Are you OK with a real life "Eye of Sauron" for mass surveillance?

[Steve_MB]

@Uzi

Monitoring communications by itself would not have caused the loss of business.

Business discussions are often kept secret, and would thus be deterred by routine surveillance. The credibility of any claim that the watchers are somehow incorruptible is particularly strained in this situation, given the government’s obvious incentives to tilt the playing field toward its own economic interests.

I have no idea how much it would cost. If you said 100 billion or a trillion, I’d not be surprised.

Given the amount the system would take out of the productive economy, and the cost-per-life-saved statistics I referenced above, this requires you to make a case for a minimum of tens of thousands of lives saved per year before the argument even begins to reach parity with lives lost due to decreased overall wealth.

[Smartass]

@Uzi

Except in this case, you’re the Christian. You believe in your rights and no amount of reasoning convinces you that the negatives are far outweighed by the positives.

Not sure how you reach that conclusion, since most of what I have posted has been in an effort to get you to admit that legitimate negatives exist, outside of the risk of my being caught having an affair. If you’ll review the discussion, most of my posts have been examples of the negatives and most of your responses have been straw man attacks on a small subset of those examples (while steadfastly ignoring the others). When you claim the negatives aren’t really negatives or that they have a value of zero, where is the opportunity to talk about relative weights?

In other words, before you claim reasoning doesn’t work with me, why don’t you give it a try?

@Uzi

A subset of the numbers I’ve posted above. Anyone who is actually interested in discussing this seriously would know that not every one of those cases can be resolved by any one tool.

And anyone who is actually interested in weighing the positives against the negatives would be willing to suggest how big they think that subset is. Regardless of how I evaluate the negatives, I can’t compare them against “some number greater than zero” positive outcomes.

@Uzi

Again, you say this like it isn’t happening in some form already. The vast majority of these people don’t even notice what exists now.

I really don’t know what argument you’re trying to make here. You still have a right to life, even if you don’t see the guy sneaking up behind you with an axe.

@Uzi

Do you not know why I refer to this as a tool? Because like any tool it has its uses and its drawbacks. If this is a sledgehammer, I don’t use it to drive finishing nails. I can, but I have to be mighty careful not to damage the molding.

Do you not know what I am talking about the numbers? The sheer number of “potential nails” vs the number of “actual nails” means that the number of nails your hammer will successfully drive is likely very small. Again, we’re talking about weighing positives and negatives, and I’m telling you why I’m not convinced that the number of SkyEye positives wrt Missing Persons is very large. In fact, I’m saying that the “subset” you referred to is quite small. And you’re responding as if I accused you of claiming that the subset it 100%. No, I’m accusing you of thinking the subset is far bigger than it actually is, based on the way you talk about the great positives of SkyEye. If you want to defend your position, lecturing me about hammers and tools isn’t going to help; however, if you’ll tell me how big you think the subset is, we can explore whether my accusation is correct.

Or at least argue about something other than how stupid you think I am. (In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t really care how stupid you think I am, so that one’s kind of a non-starter.)

@Uzi

Geez, I wonder why I brought the saving lives thing up? Hmmm.

Geez, I wonder why I’m trying to nail you down on how many lives you think SkyEye will save? Hmmm.

@Uzi

Because there would be no way to track a person back to where they were last seen if we turn it on after the fact.

No, but if you have a repeat offender, you’d be casting your net in the right part of the pond, as opposed to trying to catch every living fish.

I expect you’re going to say something like, “How many kids have to be kidnapped before we try to catch the criminal?” And the answer is, “We try to catch them after one, but we don’t put the entire population under surveillance before there are any.”

If people were getting abducted and held prisoner at a really high rate, this SkyEye thing starts sounding more necessary. But one of the reasons I’m calling your attention to the Missing Persons numbers is that there is no evidence that a whole lot of these imprisonments are happening. There is no big crime wave happening, but you are touting SkyEye as if there were a big crime wave happening.

@Uzi

Strawman. Never said there wouldn’t be any abuses. I said that that activity on the system should be tracked to help prevent and find any abuses.

I just want to pause a second to highlight how you continue to misrepresent what I’ve said. Notice the word I bolded in your quote. Now notice the word I’ve bolded in my post that you were responding to:

@Smartass

I don’t think that’s an outrageous position for me to take. However, I DO think it’s outrageous that your response is, “There shouldn’t BE any abuses, so quit talking about how much you enjoy nebulous fluff.”

So, right there in two recent quotes, I have proof that you are–currently, casually–misrepresenting what I’m saying. Having said that, the next question is, have I misrepresented your position? Let’s see…

[QUOTE=Uzi]

137: I never said it wasn’t a problem if the system was abused. I said the system can be controlled so such abuses are not easily done or the person abusing the system could be caught…I shouldn’t give up a system that would help me immensely in solving crimes, because of a small possibility someone might abuse it as well.
178: There is a chance that it could be abused. I’ve acknowledged that and put forward a scenario on how potential abuses could be avoided.
236: Unlikely that anyone will use this tool for such a thing as there would be logging and tracking withing the system.
251: Preventing abuse by those using the system inappropriately is doable if people chose to put the appropriate controls in place.
[/quote]

Seems to me that I what I said is a reasonable summary of what you’ve been saying. If not, please clarify.

On the same subject, I would ask that you address one of the key problems with preventing this abuse: For the most part, people abusing this system would be government officials of some kind (police, mayors, governors, congresspersons, etc.), and any “controls” that you put in place would have to be implemented/monitored by government officials. The primary reason why I don’t trust your controls is the simple fact that it is, effectively, self-monitoring: The government won’t abuse people because the government will use these controls to monitor the government.

@Uzi

Its the way I write. Sorry if it is confusing. I’ll try to be more specific in the future.

I would appreciate it.

@Uzi

I am honestly interested in why people have a problem with being watched when they are currently being watched in an adhoc fashion now.

