Covid-19 Could Normalize Surveillance - or Provide a Moment for Reasserting Rights (cnn.com) 85
"Will we look back at 2020 as the moment privacy finally evaporated?" asks CNN's international security editor:
Privacy International called Covid-19's impact on privacy "unprecedented." "9/11 ushered covert and overt surveillance regimes, many of which were unlawful," said Edin Omanovic, the campaign group's advocacy director. The surveillance industry "understands that this is an opportunity comparable to 9/11 in terms of legitimizing and normalizing surveillance. We've seen a huge willingness from people to help them as much as possible...."
The title of Shoshana Zuboff's book "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" referred to the power and wealth accrued by tech companies who amassed huge amounts of data over the past two decades. She thinks Covid-19 could mark a moment not of the continued, inevitable dominance of these giants, but instead of people reasserting their rights in the way they should have done when these new online hyperpowers emerged. "9/11 compromised our democracies in relationship to tech companies and their growing capabilities," she said. "We ended 2019 with people around the world in the process of waking up and appreciating the fact that surveillance capitalists have amassed these immense empires of unaccountable power... We're hitting this wall of mistrust, because we have failed over the last 20 years to create the institutions, legislation and regulatory paradigms that allow us to trust in this new invasive world..." This is a moment for better-informed societies to create the legal framework they've lacked to master the power of technology for their benefits, she said...
Yet, like 9/11, the moment is one of panic, coping, and rush for a return to normality, and less of a nuanced discussion about how the crisis can become an opportunity to fix the wrongs of the past. Without that discussion, our new normals may become a world in which a little bit more of our inner selves is out there in the ether, at risk of misuse.
The title of Shoshana Zuboff's book "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" referred to the power and wealth accrued by tech companies who amassed huge amounts of data over the past two decades. She thinks Covid-19 could mark a moment not of the continued, inevitable dominance of these giants, but instead of people reasserting their rights in the way they should have done when these new online hyperpowers emerged. "9/11 compromised our democracies in relationship to tech companies and their growing capabilities," she said. "We ended 2019 with people around the world in the process of waking up and appreciating the fact that surveillance capitalists have amassed these immense empires of unaccountable power... We're hitting this wall of mistrust, because we have failed over the last 20 years to create the institutions, legislation and regulatory paradigms that allow us to trust in this new invasive world..." This is a moment for better-informed societies to create the legal framework they've lacked to master the power of technology for their benefits, she said...
Yet, like 9/11, the moment is one of panic, coping, and rush for a return to normality, and less of a nuanced discussion about how the crisis can become an opportunity to fix the wrongs of the past. Without that discussion, our new normals may become a world in which a little bit more of our inner selves is out there in the ether, at risk of misuse.
Yeah (Score:3)
The ear recognition and gait recognition industry is ready to pounce since everybody will wear masks for years.
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everybody will wear masks for years
No, they won't.
Re: Yeah (Score:2)
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This shitty pandemic will sooner or later end and things will go back to some semblance of normal. Period.
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That's what we said about 9/11. Nothing has gone back to anything that resembles "normal" prior to 9/11.
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You assume panic, but why? Since 9/11, nothing has gone back to normal. I'm saying that after COVID-19, nothing will go back to normal. If this makes you nervous, then rather than take chemicals or sit around watching mindless TV (seriously, your suggestions are a bit creepy, reminding me of the song by Perfect Circle 'Counting Bodies Like Sheep To The Rhythm Of The War Drums'), then consider that the new normal could be better than the previous normal.
snip of lyrics from the song I mentioned above (in m
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Tyranny doesn't creep in -- it comes in to cheers. "So this is how liberty dies -- with thunderous applause." -- Padme
The prequels political background was based on many cases in history from ancient Rome and Greece, to 1930s Germany, and Venezuela, Russia, and Turkey more recently. People cheer to give dear leaders emergency powers that they never give up.
Quit listening to disasterbation scenarios of this or that president sneaking into tyranny. Look instead for a huge chunk of the population demanding
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You may as well just use 4chan as your news source.
