zlacker

>>syness+(OP)
I think the tech crowd is in denial about their role in surveillance.

We expect professionals to behave ethically. Doctors and companies working on genetics and cloning for instance are expected to behave ethically and have constraints placed on their work. And with consequences for those behaving unethically.

Yet we have millions of software engineers working on building a surveillance society with no sense of ethics, constraints or consequences.

What we have instead are anachronistic discussions on things like privacy that seem oddly disconnected from 300 years of accumulated wisdom on surveillance, privacy, free speech and liberty to pretend the obvious is not obvious, and delay the need for ethical behavior and introspection. And this from a group of people who have routinely postured extreme zeal for freedom and liberty since the early 90's and produced one Snowden.

That's a pretty bad record by any standards, and indicates the urgent need for self reflection, industry bodies, standards, whistle blower protection and for a wider discussion to insert context, ethics and history into the debate.

The point about privacy is not you, no one cares what you are doing so an individual perspective here has zero value, but building the infrastructure and ability to track what everyone in a society is doing, and preempt any threat to entrenched interests and status quo. An individual may not need or value privacy but a healthy society definitely needs it.

>>tobbyb+Bl
Not everyone agrees with you that the tech sector is contributing to the building of a surveillance society or police state. There are a lot of people who have carefully considered the issue and come to the conclusion that facebook knowing what posts you liked or ad networks knowing which pages your IP address has visited is not a Bad Thing. It's clear that you don't agree and all debate is welcome, but I caution you not to trip in your rush to claim the moral high ground.

I don't think there's any need to rehash the debate here. Simply, I and many others do not believe that any western government is going to use information gathered by tech companies to preempt threats to entrenched interests and the status quo. I've seen the same arguments made here for years, and none of it is convincing.

It's admirable that you are so certain in your beliefs. If you don't like what the tech sector is doing, please by all means continue to advocate. Shout it from the mountain tops, go to work for the EFF. But don't discount people that legitimately disagree with you as being irresponsible. At least some of us have made the effort to understand your point of view. The least you could do is to try to understand ours.

>>karmac+Is
What about Palantir, then?

Very hard to suggest they aren't supporting the police state.

It's unquestionable that the tech sector is directly culpable for supporting the cops and the politicians to spy on us... to affirm otherwise is counterfactual. The moral high ground belongs to the people who don't collaborate with those who would rather have us dumb and controlled.

It's pretty hard to respect the pro-surveillance view because it seems flatly head-in-sand ignorant of reality time and time again. We have evidence of surveillance state wrongdoing in hand, and no successes to point to while simultaneously experiencing multiple terror attacks, and yet the pro-surveillance types are steadfast in their position, as though it's a religion.

The Snowden files showed us explicitly that disrupting political groups is actually done via GCHQ! This is very far from protecting the citizens, and is instead stifling them purposefully.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intellig...

I actively am discounting the opinion of people that do not understand this threat realized, currently unfolding threat to our democracy. An informed opinion doesn't sound like one passed via the government through the media.