Well, one of the key differences is that in most of the cases where people are “watched” now, they are not identifiable–at least, not very easily. The track-back ability makes everyone identifiable. I’d say that represents the difference between “being seen” and “being watched”.

@Uzi

The energy lost when people think on it?

The weight of the sweat produced when the footage goes public.

@Uzi

I assumed both were your threshold. One on the positive side, one on the negative side.

If there are only two sides, there can only be one threshold between them.

@Uzi

I also assumed because of the side of the argument that you are on that no surveillance is your default stance.

No, I was clarifying that I’m not arguing that privacy is some kind of absolute good, in the same way that “saving a life” is not an absolute good. That is, there is an amount of privacy I think is reasonable to give up in order to save lives. In the one example, a little privacy lost saves a life. That’s a lot of benefit for a little negative, so it is on the “yes” side of my threshold. In the other example, a whole hell of a lot more privacy lost saves “some” lives. The second one seems to be your position, and it is on the “I’m leaning toward no” side for me. My “threshold” between “Definitely yes” and “I’m leaning toward no” is somewhere between those two examples. I’m not sure exactly where, and there is a LOT of “space” being covered.

@Uzi

So, why is it you are baffled when I question where you draw the line for surveillance being worth the loss of privacy?

I’m not baffled by the question, I just don’t have a good way to answer it, because we haven’t agreed what privacy is or how to discuss amounts of it. I think that the “amount” discussion has to include a) the nature of the violation and b) the number of people being violated. The number of people in this example is, basically, 100% of the geographical area under consideration. The violation is not stripping them completely of privacy, but it’s reducing it a lot more than you seem willing to acknowledge.

@Uzi

I keep mentioning these examples because they are the only ones that have some quantifiable measure to them.

The fact that you can’t hold a ruler up to something and “measure” to a number, does not make it reasonable to ignore it. I can’t easily quantify the “value” of privacy and you can’t easily quantify the “value” of a life saved. I could be an ass and say “one privacy violation = one life saved”, which means that your 300 million privacy violations against–how many? 1,000? 10,000?-- lives saved is an obvious loser. But I haven’t done that, because it would be a ridiculous position to take.

@Uzi

Otherwise, you have not said how a camera miles in the sky can possibly affect you in any meaningful way.

These attempts to wax poetic in mischaracterizing the debate are growing tiresome. The camera doesn’t affect me. The 24-hr surveillance footage of the entire “outside” world that it would generate would affect everyone.

@Uzi

To say your ‘privacy’ is being violated with no definition on what that means or how it harms you, or anyone else, is ‘fluff’.

You’ve been offered a great deal of definition, meaning, and harms in this thread. You’ve ignored a lot of it, and you’ve attacked parts of it with various strawmen. You have not refuted ANY of these arguments to a degree that entitles you to suggest we’ve offered “no definition” or that what we’ve said is fluff. Refusing to acknowledge an argument (or casually misrepresenting it) is NOT the same as refuting it.

Address the actual content of what has already been said, or continue to come off as someone who fights for ignorance, rather than against it. It’s your choice.

@Uzi

‘Feel that way’. Feelings are good in songs and TV soap operas.

Why are you so concerned about rescuing kidnapping victims if you have no feelings? If feelings are irrelevant, then how is one life-saving worth more than one privacy violation? Both are just events with no significance beyond the feelings they generate in people.

@Uzi

…I know from how many are missing that a subset of them will be saved. I know that a subset of the unsolved murders will be solved. I know that a some of those who will be convicted now, would have been cleared if this tool was implemented.

And about how many “life-savings” and how many “criminal-catches” do you think that the system will generate per year?

@Uzi

I know that more than I can possibly know how many people’s feelings will be hurt by some nasty man looking through a camera at them while they walk down the street.

Another strawman. No one has suggested that the issue here was “hurt feelings”. The issue is violated privacy, and the “feeling” is the outrage at having one’s privacy violated, plus the fear of the system being abused at one’s expense. Oh, and for any instances of abuse that happen, the “feeling” is the pain resulting from that abuse.

So, to help you think about the issue more clearly, I’ll submit that if you violate the privacy of 100 people, the majority of them will feel some amount of outrage, and a significant minority will feel fear about potential abuse. As for the people who wind up being abused, ALL of them will feel pain and anguish.

@Uzi

I try to avoid that argument as it is a selfish one. I hope people will look at saving others as a form of the golden rule with them potentially being saved in return.

That’s very admirable of you, but it’s a misrepresentation of what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about a system that will take away some of one person’s privacy in order to save the life of one other person. It will take away some of every person’s privacy in order to save the lives of some fraction of a percentage of those same people. It’s one group giving up privacy in hopes of a benefit to itself.

And this is why I keep objecting to your you/me/him/her examples, because they are not applicable. If you use proper examples, you’ll see that the Golden Rule is not applicable to the discussion. Similarly, when a person’s house is searched pursuant to a search warrant, the Golden Rule is not in play.

@Uzi

Should the state force me to wear a seatbelt or a helmet? I think so. I’m not thinking of their well being, but the cost to society to support them when they are on life support, etc.

If that’s your argument, then you should present that as your argument. It is certainly nothing like the arguments you’ve presented thus far.

@Uzi

1. I don’t think anyone should have an expectation of privacy when they leave the house.

They shouldn’t have an expectation of being “unseen”, but I think they DO have an expectation of being “unwatched”. I would say that they should have that expectation barring a damn good reason for the authorities to be watching them. If you’ll review the earlier pages in this thread, you’ll see that the Supreme Court (so far) agrees with this notion of privacy. If you don’t, make an argument that consists of something more than referring to privacy as “nebulous fluff”. Or admit that you’re not really interested in having a legitimate debate. Or, I guess, accuse me of having an affair.

