<story><title>U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars</title><url>http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-spies-on-millions-of-cars-1422314779</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JonCox</author><text>I sometimes feel the Hacker News crowd are a bit out of touch with the rest of the population.&lt;p&gt;Here in the UK most people I know feel safer with surveillance, it&amp;#x27;s used primarily to keep law and order.&lt;p&gt;We don&amp;#x27;t live in some authoritarian state where it&amp;#x27;s used for nefarious means, it&amp;#x27;s used to keep the public safe.&lt;p&gt;And seriously, why would you care if you&amp;#x27;re sitting on a database? What difference does it make to anything?&lt;p&gt;And I want to know when this mythical time was when we all had total privacy? I don&amp;#x27;t understand what bothers people so much about a person in a CCTV monitoring station looking at them sitting on a bus, or a spook reading the emails I send to my parents. Honestly, no-one cares.</text></item><item><author>stegosaurus</author><text>Same deal in the UK with the national ANPR system (Automatic Number Plate Recognition).&lt;p&gt;Ostensibly to reduce the amount of uninsured&amp;#x2F;untaxed drivers on the roads.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t want to sit around in databases? Well, here&amp;#x27;s a nice list of just a few of the things you can&amp;#x27;t have:&lt;p&gt;Bank account; Car&amp;#x2F;motorcycle; Mobile telephone; Internet-connected computer; Credit&amp;#x2F;debit card; Visible face (oh, we might be safe there, for a few years)&lt;p&gt;Unless of course you&amp;#x27;re a criminal, in which case you can handily avoid a lot of this!&lt;p&gt;I used to think we could escape surveillance using technology. Fool&amp;#x27;s errand. We&amp;#x27;d need an entire culture change. It&amp;#x27;s gone.&lt;p&gt;If blanket video coverage of public areas is fine, why not blanket audio coverage? Add in facial and audio recognition. Now consider you&amp;#x27;re running about with a microphone webcam combo in your pocket, the power and battery life of which will only increase.&lt;p&gt;I hate it with every ounce of my being, but I can&amp;#x27;t see a way out here. I can&amp;#x27;t see the &amp;#x27;line&amp;#x27;, any more.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stegosaurus</author><text>The key point is interpretation and use of the data.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t particularly mind CCTV coverage of cities, if we still live in 1970 and technology limits it to essentially manual viewing of feeds to follow criminal suspects. In that world, ordinary citizens walking around a city centre are items of data that are discarded forever as soon as the tape reels run out. Even if they&amp;#x27;re kept, the volumes of data involved are so huge that they&amp;#x27;re effectively lost in time anyway.&lt;p&gt;The world we live in today is not that world. We are not far from being able to use facial recognition to track the whereabouts of every single citizen and save it forever, indexed along with the video recording of them at the time. We already have the capability to do that using cellphones. We can save the entire life history of individuals using these records and collate them into a viewable form near-instantly.&lt;p&gt;As I alluded to in my earlier post, the way we&amp;#x27;re going it&amp;#x27;s not a huge leap to imagine voice recognition allowing for phone calls to follow suit. Why is voice recognition important? Because it turns weeks and weeks of trawling through transcripts into a search query with instant results.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a completely different ball game. It&amp;#x27;s permanent, searchable, indexable super-fast memory. &amp;#x27;Forgetting&amp;#x27; becomes obsolete.&lt;p&gt;In the old world of tape CCTV cameras, my neighbours knew more about me than the Government. Now, it&amp;#x27;s almost certainly the other way around, and if not, only because they&amp;#x27;ve decided not to type &amp;#x27;stegosaurus&amp;#x27; into the Big Database of Everything.</text></comment>
<story><title>U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars</title><url>http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-spies-on-millions-of-cars-1422314779</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JonCox</author><text>I sometimes feel the Hacker News crowd are a bit out of touch with the rest of the population.&lt;p&gt;Here in the UK most people I know feel safer with surveillance, it&amp;#x27;s used primarily to keep law and order.&lt;p&gt;We don&amp;#x27;t live in some authoritarian state where it&amp;#x27;s used for nefarious means, it&amp;#x27;s used to keep the public safe.&lt;p&gt;And seriously, why would you care if you&amp;#x27;re sitting on a database? What difference does it make to anything?&lt;p&gt;And I want to know when this mythical time was when we all had total privacy? I don&amp;#x27;t understand what bothers people so much about a person in a CCTV monitoring station looking at them sitting on a bus, or a spook reading the emails I send to my parents. Honestly, no-one cares.</text></item><item><author>stegosaurus</author><text>Same deal in the UK with the national ANPR system (Automatic Number Plate Recognition).&lt;p&gt;Ostensibly to reduce the amount of uninsured&amp;#x2F;untaxed drivers on the roads.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t want to sit around in databases? Well, here&amp;#x27;s a nice list of just a few of the things you can&amp;#x27;t have:&lt;p&gt;Bank account; Car&amp;#x2F;motorcycle; Mobile telephone; Internet-connected computer; Credit&amp;#x2F;debit card; Visible face (oh, we might be safe there, for a few years)&lt;p&gt;Unless of course you&amp;#x27;re a criminal, in which case you can handily avoid a lot of this!&lt;p&gt;I used to think we could escape surveillance using technology. Fool&amp;#x27;s errand. We&amp;#x27;d need an entire culture change. It&amp;#x27;s gone.&lt;p&gt;If blanket video coverage of public areas is fine, why not blanket audio coverage? Add in facial and audio recognition. Now consider you&amp;#x27;re running about with a microphone webcam combo in your pocket, the power and battery life of which will only increase.&lt;p&gt;I hate it with every ounce of my being, but I can&amp;#x27;t see a way out here. I can&amp;#x27;t see the &amp;#x27;line&amp;#x27;, any more.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>josephlord</author><text>It doesn&amp;#x27;t make a difference until someone trawls the databases and can reconstruct much of your life. Also even if it doesn&amp;#x27;t matter to you don&amp;#x27;t you want journalists and lawyers free from communication (and who they contact) surveilance?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m actually fine with a CCTV operator in a monitoring station viewing the feeds. I&amp;#x27;m also OK with the recordings being kept a short time in case they are needed to investigate something not spotted at the time. What I&amp;#x27;m not comfortable with is them being kept more than a month or so. CCTV footage kept long term may be linked with Face recognition for detailed and personal tracking.&lt;p&gt;Likewise with the ANPR, I would be OK with it kept and accessible for a month or so (although I think a judge should approve searches both on a particular event (time and location) and for searches on a particular number plate.&lt;p&gt;We may not yet live in a authoritarian state but can you rule out one occuring in the next 50 years? What if legal and reasonable things today are outlawed, gay rights roled back and they search the ANPR for people who may have frequented gay bars or the archived communications data for anyone who used Grindr.&lt;p&gt;In my view the collected knowledge is more dangerous than the terrorists to a free society and oversight and limits on retention are required.&lt;p&gt;You are right though that the majority of the public do not feel this way yet. That doesn&amp;#x27;t mean we shouldn&amp;#x27;t oppose the surveilance where not fully justified and try to educate them.&lt;p&gt;I would also note precisely what you said &amp;quot;people I know feel safer with surveilance&amp;quot; and while I think you may be right I&amp;#x27;m really not sure how much safer they actually are.</text></comment>