On Fri, Apr 20, 2001 at 07:36:47PM -0700, Spike Jones wrote:
> Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> > If the libertarians are the only one demanding openness, accountability
> > and transparency, then of course nothing will happen -
>
> In the case of transparency, something *will* happen: more and
> smaller cameras everywherer. {Thats my new word: everywherer-
> meaning more ubiquitous.} This is regardless of who advocates
> what. There is no way to legislate them away, any more than we
> can command the tide to fall back into the sea. I see the job of
> libertarians to demand increasing permissiveness and acceptance
> in anticipation of the million electronic eyes that are now in the
> design phase. What else can we do? Pass a law that engineers
> must stop designing tiny cameras?
What about laws ruling out these unathorized cameras as having no
evidence value (hence making only registered cameras with whatever taps
the government likes acceptable for insurance companies and the police,
and hence for shopowners etc), and putting a fairly high penalty on
using unauthorized cameras and their images. The latter law would of
course be hard to enforce, but that is not the point - if the police
find a link between you and a camera they can put you away for quite
some time, so it would rather work by having everybody hide stuff even
more and give a bit more power to the police, while at the same time not
giving much more leverage to citizens against the major powers. A "war
on (unauthorized) cameras" is not impossible. Imagine politicians
speaking loudly in favor of the right to privacy and how sexual perverts
and criminals employ the cameras. Idiotic, of course, but it can be
quite damaging.
This worst-case scenario is what we have to avoid. It is not just about
laws, but as you say creating the mindset that can handle this
technology.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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