@Uzi

2. I am acknowledging that you and others think there are privacy rights being violated…

And we think it because it’s in keeping with legal precedent in the U.S. It’s not just some random notion that came to us while staring at a lava lamp.

@Uzi

…and that the violation of same isn’t enough to warrant not using the tool.

This second part isn’t something you’re acknowledging. It’s something you’re claiming but offering very little in the way of legitimate arguments in support of the claim.

-VM

[Uzi]

@Steve_MB

Business discussions are often kept secret, and would thus be deterred by routine surveillance.

A boon to the travel industry as people would travel to meet face to face. Not sure how the ‘secret’ system would have caused any disruption until it actually became public.

The credibility of any claim that the watchers are somehow incorruptible is particularly strained in this situation, given the government’s obvious incentives to tilt the playing field toward its own economic interests.

I trust the government as much as I trust you. So, I put controls in the system to watch what you do with it.

Given the amount the system would take out of the productive economy, and the cost-per-life-saved statistics I referenced above, this requires you to make a case for a minimum of tens of thousands of lives saved per year before the argument even begins to reach parity with lives lost due to decreased overall wealth.

Sure, tell me how much a life is worth? That way if we have to call out an ambulance someone can make a quick calculation on whether it is worth the cost. Trapped under a vehicle in an accident with traffic backed up for miles because of it? Count how many cars x how many people x how long they are spending in traffic vs what you have left on their life. If their numbers outweigh the victims, then bulldoze them to the side of the road to allow traffic to flow again. And think of the rights being violated for all those people being unlawfully detained in their cars while someone saves the traffic victim. Pretty ridiculous right? No more so than to say someone’s right to privacy is being violated when a camera is monitoring the street they are walking down.

[Uzi]

@Smartass

And anyone who is actually interested in weighing the positives against the negatives would be willing to suggest how big they think that subset is. Regardless of how I evaluate the negatives, I can’t compare them against “some number greater than zero” positive outcomes.

Kind of like arguing against some nebulous thing like ‘privacy’?

Or at least argue about something other than how stupid you think I am. (In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t really care how stupid you think I am, so that one’s kind of a non-starter.)

Geez, I wonder why I’m trying to nail you down on how many lives you think SkyEye will save? Hmmm.

A subset of the original number. I have no way of knowing if it is a large number or small. Potentially all. You have no way to refute it, either. We know that the number exists and a this sort of tool could have helped resolve those cases. I think it would be high as following the missing person from their last known location should result in where they currently are. At the very least it would focus police efforts in more relevant areas.

I expect you’re going to say something like, “How many kids have to be kidnapped before we try to catch the criminal?” And the answer is, “We try to catch them after one, but we don’t put the entire population under surveillance before there are any.”

And we are back to square one. What harm does this do to you specifically if someone is watching you when you leave your house?

There is no big crime wave happening, but you are touting SkyEye as if there were a big crime wave happening.

Strawman. Crime rates are down (going down since the 70’s?). This is another tool to help the police do their jobs.

I just want to pause a second to highlight how you continue to misrepresent what I’ve said. Notice the word I bolded in your quote. Now notice the word I’ve bolded in my post that you were responding to:

I have no idea what you are talking about or why. We agree that there could be abuses and I’ve laid out ways to minimize them. Are you saying any abuse in unacceptable? If so, then I’d have to answer that no lives lost is unacceptable. Otherwise, there is a cost to any system ever implemented. Supposedly the benefits outweigh the negatives.

The primary reason why I don’t trust your controls is the simple fact that it is, effectively, self-monitoring: The government won’t abuse people because the government will use these controls to monitor the government.

And you can request access to the logs pertaining to you as one of the controls I’ve mentioned up thread. Assuming this thing can actually tell who you are rather than any other dot on the screen.

Well, one of the key differences is that in most of the cases where people are “watched” now, they are not identifiable–at least, not very easily. The track-back ability makes everyone identifiable. I’d say that represents the difference between “being seen” and “being watched”.

I think this system would be quite effective even if they couldn’t identify a person specifically with it. eg. We know the victim was seen at the cafe at a certain time. We see X number of people leaving at that time and follow them until we can question them. Rather than a random door to door search, the police have a higher likelyhood of finding witnesses.

If there are only two sides, there can only be one threshold between them.

You posted two cutoff points: a positive one and a negative one. Each is a threshold. That leaves three possible ranges: 2 outliers and the values between the cutoff points.

I’m not baffled by the question, I just don’t have a good way to answer it, because we haven’t agreed what privacy is or how to discuss amounts of it. I think that the “amount” discussion has to include a) the nature of the violation and b) the number of people being violated. The number of people in this example is, basically, 100% of the geographical area under consideration. The violation is not stripping them completely of privacy, but it’s reducing it a lot more than you seem willing to acknowledge.

Agreement. Which is why I’ve been asking for the definition. How do we define the value of something so intangible that means different things to different people?

The fact that you can’t hold a ruler up to something and “measure” to a number, does not make it reasonable to ignore it.

It is far easier to define the value of saving someone’s life. They are alive vs being dead. What they do when alive, well that is up to them. When they are dead they are only worth the value of their organs.

These attempts to wax poetic in mischaracterizing the debate are growing tiresome. The camera doesn’t affect me. The 24-hr surveillance footage of the entire “outside” world that it would generate would affect everyone.

It either does or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t affect you personally, then why do you assume it affects anyone else? So far, that makes two of us unaffected by a camera in the sky. No longer 300 million people, but 299, 999, 999, 998. What do you think the total number of people saying ‘no problem’ would be if I asked them if giving up their privacy when outside could help find their kid if they went missing? I think your numbers of people affected by this would be far fewer than 300 million.

Why are you so concerned about rescuing kidnapping victims if you have no feelings?

What do feelings have to do with preventing someone being harmed?

As for the people who wind up being abused, ALL of them will feel pain and anguish.