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go live in your own little pandemic world and leave us alone
Re: You didn't hear? (Score:2)
You have a strange conception of "a few". Look up the definition, you may be shocked.
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What's wrong with you?
Please buy my book! (Score:5, Funny)
Hardly any of you bought it when it was published last year, but this pandemic is giving me another opportunity to mention it!
I'd cancel my cellphone account.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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go somewhere else to exercise your free-dumb to spread disease
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go somewhere else to exercise your free-dumb to spread disease
I wear a mask and gloves when I'm in public as I feel it's the right thing to do. But I also respect that people should have the choice during this pandemic.
COVID-19 is pretty scary, but it's not like HIV or any number of other viruses. It's pretty contagious, but not insanely so. COVID-19 has an R0 somewhere between 2 and 2.5. Which is a hell of a lot better than the initial estimates that looked like it was closer to an R0 of 5. For comparison the common flu has an R0 of 1.3. SARS had an R0 between 2 and
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Tracking our movements i
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Government will misuse this power. They always do. Things passed for anti-terrorism get used for regular crime.
And do you know if it's impossible to spy without uncorruptable logging for later review by elected officials? It is not. Imagine Nixon's plumbers, who only had to sit there and push buttons to listen in on everything the Democrats were doing -- or vice versa.
Do not build these things to begin with. Then it can't be misused.
We really need a Supreme Court ruling that people take the security of
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If you're so scared of getting sick, you have the freedom to stay home.
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The big question is: where will you be able to go without carrying a cell 'phone that has mandated tracking software ? The answer will depend on which country you live in, what sort of transport you use, etc.
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The big question is: where will you be able to go without carrying a cell 'phone that has mandated tracking software ? The answer will depend on which country you live in, what sort of transport you use, etc.
Where will I go? Right to the effing polls.
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Apple or Google and other software apps on your phone are already continuously tracking your location with very high accuracy. Furthermore, this information is bought and sold between companies although it is lightly anonymized (which is easily reversed). Of course, the government also has access to this information if+when they want it too. We already live in a total surveillance society and there isn't a realistic way to opt-out while remaining a modern person.
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You can try to fight the tide of history, but it is a lost cause. Even if you don't use a smart phone, do you use credit cards? Do you drive on the highway (license plate scanners)? Do you walk around in public with your face exposed (video cameras + facial recognition)? How about your web surfing habits? Do you always use an anonymizing VPN that you trust and can't be hacked or forced open by the govt?
Like I said, we already live in a total surveillance society, which will only become ever more comple
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There is no need to cancel cell phone service. Just don't take it with you. Mine lives on the dining room bookcase. A land line is no longer an option unless whoever buys out Frontier actually starts fixing the lines again. And you need two-factor verification too often for a landline alone to be useful. VOIP stops working if the power goes out, so you need a phone to tell the power company the power is out.
My problem is the Verizon 4G does not reach my house, where 2G does. And I got Verizon instead of AT
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Tbh cell phones with you are worth their weight in gold just to be able to call a tow truck without having to go knock on someone's door a mile away on the highway.
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Really? Who is your carrier?
AT&T?
Location Information includes your street address, your ZIP code and where your device is
located. Location information is generated when the devices, Products or Services you use
interact with cell towers, Wi-Fi routers, Bluetooth services, access points, other devices, beacons
and/or with other technologies, including GPS satellites
Verizon?
6. Location of yourwireless devices
We collect cell tower location information. Based on what you
T-Mobile?
Geolocation data, specifically data that identifies the approximate or precise location of your mobile device. We may also use technology in our retail locations to collect data about the presence of your device;
Tellling example (Score:2, Insightful)
A telling example of where it will lead - unless we stop it - has already been provided. The *very first real act* in reacting to COVID-19 was to effectively suspend the first amendment. Intended to last *2 weeks to flatten the curve* even with wild over-estimates of the danger, now, the danger has proven far less than the worst-cases, hospitals sit nearly empty almost everywhere, ventilators are sitting unused, and it has instead been *2 months* with many places no real end in sight, and some predicting th
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Unfortunately most people simply look at the news for how to think. CNN tells everyone that they should be scared and that everyone is an idiot that doesn't believe them. FOX tells everyone random stuff. All of the media works on being paid for clicks and views.
