personal freedom roundup...
Aug. 14th, 2012 07:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psybelleI'm going to ignore the NYT whitewashing of Trapwire. Also going to ignore Cubic's claims that they're not associated with Trapwire (too much overlap on various boards between Trapwire, Abraxis, Cubic, Ntrepid, etc for them to claim no association whatsoever).
I've seen claims that the things Trapwire brags about are just not technically feasible... and to that, I say 1) bullshit (and if it isn't possible now, facial recognition is improving to the point that this technology will be biting the naysayers in short order), and 2) there's still a problem.
We do have increasing surveillance, everywhere. Surveillance undercuts the presumption of innocence, one of the basic tenets of the legal system (the counter to "if you've got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" is "if I'm not doing anything illegal, you've got no business surveilling") and tends to discourage dissent. (You wouldn't want that to go on your permanent record, would you?)
Which brings up the next issue. You get recorded by a camera somewhere. Then what? Who owns the camera? What happens to that image, the location and time-stamp, that data? Who owns the data? It's digital, can be replicated infinitely; where does it go? Who stores it, keeps it, guards it, sells it? How long do they keep it? (Are corporations/NGOs covered by FOIA? I was in several Las Vegas casinos not that long ago, and a number of them are Trapwire customers - how do I find out if I was recorded? Can I get my records expunged or corrected?)
There's more, of course... but I'm grumpy enough, going to stop now.
I've seen claims that the things Trapwire brags about are just not technically feasible... and to that, I say 1) bullshit (and if it isn't possible now, facial recognition is improving to the point that this technology will be biting the naysayers in short order), and 2) there's still a problem.
We do have increasing surveillance, everywhere. Surveillance undercuts the presumption of innocence, one of the basic tenets of the legal system (the counter to "if you've got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" is "if I'm not doing anything illegal, you've got no business surveilling") and tends to discourage dissent. (You wouldn't want that to go on your permanent record, would you?)
Which brings up the next issue. You get recorded by a camera somewhere. Then what? Who owns the camera? What happens to that image, the location and time-stamp, that data? Who owns the data? It's digital, can be replicated infinitely; where does it go? Who stores it, keeps it, guards it, sells it? How long do they keep it? (Are corporations/NGOs covered by FOIA? I was in several Las Vegas casinos not that long ago, and a number of them are Trapwire customers - how do I find out if I was recorded? Can I get my records expunged or corrected?)
There's more, of course... but I'm grumpy enough, going to stop now.