Will they? Why? Just because they ‘feel’ something doesn’t make it something that others should cater to.

If that’s your argument, then you should present that as your argument. It is certainly nothing like the arguments you’ve presented thus far.

It is understood that anything the government does usually affects some people positively and others negatively.

They shouldn’t have an expectation of being “unseen”, but I think they DO have an expectation of being “unwatched”.

They should only be watched when someone is using to system to do so, with the controls in place I’ve mentioned earlier to limit abuses. If you walk your dog regularly by the crack house that the police are watching (and recording), then it is likely that they will check who you are. You are ‘unwatched’ until the time when the system is used for an investigation.

And we think it because it’s in keeping with legal precedent in the U.S. It’s not just some random notion that came to us while staring at a lava lamp.

Yeah, an appeal to authority is something that sways me.:rolleyes: Wrong decisions are wrong.

This second part isn’t something you’re acknowledging. It’s something you’re claiming but offering very little in the way of legitimate arguments in support of the claim.

I have multiple time. One person’s life if worth more than another’s supposed privacy.

[Steve_MB]

@Uzi

A boon to the travel industry as people would travel to meet face to face.

If that’s the economic model you’re using, then you really ought to dismiss the SkyEye concept out of hand – if it were implemented, how could some enterprising young chap perform the public service of breaking windows to stimulate the glaziers’ business?

Trying to ignore the fact that basic economics refutes your “if it saves one life” emotional argument is bad enough, but resorting to the economic-theory equivalent of phlogiston and luminiferous aether?

@Uzi

And you can request access to the logs pertaining to you as one of the controls I’ve mentioned up thread. Assuming this thing can actually tell who you are rather than any other dot on the screen.

So, your idea of a “control” is that a citizen can “request” (not demand it as a matter or right, but “request” it and hope that the request-taker is in a good mood) a record for which there is a built-in excuse for the government to say “sorry, can’t help you”.

I’m so impressed… :rolleyes:

[Uzi]

@Steve_MB

Trying to ignore the fact that basic economics refutes your “if it saves one life” emotional argument is bad enough, but resorting to the economic-theory equivalent of phlogiston and luminiferous aether?

And what is the equivalent when someone doesn’t take the effort of reading the thread failing to see my numerous mentions of concepts like cost vs benefits, etc? I’ve asked for quantifiable information on what privacy is so that it can be measured. To what bloody end would I be doing this other than to use the information to determine if the positives outweigh the negatives? I’ve already said that I wouldn’t be surprised if it took 100’s of billions of dollars to implement. That sort of expenditure is in the realm of fantasy (unless you Americans want to blow up more brown people, that is).

So, your idea of a “control” is that a citizen can “request” (not demand it as a matter or right, but “request” it and hope that the request-taker is in a good mood) a record for which there is a built-in excuse for the government to say “sorry, can’t help you”.

So, tramping into someone’s office and ‘demanding’ things gets results, does it? I request a copy of my driver’s license, I request any number of other documents. None of this negates that I may have a right to the damned thing. :rolleyes: back at’chya.

[Steve_MB]

@Uzi

And what is the equivalent when someone doesn’t take the effort of reading the thread failing to see my numerous mentions of concepts like cost vs benefits, etc?

Mentioning them as a buzzword is not the same as actually addressing them. The fact is that your own cost estimate pushes the bar up from “well, it might save a life here and there” to “it has to save thousands of lives to offset the known loss of life caused by economic drag”. You still haven’t made any attempt to clear the bar as it is now set.

[YogSothoth]

@Lubricious_Integument

Well I’ll be darned, it did happen.

And if I might be so bold, you are far more attractive and physically fit than I imagined.

That’s because I have balls on my chin. Nothing says manly sexiness like testosterone that’s right in your face

[Mangetout]

@Uzi

Sure, tell me how much a life is worth? That way if we have to call out an ambulance someone can make a quick calculation on whether it is worth the cost. Trapped under a vehicle in an accident with traffic backed up for miles because of it? Count how many cars x how many people x how long they are spending in traffic vs what you have left on their life. If their numbers outweigh the victims, then bulldoze them to the side of the road to allow traffic to flow again. And think of the rights being violated for all those people being unlawfully detained in their cars while someone saves the traffic victim. Pretty ridiculous right? No more so than to say someone’s right to privacy is being violated when a camera is monitoring the street they are walking down.

One person is killed every 30 seconds or so in a road accident somewhere in the world. We could significantly reduce this by by banning all private road use. It would be worth a little inconvenience, right?

[Uzi]

@Mangetout

One person is killed every 30 seconds or so in a road accident somewhere in the world. We could significantly reduce this by by banning all private road use. It would be worth a little inconvenience, right?

Yes. It will happen when self driving cars finally become the norm. Look at Google’s crash stats so far. All the accidents it’s had have been the fault of other drivers. Even if you are one of the few persons still driving, you’re insurance rates will probably be huge.
And I imagine the cost of training and certification would rise to private pilot’s license levels for a personal license.

[Smartass]

@Uzi

Kind of like arguing against some nebulous thing like ‘privacy’?

That is PRECISELY the problem with trying to have this conversation with you. You seem to have no inkling of what constitutes “fair and reasonable” in this kind of format:

You are arguing from the standpoint of “the positives (e.g. “saved lives” & “criminals caught”) outweigh the negatives”
[ul]
[li]You talk about the “value” of saved lives, without ever being willing to try to quantify it or just to clearly express what that value is to you personally. (What is the value of saving someone else’s life to you personally?)[/li][li]You talk about, seemingly, a bunch of lives being saved, without being willing to hazard a guess at how many you think we’re talking about. You will only say “a subset”.[/li][li]In response, I and the other posters have been going out of our way to work with you to determine a way to evaluate these benefits that you are SURE outweigh any possible negatives that anyone can name.[/li][/ul]

I am arguing from the standpoint of “the negatives (e.g. “privacy violations” & “abuses of authority”) outweigh the positives”
[ul]
[li]I talk about the “value” of lost privacy, and I talk about how many people are being affected and what that might mean to those people.[/li][li]I talk about the harm from the potential abuses, with numerous examples of ways that government power has been abused in the past and how it is being abused now.[/li][li]In response, you dismiss the ideas of privacy and privacy violations as “nebulous fluff” and rail at me about how it means nothing because I cannot quantify it.[/ul][/li]
In other words, you want to hold my arguments up to standards that you’re not willing to hold your own arguments up to. In addition, you continually misrepresent my statements in your responses or respond to one phrase out of a paragraph as if that phrase represents the entire content of my message.

