Thanks. I just thought, wouldn't it be interesting if the singularity didn't fix the 2038 problem.
It's 3pm instead of 3am since I figure AI military drone swarms wouldn't care about timezones, and you can guess from the place names that the survivors are somewhere in Kamchatka at +12.
I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America.
If this is what they thought was possible, why write the 4th Amendment?
Unreasonable search and overbearing government was one of the key issues of the American Revolution.
> I can't imagine that the authors of the Constitution predicted always on, AI enabled facial and license plate recognition on every street corner in America.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety - Ben Frank
I know this is supposed to be some kind of "gotcha", but I'm legitimately curious: what essential liberty is someone giving up being surveilled in public?
public surveillance cameras erode personal privacy because there were no cameras with ID and tracking before. Widespread camera networks with tracking, ID and record keeping in a networked environment that is accessed by many varied agencies (e.g. federal immigration related) constitute new government surveillance. The US Constitution's Fourth Amendment provides explicit protection against unwarranted searches and seizures. Socially, constant monitoring creates a chilling effect on free behavior in public spaces, undermining individual liberty. For example, three teenagers dress oddly on Saturday night in association with a music culture. Authority officers show up with weapons, bright lights and harsh questions? That happens more than once. Is that "chilling" ?
Mission creep and abuse are major concerns. Examples are documented where systems introduced for limited purposes — like traffic enforcement or terrorism prevention — expand into broader, unchecked surveillance by multiple agencies, commercially and maybe gray or black markets, too. Imagine cameras initially deployed in work zones may later be used citywide, enabling mass tracking of individuals without probable cause.
Lack of oversight and due process further fuels opposition. Automated systems, such as those issuing speeding tickets without human review, deny individuals fair recourse. The absence of judicial warrants and transparency in deployment is seen as enabling government overreach and hidden revenue generation, disproportionately impacting low-income communities. Long-term record keeping may contain errors, omissions and misjudgements that remain uncorrected.
Financial and civil costs are real. Surveillance systems are expensive, yet studies show limited effectiveness in actually preventing crime or terrorism. Civil libertarians argue that resources should instead support community-based safety solutions that respect constitutional freedoms.
Ultimately, strict legal limits or outright bans on public video surveillance are in effect right now in many places, and those cases can be discussed among an informed voting public.
> Socially, constant monitoring creates a chilling effect on free behavior in public spaces, undermining individual liberty.
I was skeptical from the first sentence, but I stopped here.
This "chilling effect" is a favorite of privacy advocates, but it's purely a hypothetical. I have asked for and received no evidence of its practical effect in the real world, and can find plenty of evidence to the contrary.
New York City, for example, is one of the most highly-surveilled cities in the US, and yet turnout for things like protests is seemingly unaffected.
This is one of the centerpieces of your entire argument, yet is literally taken on faith.
I am! If the rest of your post is predicated on an unsupported point, it means it's unsupported, by definition. That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence[1].
I agree that the hypothetical "chilling effect", as presented, is plausible and reasonable, but it lacks evidence. As such, I saved myself the effort of reading what might be a plausible argument until such time as it becomes supported by evidence.
I went back and read it, and you supported it with more hypotheticals, not evidence. So congratulations, you made me waste a couple minutes of my life! But this just tells me I once again made the right judgement call in not reading it the first time, and doesn't really help further your cause, or convince me I'm mistaken in this regard.
I thought the same thing about myself until I read Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. Changed my mental model for what habits really are and how to engineer habitual change. I immediately started flossing and haven't quit in the three years since reading. It's very worth reading because there are concrete, research backed frameworks for rewiring habits.
> American life is so much more distributed than European life.
It isn't though, Google Maps estimate going West>East coast in the US to take 44 hours (pure driving without stops), and puts going from the South of Spain to the North of Sweden to take 50 hours, more or less the same.
Then Europe is a bunch of countries, most of them speaking different languages, with way more difference in culture than the states of the US. I'm not sure it matters though, it really isn't relevant, but probably the wrong thing to bring up regardless, when the reality looks the opposite than you seem to think.
FWIW, when the (last) civil war in Spain happened, you had volunteer civilians coming from Sweden (among other countries) to defend their ideals, even if it wasn't their fight, completely different culture and language. But if you care about something bigger than yourself, then you act.
"My country is large" isn't an excuse to not stand up against tyranny, not sure in what world it would be.
The whole "just barely surviving financially" sucks though, especially considering the poor labor movements and almost non-existing union support, and poor grassroot organization. It always felt weird and artificially suppressed, but without those thing, it certainly seems easier to take over an entire country. Hope others learned their lessons with this.
> Then Europe is a bunch of countries, most of them speaking different languages, with way more difference in culture than the states of the US. I'm not sure it matters though, it really isn't relevant, but probably the wrong thing to bring up regardless, when the reality looks the opposite than you seem to think.
There's certainly more cultural similarity across the US, but that doesn't mean there isn't a sense of emotional and geographic distance. Remember that the typical riot participant is not a political theorist who has some deep theory of how discharging their duty will enact change, just an average guy who's mad as hell about what's happening and not going to take it anymore.
> That would be like driving from Key West to Prudhoe Bay which looks to be 91 hours.
Haha, yeah, at least I got a laugh from it, thank you :) A fair comparison then I guess would be from Canary Islands to Svalbard, if we're aiming to make it as far as possible to make some imaginary point no one cares about :)
Plenty of Minnesotans have come out to protest, just like in other cities where ICE is active. Many people outside the cities, even just in the suburbs, haven't seen any of it at all and it's just something that's happening on TV that doesn't really exist to them. I've never seen an ICE officer in my life, despite living in a area with many immigrants from the Middle East. Minneapolis might as well be Spain to most Americans.
reply