On Wednesday, March 29, 2000 10:47 AM Zero Powers zero_powers@hotmail.com
wrote:
> > > The way I see it transparency
> > > helps to further this goal, not to inhibit it, particularly where
> > > transparency if two-way and power equivolent.
> >
> >And I do not. Imagine this. You live in a society where most people
find
> >gays repulsive and quite a few are willing to kill gays. The majority,
> >let's say, doesn't care about gays dying per se, especially if they see
> >certain gays having lots of mind blowing anal sex many times a week or
> >night.
>
> Come on. Get real. It is illegal to murder people, regardless of whether
> they are gay or how much "mind blowing anal sex" they enjoy. And the fact
> of the matter is that those laws are enforced. Sure there was a time when
> if you were black in America you had no rights which any white man was
bound
> to honor. Those days are passed.
Depends on where you are, really. Three people were recently murdered in
NYC by the police there. In at least one of the cases -- the Diallo one --
the police were acquitted. Granted, there was not ubiquitous surveillance
(even if there were, judging intentions would still be hard), but the point
is this stuff still does go on.
I was only using gays as an example. Another example, the Branch Davidians
were basically killed by the FBI in plain sight with all sorts of intensive
surveillance going on, yet most Americans do not care about it or think the
government did the right thing. (I recall opinion polls at the time giving
somewhere around 80% approval for the FBI's actions there.)
> I never said transparency will necessarily bring about an end to all
illegal
> behavior. What it will do is *guarantee* that the perpetrator is
> identified, caught and convicted. That's about all any social policy can
> hope to do. To cure people of criminal tendencies you need to look to the
> neuroscientists, and maybe the philosophers.
I'm not asking for ubiquitous surveillance to guarantee social perfection.
My point is that it would only accenuate current imperfections. I think
this is what some of Zero's other critics are getting at too. The only
thing ubiquitous surveillanca will guarantee, I believe, is, at least
temporarily ubiquitous surveillance. The rest depends on what people do
with it is what is at issue here. But this is true of any social policy.
If one advocates, e.g., capital punishment, one could argue that murderers
should die for their crime. I would agree, but, as a practical matter, if
we wrongfully capitally punish (kill) an innocent, how do undo that? We can
disconnect things to examine them in our head, but when the tire meets the
road, we have to look at what will most likely happen. Human history is
awash in blood -- mostly spilled by people who meant well and adopted
seemingly rational policies without examining what these policies might do
in the real world.
I'm waxing rhetorical here.:/
Let me give a more realistic example. Drug use in the US and many countries
is illegal. To a large extent, drug use is also unpopular. With ubiquitous
surveillance, imagine how many pot smokers will be jailed, perhaps for long
terms. (This is a good example because with D.A.R.E. programs in the US,
there already are people turning in their relatives, friends, teachers, etc.
to the police. D.A.R.E. programs basically teach school aged kids that the
cops are fine people and that if anyone is using drugs the police should be
told. This is one step closer to ubiquitous surveillance in a basically
democratic society.) Surely, no one here thinks this a fine use ubiquitous
surveillance, but it would be a likely use if we had it now.
L8R!
Daniel Ust
http://mars.superlink.net/neptune/
"Only in a police state is policing easy." -- ???
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