As long as you continue to do this, there is no chance of rational debate, because YOU won’t agree to play by the same rules that you want me to play by. Ordinarily, I don’t spend a lot of time re-scanning threads and throwing people’s quotes back in their faces just to make them look foolish. However, as long as you continue to demonstrate no willingness to play a fair game, I’m going to continue to show you how many ways I can make you look ridiculous, because I think that anyone who acts that way deserves to feel embarrassed.

So, we can move forward and have a rational debate about the merit of our arguments, or you can continue your quixotic quest of trying to win a verbal pissing contest with me. It’s up to you. However, you may want to ask yourself what sort of life experience would give me the audacity to name myself “Smartass” in a forum like this, and to leave it that way for over 15 years.

@Uzi

A subset of the original number. I have no way of knowing if it is a large number or small. Potentially all. You have no way to refute it, either.

No, but if you won’t even say what you THINK it is, there is nowhere for the conversation to go, because all we have from you is that it’s a number greater than one that represents such a huge benefit to society that it’s ridiculous to even consider whether the violation of everyone’s privacy makes it worthwhile. “Lives will be saved” is not enough. No one would argue that a life saved is not a good thing–just like MOST people wouldn’t argue that allowing law-abiding citizens to have a right to their privacy is a good thing–but a saved life does not–CANnot–have infinite value to society. Your arguments so far suggest that any number of lives saved that is greater than zero justifies any amount of money spent or privacy violated, but whenever anyone points this out to you, rather than responding appropriately, you fall back on “your privacy isn’t worth anything, so any lives saved is a net benefit.” In support of that, you’ve explained repeatedly that my personal privacy isn’t worth anything to you personally. If I were to take your approach, I would just say that, since I don’t know you personally, then saving your life is worth nothing to me…and you would make a show of calling me out for my bad behavior, while studiously refusing to acknowledge your own.

@Uzi

I think it would be high as following the missing person from their last known location should result in where they currently are.

You’re back to ignoring the numbers. In making this estimate, you are misrepresenting the problem by talking about “the missing person”. You need to be talking about the 661,000 missing persons, 659,000 of which are going to turn up without SkyEye. And you need to show that you understand that if we check the video footage for each missing person case immediately, then we’re going to need enough manpower to investigate 661,000 cases. Alternatively, if we wait to see which ones are REALLY missing, then the ones who were actually abducted are likely to be already dead.

I’m not expecting you to have that perfect answer to this dilemma. I AM expecting you to talk about the subject as if you recognize there IS a dilemma.

@Uzi

And we are back to square one. What harm does this do to you specifically if someone is watching you when you leave your house?

I guess we are, since SkyEye is a system for placing EVERYONE under surveillance when they step outside, but you still want to argue as if SkyEye were a system that only places one Smartass under surveillance.

Why don’t you try your own argument on for size: What good does it do you specifically if SkyEye saves the life of some stranger you’ve never met?

@Uzi

Strawman. Crime rates are down (going down since the 70’s?). This is another tool to help the police do their jobs.

It’s only a strawman if you haven’t been suggesting that the police really NEED this help, by doing things like quoting statistics of unsolved Missing Persons and homicide cases. I’m pretty sure that’s what you’ve been doing.

@Uzi

I have no idea what you are talking about or why.

I’m talking about the fact that I say one thing, and you pretend that I’ve said some other thing, and then argue against this other thing that I haven’t said. And you do it over and over and over and…

@Uzi

We agree that there could be abuses and I’ve laid out ways to minimize them. Are you saying any abuse in unacceptable? If so, then I’d have to answer that no lives lost is unacceptable.

Well, yes, any amount of abuse IS unacceptable. Just like any number of kidnappings and murders is unacceptable. Are you saying that one life saved is WORTH any amount of abuse of other citizens?

I suspect that you probably started to ask whether I think that any single abuse would outweigh the benefits of saved lives. I further suspect that you mangled the question to make it sound like I’ve taken an unreasonable position, which allows you to “defensively” take the opposite unreasonable position. So, you’ve misrepresented my position and placed yourself in an obviously unreasonable one. And you did all of this in response to a quote where I said ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about how many abuses were “acceptable”.

If you’ll try to play a fair game, you’ll find that the result is a lot more interesting.

@Uzi

Otherwise, there is a cost to any system ever implemented. Supposedly the benefits outweigh the negatives.

Yeah, “supposedly” is the right word, because you’ve done a terrible job making a convincing case for this position.

@Uzi

And you can request access to the logs pertaining to you as one of the controls I’ve mentioned up thread. Assuming this thing can actually tell who you are rather than any other dot on the screen.

Well, that’s a challenge, isn’t it? How on earth can the “logs” show which footage I’m in; thus, how on earth can the logs reveal whether any particular person is accessing footage of me? As you’ve said before, the camera is pointed a location, not at particular people.

@Uzi

I think this system would be quite effective even if they couldn’t identify a person specifically with it. eg. We know the victim was seen at the cafe at a certain time…

In the scenarios you describe, probably yes. What if the person was at the mall? What if it happened at a football game? At an indoor stadium? What if they lived in an apartment complex, rather than a single-family dwelling? What if it happened at night? What if it happened in a part of town where most of the kids wear hoodies? Or during a season when everyone is bundled up?

