[ExI] privacy again

[spike]

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan
Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2016 12:05 PM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] before?

 

On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 8:12 AM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com <mailto:foozler83 at gmail.com> > wrote:
>>… We have touched on the issue of privacy several times lately and
> I wonder if it received a lot of attention before I joined.  

>…I recall some discussion of universal surveillance, which would mean zero or near zero privacy. Or maybe I'm confusing this group with another. That discussion was before 2010…Dan



 

Reminder of discussions we were having here about 15 yrs ago.  The kinds of things we now have were still in the design phase mostly, but it was becoming clearer that tiny cameras with plenty of memory were possible, as well as the now-common quad-rotor camera drones and so on.

 

I suggested at the time that anything you do outside your own home is public domain: you are spraying photons everywhere into the world.  If the world intercepts, records, interprets those, that’s not our fault.  It isn’t our responsibility to keep your secrets, or even to avert our eyes and cameras.  You have no reasonable expectation of privacy of things done outside your home.  The constitution says nothing about that.  The US Constitution 4th amendment having to do with US citizens’ right to be “…secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures…” etc, does not apply here.  If you are outside your home and I have a camera drone nearby, I am not seizing your photons.  You are hurling them at my camera.

 

It devolved into a discussion of whether a citizen has the right to shoot down a camera drone.  I argued (in what may sound like a contradictory position (but is not)) that we do have that right, if the drone is over our property.  I might even argue that we have that right even if that drone was nearby enough for Mister Twelve Gage and his eager nephew Buckshot to discourage its snoopy activities.  I don’t recall seeing anything about drone hunting season, or that they are an endangered species.

 

My overly-uptight town has regs on firearm discharge in the city limits, but something like a water jet could work.  An ordinary air compressor with any old scuba tank or propane bottle could be rigged with a converging nozzle and valve.  A three-second blast of water could be fired a couple hundred feet accurately enough to take down one of these perhaps.  If not take down, one could arrange the water to contain salt, so as it evaporates it leaves a harmless residue, fogging the lens.

 

Camera drones need to be kinda close: small apertures are not great for bringing in details.  Check out how well your phone camera does at long distances (not great.)  Were I to sunbathe nude, one of these would need to be within range of Mister Twelve Gage or my homemade super-soaker anti-drone tech to merely verify that… uh… that I am indeed male.  But I digress.  {8^]  Kidding, bygones.  {8^D   Sorta.  {8-[

 

That kind of anti-drone tech is cheap, legal everywhere and would likely have a range similar to Mister Twelve Gage under most circumstances for the skill level of most sport shooters.  The super-soaker would be fun to build, and the neighbors would be less likely to complain about the noise.

 

Turns out my neighbor has a camera drone.  I cheer him on: I like drones, I wont try to shoot it down.  But I am an openness type, and don’t mind wearing a cosmetic prosthetic when nude sunbathing.  But I like the tech challenge of making a low-cost water gun.  It could be done for about a couple hundred bucks, if you don’t count the cost of the stuff I already have, the compressor and pressure tank.  We might be able to retrofit existing converging nozzles and quick release valves.  I didn’t count the cost of the prosthetic, being as it doesn’t apply to everyone here.

 

Don’t flame me bro.  This can be a fun light-hearted discussion, even though it has some damn serious implications (think about it.)

 

For instance, Chris has already mentioned some matters more serious than camera drones.  I would point out that we are already censoring ourselves online, not just for political correctness.  In two glaring examples I can think of, both have to do with avoiding online blasphemy against two very different but highly motivated religions.

 

spike

 

 

 

 

 

 

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