The main story ended a while back. If this was about simply flattening the curve, we have done that. The data seems fairly clear that the only places that ever even came close to running into issues with the hospitals were places like New Y
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We have to keep pounding the truth, that this is about not overwhelming hospitals, not stopping transmission itself. It is not, in fact, about "protecting you". These are nasty, nasty politicians. I might suggest drunk on power, but that likens it too much to historical collapses into dictatorship.
On the other hand, maybe that's not such a bad idea for people to keep in the back of their minds.
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Excess deaths are spiking pretty much everywhere to the tune of tens of thousands per month. Put your tin foil hat away.
Re: Tellling example (Score:1)
Linked article says nothing of the sort. Obvious liar is obvious.
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hospitals sit nearly empty almost everywhere
Wow, it's amazing how much work my nurse wife and her coworkers have been getting lately at one of those "almost empty" hospitals you seem to have spun out of whole cloth.
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It's happening quite a bit, we're seeing it in hospitals all over California [calmatters.org], including here in Ventura.
How come you couldn't find a link to show even a single layoff?
You just found a link about states wanting more federal money.
If America had a single payer healthcare system, it wouldn't have those problems. There is plenty of work to do saving lives. America's hospital system is just set up to make money instead.
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It will take a while to see where this goes. Infection Fatality Rate estimates are in the ~0.5% range (but could be > 1%)., with R0 in the 3-5 range. That means that under normal conditions, about 80% of people will get it and about 0.3% of everyone will die. That would be 500K in the US, and 25M world wide.
Maybe. A vaccine would change everything. Countries with effective test/ track programs are beating it. This is just what happens if we let life go on as normal.
See for example https://www. [medrxiv.org]
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We are seeing ads on TV that blame Trump for the deaths. Fair or not, the same ad then trumpets scary economic numbers in an attempt to associate them with Trump.
This is insideous.
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The *very first real act* in reacting to COVID-19 was to effectively suspend the first amendment.
What are you talking about? This is utter nonsense. You're making things up.
I hate that this is portrayed as new (Score:5, Insightful)
Thousands of years of civilization go by, and people think these are new questions. We don't need new laws. What we need is to translate existing laws into to scenarios.
Forget "digital", forget "recognition". Focus on "surveillance".
We've had surveillance laws for how many hundreds of years? If I'm not mistaken, the word comes from "soldier", so that's how old it is. I may be mistaken.
We've always had loads of civil rights, and there have always been times, reasons, and scenarios to cut them short in times of emergency.
There are three kinds of "martial law". There are all sorts of warrants and wire tapping and no-knocks, and crowd control, and protests, and riots, and propaganda.
Today, there is a very good, very great, very valid reason to forego a lot of civil rights in favour of health. As is always the case with health, you can't balance health with anything else; doing so degrades health, always.
Today, we ought to easily be able to ditch the rights for the health.
The only problem is that we don't have laws to back out of such scenarios when it's over. Ditch the health, retrieve the rights. Just like every other emergency you've ever had, big or small.
In, then out. Search warrants apply, and usually only within a small context, and then they stop applying.
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^^^ mod this up
Re:I hate that this is portrayed as new (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not that it's new. But are we going to let it be permanent like all the bullshit after 9/11? And we sure shouldn't give up our rights to transparency in government processes. And if health is so important, let's demand our right to real universal health care.
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The only thing that should be "permanent" is the constitution. Everything else ought to be "within a context" or "within a scenario". A "when...until" so-to-speak.
I should point out that I'm not in your country. My country does have healthcare. Your country doesn't actually want it. You see healthcare as a luxury item -- I have a good job that gives me healthcare, you don't, I'm better than you, with my healthcare and with my luxury car.
But there are two reasons why rich americans should want to pay fo
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You need not spend so much effort thinking about it. Just look at things from the socio/psychopath's point of view. That's how they do things
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You are confusing "rights" with "license". License applies for things that are granted by Law, and can be removed by Law. "Rights" exist independently of Law and cannot be taken away.
