[ExI] The NSA's new data center

[Anders Sandberg]

On 25/03/2012 10:05, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> So you'll get seamless coverage of the back room deals in Washington? 
> I'm sure only Moore prevents us from being there. I'm sure the board 
> meetings won't mind a few perching quadcopters in there, either. 
> Transparency is good, after all. 

Any big surveillance operation is likely to gather this kind of 
information too. Current big surveillance systems most likely gather 
plenty of information about government and corporate activity as a side 
effect. They don't mean to, and I am certain members of Senate 
appropriations committees would not like being told that copies their 
emails and phonecalls are stored somewhere, but as I said in the other 
post, beyond a certain point selection becomes post-gathering rather 
than pre-gathering.

That said, I do not believe in technological determinism. Societies (and 
elites) can decide they do not want to have ubiqitious surveillance and 
take steps to prevent it. My initial analysis was more motivated by my 
interest in preventing hard totalitarianism than making predictions 
about when the NSA or BfV get 100% coverage.

However, the longer societies wait in deciding what they want, the less 
room to maneouver they have. Lots of boats might already have left - 
especially since powerful information assymetries also can exert policy 
capture.



-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University