@Uzi

You posted two cutoff points: a positive one and a negative one. Each is a threshold.

I posted two examples. You can keep calling them thresholds or cutoff points, but you’re NOT going to find anything that I’ve posted that suggested that was the case. You’ve made an assumption. More specifically, you’ve deliberately made a ridiculous assumption and tried to pin it on me. Your ridiculous assumption does not constitute evidence that I’ve take the ridiculous position you’re trying to credit me with. Don’t you think it would be more productive to stop bombing empty fields and try to attack the hill that I’m actually standing on?

The VARIABLE under discussion is whether I personally would say “yes”. The examples I gave included two VALUES for that variable: “No-brainer yes” and “NOT no-brainer yes”. Unless you are hypothesizing another, secret value in between those two values, there CAN BE ONLY ONE threshold between them.

@Uzi

That leaves three possible ranges: 2 outliers and the values between the cutoff points.

I have no idea what sort of cockeyed graph you’ve created in your head. I gave two example data points, and you’ve apparently imagined some kind of process control chart with cutoff points and outliers (and how in the hell could the curve representing “whether I would say yes to SkyEye” have outliers? Wait, never mind). There is NOTHING in my post to suggest that I was defining any such thing. You’ve created an entire imaginary graph out of thin air. However, for the record, if I had been describing some sort of control chart for quality-checking my opinions, then those “cutoff points” would not be thresholds; they would be boundaries.

Plus, if I only gave you two data points, on what possible basis are you determining they BOTH are outliers, and where are the upper and lower bounds that you are claiming that they lie outside of?

Good grief.

@Uzi

How do we define the value of something so intangible that means different things to different people?

Is that not also true of “saved lives”? Particularly when we’re talking about saving the lives of strangers?

@Uzi

It is far easier to define the value of saving someone’s life. They are alive vs being dead. What they do when alive, well that is up to them. When they are dead they are only worth the value of their organs.

And you have the nerve to accuse me of “nebulous fluff”? Dude.

@Uzi

If it doesn’t affect you personally, then why do you assume it affects anyone else?

Please, just read what I posted. I’m begging you, read it, try to understand it. I said that the footage affects EVERYONE. If you inspect the members of the set of people that includes everyone, you will find me in it.

@Uzi

So far, that makes two of us unaffected by a camera in the sky.

No, so far that makes two of us who are affected, and one of us who doesn’t mind or care. If your image has been captured, and all of your movements can be tracked, then you are affected. However, you don’t mind because you are convinced that no harm will come to you as a result. You’re probably right, but you may not be.

I’m assuming that I’m not going to be abducted and held prisoner in someone’s basement. I’m also probably right, but I may not be.

@Uzi

What do you think the total number of people saying ‘no problem’ would be if I asked them if giving up their privacy when outside could help find their kid if they went missing?

You really think that would be a fair and honest way to ask the question? What will you ask people who don’t have kids? What will you ask people who ARE kids? Are you going to let them know that everyone is going to have to give up their privacy in order to have this “protection”? Are you going to tell them statistical likelihood of their child being kidnapped?

Or are you going to look for ways to misrepresent the question so it sounds like, “Would you pay a penny to save your child’s life?”

@Uzi

I think your numbers of people affected by this would be far fewer than 300 million.

I think the way you play fast and loose with words makes meaningful conversation nearly impossible. All 300 million would be affected. The question is, if you put the system in place, how many would feel that they had been harmed.

@Uzi

What do feelings have to do with preventing someone being harmed?

They provide a motive. If feelings are irrelevant, then the fact that you care whether someone is harmed is also irrelevant. This desire to “save lives” is based on some sort of feelings that you have, in the same way that protecting privacy is based on feelings that people have. And before you start circling back, I’ll remind you that YOU were the one that implied that feelings are irrelevant, despite the fact that they are behind the majority of human behavior.

@Uzi

Will they? Why? Just because they ‘feel’ something doesn’t make it something that others should cater to.

Just because kidnapping victims don’t like being held hostage in someone’s basement doesn’t make it something that others should cater to. Your arguments are growing more and more absurd.

@Uzi

It is understood that anything the government does usually affects some people positively and others negatively.

Nice pontificating. However, stating obvious, irrelevant truths does not in any way entitle you to start establishing claims based on arguments that you haven’t made. Which, by the way, is what MY quote was about.

@Uzi

They should only be watched when someone is using to system to do so, with the controls in place I’ve mentioned earlier to limit abuses.

Is this some kind of time travel riddle? If you record me now, and decide later to view the footage, then the “watching” is not occurring when you look at the video; the watching is occurring now, while you’re making the recording. If the video is a live stream, with no ability to rewind, then I’m only being watched when you look at it.

@Uzi

If you walk your dog regularly by the crack house that the police are watching (and recording), then it is likely that they will check who you are. You are ‘unwatched’ until the time when the system is used for an investigation.

I want to pause to celebrate that this sounds like a legitimate argument that you’re trying to make, which is a really nice change of pace. That being said, I disagree with you. That is to say, I’m okay with you limiting the definition of the word “watch” in this way. However, there is still real surveillance happening here: Without SkyEye, you can decide to watch me tomorrow, but you can’t decide to watch me yesterday–it’s too late. With SkyEye, you CAN decide tomorrow to watch me yesterday.

So, whether or not you consider that “being watched”, the fact remains that I am under surveillance. This example is particularly distressing, because my dog LOVES going for walks, but Little Ruu does not like being watched.

@Uzi

Yeah, an appeal to authority is something that sways me.:rolleyes: Wrong decisions are wrong.

