[extropy-chat] Transparency vs. terrorism

[Dan Clemmensen]

Paul wrote:

> On 8/6/05, *Dan Clemmensen* <dgc at cox.net <mailto:dgc at cox.net>> wrote:
>
>     As a society we in the US have shown a distressing tendency to give up
>     freedoms to counter terrorists.As long as we are going in this
>     direction
>     anyway, why not go a bit further. If we give up the (non-existent)
>     right
>     to privacy in public, we can make it much harder on terrorists.
>
>
> More or less what will happen anyway, with the government's blessing 
> or not. Think of the digitization of virtually all information that's 
> underway with Google, and the continual growth of the blogosphere. 
> There was this woman in South Korea, her dog made a bit of a mess on a 
> train, and she refused to clean it. Thanks to camera phones, her 
> picture was placed on the Internet, and she was recognized in the street.
>
> Your LOLs won't be little old ladies, they might be the guy in the 
> subway fiddling with his cell phone, or later, someone recording what 
> they see through their glasses or contact lenses. This will be more or 
> less fair, as everyone will be watching everyone else. Everyone is the 
> watchers, and the watchers watch everyone.
>
Exactly. Since it's inevitable, I'm proposing that the government 
finance a quick kick-start to this phenomenon as a cheap and effective 
response to terrorism. The bottom-up approach will not lead to effective 
coverage in the short term, and there is not enough mobile bandwidth 
already deployed, so fixed cameras are currently more cost-effective.