someone using strong encryption is expensive to surveil. Someone leaving a lot of traces on social media is cheap to surveil etc.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @TomK 12 Oct 2023

Thanks, very good points. I think You need a fiscal collapse that will force normieland to accept that the state is a fragile leviathan. Then the ''sovereign'' fights back.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Lux 12 Oct 2023

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @jgbtc 12 Oct 2023

When the state collapses.