Well, since “wrong” is your opinion, then you’re saying that your opinion is your opinion. I agree. However, I was not “appealing to authority” about a legal decision. I was providing evidence that privacy is a thing, and that surveillance is a violation of privacy. The point was not to say, “This is so because the SC says so.” You keep claiming that our right to privacy is “nebulous fluff”. The right to privacy is a legal right established by the U.S. government, in the same way that the right to life represents a legal right. Whether or not you think that we OUGHT to have a right to privacy, the cite was evidence that we do have it. It is an actual existing legal concept that has been defined sufficiently to be addressed in legal proceedings. You may not like it or approve of it, but dismissing it as “nebulous fluff” is demonstrating both ignorance AND arrogance.

@Uzi

One person’s life if worth more than another’s supposed privacy.

Since we’re not talking a system that allows one person to trade privacy for one other person’s life, it does not matter whether I agree or disagree with this statement, because it is irrelevant.

-VM

[Uzi]

[quote=“Smartass, post:292, topic:723739”]

[li]You talk about the “value” of saved lives, without ever being willing to try to quantify it or just to clearly express what that value is to you personally. (What is the value of saving someone else’s life to you personally?)[/li][/QUOTE]

Are you joking? What sort of post apocalyptic anarchist heaven do you live in that requires me to justify saving some stranger’s life?

[QUOTE]
[li]You talk about, seemingly, a bunch of lives being saved, without being willing to hazard a guess at how many you think we’re talking about. You will only say “a subset”.[/li][/QUOTE]

Up to and including the total number. You keep harping on this, yet it is far more of a quantifiable number than what you have provided on the negative side of the balance sheet. Let’s assume it is the total number as you have no proof it isn’t. These people are missing and we have no way to verify that they have left voluntarily.

[QUOTE]
[li]In response, I and the other posters have been going out of our way to work with you to determine a way to evaluate these benefits that you are SURE outweigh any possible negatives that anyone can name.[/li][/QUOTE]

I am sure that any one person’s life is of more value than any number of people’s loss of privacy when walking down the street. Those people can just suck it up. Is it more than their loss of privacy if they are stepping out on their spouse? How much value does that loss of privacy cost if discovered and then how do you compare it?
Now I know you’ll probably get butt hurt that I’ve used such an example, but we have to fall back on the value of your feelings as to whether surveillance has an impact of some sort. I compare that to the impact of a physical assault.

However, as long as you continue to demonstrate no willingness to play a fair game, I’m going to continue to show you how many ways I can make you look ridiculous, because I think that anyone who acts that way deserves to feel embarrassed.

You really are grasping at straws. You know you have no logical argument or way to quantify your position and now your just obfuscating.

“Lives will be saved” is not enough. No one would argue that a life saved is not a good thing–just like MOST people wouldn’t argue that allowing law-abiding citizens to have a right to their privacy is a good thing–but a saved life does not–CANnot–have infinite value to society.

You keep presenting these strawmen as if I’ve said such a thing.

Your arguments so far suggest that any number of lives saved that is greater than zero justifies any amount of money spent or privacy violated, but whenever anyone points this out to you, rather than responding appropriately, you fall back on “your privacy isn’t worth anything, so any lives saved is a net benefit.”

Only if you aren’t actually reading what I’m writing. The cost has to be factored in. What is the value of this thing you call ‘privacy’. I’m not saying I don’t know what privacy is, I’m asking you to put a value to it. You have failed to do so at every turn. Without that, we can’t do a proper analysis.

If I were to take your approach, I would just say that, since I don’t know you personally, then saving your life is worth nothing to me…and you would make a show of calling me out for my bad behavior, while studiously refusing to acknowledge your own.

The argument of a sociopath. Take it if you want to. You haven’t demonstrated the value you give to your privacy or anyone else’s, btw.

And you need to show that you understand that if we check the video footage for each missing person case immediately, then we’re going to need enough manpower to investigate 661,000 cases. Alternatively, if we wait to see which ones are REALLY missing, then the ones who were actually abducted are likely to be already dead.

I think I addressed this earlier. You don’t implement a tool without the supporting people and processes. To do so is stupid. What you are also suggesting is that given the current manpower of the police, the currently don’t have the manpower to investigate the current case properly, either. Because a tool like this could eliminate large amounts of tail chasing.

I guess we are, since SkyEye is a system for placing EVERYONE under surveillance when they step outside, but you still want to argue as if SkyEye were a system that only places one Smartass under surveillance.

Well, if you can’t quantify why this would affect you negatively, and I certainly have said it won’t affect me negatively, who do you expect to do so?

Why don’t you try your own argument on for size: What good does it do you specifically if SkyEye saves the life of some stranger you’ve never met?

I think I understand the US need for the second amendment now. People have to protect themselves, they can’t expect any aid from society.

So, you’ve misrepresented my position and placed yourself in an obviously unreasonable one. And you did all of this in response to a quote where I said ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about how many abuses were “acceptable”.

So, society has no say on whether you should wear a seatbelt? Or wear a helmet on a motorcycle?

Well, that’s a challenge, isn’t it? How on earth can the “logs” show which footage I’m in; thus, how on earth can the logs reveal whether any particular person is accessing footage of me? As you’ve said before, the camera is pointed a location, not at particular people.

You are in location with a grid reference. The police were using the system to look at the same grid reference.

In the scenarios you describe, probably yes. What if the person was at the mall? What if it happened at a football game? At an indoor stadium? What if they lived in an apartment complex, rather than a single-family dwelling? What if it happened at night? What if it happened in a part of town where most of the kids wear hoodies? Or during a season when everyone is bundled up?

You mean a sledgehammer isn’t the best tool to drive a finish nail?

The VARIABLE under discussion is whether I personally would say “yes”. The examples I gave included two VALUES for that variable: “No-brainer yes” and “NOT no-brainer yes”. Unless you are hypothesizing another, secret value in between those two values, there CAN BE ONLY ONE threshold between them.

Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

You’ve created an entire imaginary graph out of thin air. However, for the record, if I had been describing some sort of control chart for quality-checking my opinions, then those “cutoff points” would not be thresholds; they would be boundaries.

