My threat model is against mass surveillance. This is one of the hardest threat models to defend against and to justify, because (at least here in the US), mass surveillance has become normalized. I’ve heard people directly tell me that “privacy is weird.” I’m not here to shoot down the Nothing to hide argument literally labelled on Wikipedia as “a logical fallacy,” instead, I want to take my own approach to show just how unnatural mass surveillance is.
Picture this: Your best friend tells you that he heard rumors that someone put cameras in your house and was actively spying on you. That is super creepy, but you brush it off and say that nobody would do that, because who would care that much about you? However, when you get home, you look around and find multiple dozen hidden cameras everywhere. Think about how you’re feeling right now, knowing that you’re being watched. Even though you know that you’re being watched, but have no idea who has been watching you, what they have seen, or how long they’ve been watching you, it’s disillusioning and creepy to find out that what your friend said was true.
Then, you do some digging online and find out that everyone in your neighborhood is also being watched. Oh, it’s fine then, right? Suddenly it’s much better that you’re not alone. No! More surveillance is not a good thing. People fall into the false belief that as long as it’s not targeted surveillance or a personal attack that it’s suddenly fine, that you will just blend in with the noise. Your data is valuable, and spying in any capacity is NOT normal. Remember: The situation never changed, you are still being watched, you just found out that not only you, but everyone around you is also being spied on.
You still have no idea who is watching you, and it’s even worse to find out that it might not just be one person, that anyone can buy this data for cheap. Data like this can be used to stalk you, drain your bank account, read intimate personal texts, rig elections, manipulate you into buying things you never intended to buy, and so much more. This is the state of mass surveillance and it needs to stop. It’s not a conspiracy, the dystopia is today.
Mass surveillance is not normal. Privacy also isn’t normal: it’s a right, instead.
Snowden is and always will be a hero.
Sorry we let you down dude.
In all honesty, I believe it falls on each of us to educate as much people as possible in the actual dangers of mass surveillance and what are the potential options to minimize it’s impact.
For example, I’ve been advocating for privacy within my family, friends and other acquaintances for years now. Only recently have I managed to get my wife to start caring (some fearmongering was required) and have gotten a friend from church already on track to eliminating Google, Crapple, mainstream social networks and even self hosting. Some people at work have been reaching out to ask me how they can start moving away from the big tech overreach, and now even my kids have gotten their friends on Simplex, which have made some of their parents move to it as well.
Again, it’s taken me over 7 years to manage this little, but it’s something. If all of us keep doing this, avoiding getting to the point of annoying others (though I’ve annoyed quite a few persons with this, but whatever) more and more people will start moving in that direction.
Just getting some people to change from chrome to brave, which is one of the easiest things to do without making them change their streamlines, or move to Signal from SMS and WhatsApp, is already making headway.
If we get tired and stop preaching security, the surveillance wins. At least that’s how I see it.
I find this argument compelling:
“We have a physiological need for privacy. Mammals in particular respond poorly to surveillance. We consider it a threat because animals in the wild are tracked by predators, and it makes us feel like prey.”
Taken from this TEDx talk: https://youtu.be/jVeqAemtC6w Quoted bit starts at 5:45
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“Normal is not something to aspire to, it’s something to get away from.” - Jodie Foster. This quote is referring to social norms, and how what is truly normal is not what is accepted, but what is right.
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“Impering” is not a real word,(Fixed) I presume your question is if abnormalities can become new social norms, and what happens when that is the case (thereby creating a paradox within the quote). Abnormalities can become social norms, if given enough shift in social and cultural attitudes. The grim reality is that this is often leveraged in an immoral direction, such as the rise of mass surveillance. True privacy is not a solution either: The thought that privacy leads to an increase in crime is true and cannot be ignored, but removing privacy comes at a cost. Eventually that cost outweighs the benefits of privacy infringement, and we are far past that line. Criminals, however, will always find access to robust privacy; just as they have found access to guns. Removing privacy in the public does nothing but removing protection from those with privacy: governments and criminals alike. Unjust laws only burden the just, as the lawless will not heed them. Privacy is a right, not a privilege to be revoked due to the actions of a few.https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imperate
I don’t think they used it right (and they’re a Spanish speaker, see the little tag?) but the verb they used is a valid English verb.
It was a typo that they later fixed. I didn’t see the tag, apologies for that. I didn’t intend to come off as harsh.
i talked to people that had a difficulty grasping the concept of “if you delete a post, it might still be stored on the server”
the obscure and closed tech we have makes it hard for laymen to get a true grasp on whats truly happening.
Your heart is in the right place, but relying on what Wikipedia calls a fallacy and on implicit “natural rights” both undermine your argument severely. Your fourth paragraph is far and away the most valuable one.
There’s a reason I tell people that if I ever met God or Santa Claus, of beat their ass for assuming my end of the deal without me.
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Mass surveillance is absolutely natural. What do you think it was like for the last 10+ thousand years in villages and towns around the world. Everyone knew everyone, reputations and word of mouth was the currency of the millennia. Privacy as we know it has only exist for a very short period of time. The only reason we even got the privacy we had for a bit was because it was too much data and there were too many people for any one village to know everyone. Computers solved that. I don’t like the idea of cameras everywhere but as someone who’s been robbed repeatedly and watched others go through the same and with the utter failure that is our current legal system and our over reliance or for some twisted belief that human perception is somehow the end all be all of evidence or to determine the truth I welcome more public recording if it means I dont have to rely on some cop or other official to back or refute my testimony. I want a safe society not one where some random jackass can lose rheir mind and just blow off hundreds or more lives in a whim. There’s too many people now for the “it’s just a few people” argument. When you’re dealing with billions of individuals even a .00001% of fuckers is still a lot of fuckers. Come up with a way to stop them before hand without recording everyone and I’m down. Till then I’ll trust a video recording over a personal testimony any day of the week.
Oh look why got posted like a day after
Everyone seems to acknowledge it there.
All those negative things are happening in a society that implemented mass surveillance so clearly it doesn’t help. Recording a crime doesn’t prevent it and if there’s no incentive or funding to make sure justice is served afterwards the recording is useless. I think you’re mistaken in who this surveillance is for: it doesn’t exist to improve your life but to empower corporations and state against you.