The United States Constitution grants Licenses, not Rights.
For example, killing is a right. It cannot be taken away by any law, no matter how much one wishes to take it away, the right to kill will always exist. However the law may grant "license" to kill with impunity under certain circumstances, and have "consequences" fo
Re: I hate that this is portrayed as new (Score:3)
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in most systems the citizens only have the rights which are granted to them by law.
Do you have an example of such a system?
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But security is an endless game of one-upmanship where the criminal gets huge rewards, and the rightful owner gets huge costs.
Data "security" is rarely worth the cost of even reasonable success. Unless you can afford the huge cost of actual security, much like in any other world, hiding is always your best bet. That's why almost all animals hide -- camouflage, small, subterranean, patterns, speed, shelter, height, nocturnal, schooling. Only the apex predators and gigantic blobs can afford sharp claws and
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So what you're saying is that racism kills people. I'll buy that.
well after the 1th and 2th Amendments are gone (Score:2, Interesting)
well after the 1th and 2th Amendments are gone then the USA is it is now is over
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Please go back to school and learn this new-fangled thing called PUNCTUATION.
Did you mean "Well, after the 1th and 2th Amendment are gone, the USA as [sic] it is now, is over."
Or "Well after the 1th and 2th Amendment are gone, then the USA as [sic] it is now is over."
Your inclusion of the word superfluous word "then" implies the second meaning. What do you expect the time frame to be between the 1th and 2th Amendments being gone, and the USA as it is now is over? 1 year? 1 decade? 1 century? 10 centuries?
Also Speech and Movement and Assembly (Score:2)
Not surveillance capitalism... (Score:2)
... it's total fucking lawlessness. The last 200 years lobbyists have lobbied away the publics basic rights and freedoms.
We had the bailouts in 2008 if anyone remembers, and the congress slap the banks on the wrist.
Tech companies are stealing software on a massive scale since the rise of the internet. Your phone and apps are spying on you and to participate in the entertainment culture requires giving up any kind of semblence of human rights.
The free market mythology many were raised on is a sham, the wo
Reassert rights. (Score:2)
Look at the beat down Judge Bradly of SC of Wisc gave the states attorney , amd look at their ruling.
Look at the reaction to the Texas hair salon lady.
Look at Elon Musk.
Look at all the examples of hypocrisy, and stupidity. Pritzger sending his family to Florida. The Pennsylvania official saying that people should leave their elderlyt in nursing hiomes while pulling her mother out. Fredo.
People were willing to put up. with it for a while, but now they are getting fed up.
I suspect that what will happ
Already past the point of no return (Score:2)
The public has already made it clear they prefer the illusion of security to personal liberty... this fight was lost without most even realizing there was a battle going on. Wear your mask, adhere to government approved activities, keep your distance from your neighbors, and track everyone you've been in contact with... all the cool kids are doing it.
Stopped reading at "CNN" (Score:1)
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Contact tracing (Score:2)
Will you give up your privacy to support contact tracing? Do you trust private companies and the government to keep track of everywhere you go and who you interact with and not to abuse this information? Do you care at all about your privacy? Do you really think that this information would never be abused? Do you really think that this information would not be used for marketing?
Do you really think that this information would not be stolen, leaked, rented, sold, and subpoenaed? Do you sincerely think that t
Once the feds have your info... (Score:1)
...they have it FOREVER. And don't trust any mouthpiece that says otherwise, because said mouthpiece is flat out lying to you.
Remember, the info will be kept FOREVER.
Always be on guard (Score:1)
We always have politicians waiting for something like this to railroad fascist and dystopian ideas into law. Same happened with 9/11.
This proves that people need to always be on guard not just because of the disease (or terrorists), but because of our own politicians who are more than eager to use these events to further shackle us down.
This Has Already Happened (Score:2)
When initial proposals were made in the UK, Apple and Google proposed a "distributed model" in which collected data would be anonymized before upload. The government ignored tha