You created two thresholds. One where it was acceptable, one where it was not. You are wasting my time here by obfuscating over something not relevant. Call it a boundary if that makes you happy. Call it a pretzel, whatever.

Plus, if I only gave you two data points, on what possible basis are you determining they BOTH are outliers, and where are the upper and lower bounds that you are claiming that they lie outside of?

That you posted it as such?:dubious:

No, so far that makes two of us who are affected, and one of us who doesn’t mind or care. If your image has been captured, and all of your movements can be tracked, then you are affected. However, you don’t mind because you are convinced that no harm will come to you as a result. You’re probably right, but you may not be.

Again, I’ve never said no harm would come to me. Maybe someone thinks they can get me over something I’ve done that I don’t want others to know. I’d laugh at them for their efforts, of course, but it would take time out of my day to do so.

The question is, if you put the system in place, how many would feel that they had been harmed.

Sure, if that makes you ‘feel’ better. How many do you think would ‘feel’ they have been harmed. Rather than having actually been harmed, that is.

This desire to “save lives” is based on some sort of feelings that you have, in the same way that protecting privacy is based on feelings that people have. And before you start circling back, I’ll remind you that YOU were the one that implied that feelings are irrelevant, despite the fact that they are behind the majority of human behavior.

My desire is not to have my life wasted by some random asshole. My life has value. Value that is only realized if I’m alive to fulfill it. I assume your life has value as well. I have no way to value your feelings.

Just because kidnapping victims don’t like being held hostage in someone’s basement doesn’t make it something that others should cater to. Your arguments are growing more and more absurd.

You should read what I’m having to deal with. Like the sentence above.

So, whether or not you consider that “being watched”, the fact remains that I am under surveillance. This example is particularly distressing, because my dog LOVES going for walks, but Little Ruu does not like being watched.

I understand. She wants to poo in the neighbors yard without anyone catching her. Otherwise, I have no idea why she’d care she is being watched.

You may not like it or approve of it, but dismissing it as “nebulous fluff” is demonstrating both ignorance AND arrogance.

Billions believe in god, too. Doesn’t make it real or them right.

Ugh! These posts are too long!

[Trinopus]

@Uzi

Are you joking? What sort of post apocalyptic anarchist heaven do you live in that requires me to justify saving some stranger’s life? . . .

If “no one needs to justify saving someone’s life,” then mandatory blood donation cannot be questioned.

The bloodmobile will be in front of your house some time on Thursday.

[Uzi]

@Trinopus

If “no one needs to justify saving someone’s life,” then mandatory blood donation cannot be questioned.

Hmmm, not sure of my stance on this one. Sure, why not? Mandatory organ donation as well when dead.

[Mangetout]

@Uzi

Yes. It will happen when self driving cars finally become the norm. Look at Google’s crash stats so far. All the accidents it’s had have been the fault of other drivers. Even if you are one of the few persons still driving, you’re insurance rates will probably be huge.
And I imagine the cost of training and certification would rise to private pilot’s license levels for a personal license.

Meanwhile, people are dying by the minute. We could solve that by simply banning everyone (except maybe emergency services) from driving. It would be enormously disruptive, but if it saves lives, we’ve got to do it, and delay is just costing more lives, so we should do it right now, surely?

[Mangetout]

@Uzi

Hmmm, not sure of my stance on this one. Sure, why not? Mandatory organ donation as well when dead.

Mandatory blood and bone marrow donation too then. Who the hell are you to complain about the small inconvenience of the government sticking a tiny needle in you, if it saves someone else’s actual life?

[Uzi]

@Mangetout

It would be enormously disruptive, but if it saves lives, we’ve got to do it, and delay is just costing more lives, so we should do it right now, surely?

Sure, just as soon as you prove that a camera watching you causes you actual harm.

@Mangetout

Mandatory blood and bone marrow donation too then.

Other than making you physically comply with something against your will? Verses a camera that doesn’t force you to do anything that you wouldn’t do anyway.

[eburacum45]

Note that surveillance doesn’t make you do anything, unlike mandatory blood donations. But it does make your behaviour visible, thus encouraging you to act responsibly. Acting responsibly - taking responsibility for your actions- should be the goal of any sensible person.

In an age of tiny cameras and social media. all public behaviour can be instantly recorded for posterity, including the behaviour of police and other security forces. This forces everybody to behave responsibly. The whole world is watching now, and people, including the police, just can’t get away with shit any more.

[Steve_MB]

@Uzi

The argument of a sociopath.

Yes, that (“You should give up your privacy because I don’t care about it”) is precisely what you keep getting called out for offering.

Because a tool like this could eliminate large amounts of tail chasing.

As I noted earlier, under “Argument #137 To Which Uzi Does Not Deign To Respond”, the extra friction in the system caused by the need to apply shoe leather to pavement is valuable in and of itself, as if forces the government to focus its attention on actual suspects.

I think I understand the US need for the second amendment now. People have to protect themselves, they can’t expect any aid from society.

Unless your proposed version of SkyEye is actually SkyEyeAndDeathRays, it would have no effect on this issue, which is therefore an irrelevant digression.

[Uzi]

@Steve_MB

Yes, that (“You should give up your privacy because I don’t care about it”) is precisely what you keep getting called out for offering.

Yes, I am not too concerned about the mental constructs in your mind. Excuse me for ignoring you while you weep in the corner because some nasty person took your picture. It’s not that I don’t care, I just can’t stand the drama.

As I noted earlier, under “Argument #137 To Which Uzi Does Not Deign To Respond”, the extra friction in the system caused by the need to apply shoe leather to pavement is valuable in and of itself, as if forces the government to focus its attention on actual suspects.

Victim complains someone hit him on the head and stole his wallet. If I have video of you bashing him over the head how many suspects should I be focusing on?