Wow. Didn't foresee the celebrity-spotting angle of govt surveillance. Anomaly?

[MacAttack]

Police criticised over spy-cam tweet of comedian Michael McIntyre in street

The biggest civil rights issue of the day in the developed world will not be gay marriage, but privacy.

 

[Formaldehyde]

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Google Chairman Eric Schmidt

"Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are." Google Chairman Eric Schmidt

"We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about." Google Chairman Eric Schmidt

"I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce." J. Edgar Hoover

"Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs." Richard M. Nixon

 

[MacAttack]

"Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs." Richard M. Nixon

Says the man who taped all his oval office conversations....

 

[El_Machinae]

It's going to require a shift in perspective, for sure. In the end, recording devices are going to get better, cheaper, and smaller. And this will have a balancing effect on people's physical capabilities. My ability to remember a conversation with my bad memory is the same as yours if we both record it.

Right now, we have a presumption that we're not going being recorded. But we are, very often. Just with fallible meat sensors and fallible meat recording devices. The thing is, though, you can see my human head and you can guess my capabilities to observe you. But with technology, the devices are both smaller and of greater capability.

 

[Formaldehyde]

No public bathroom is safe anymore.

 

[MacAttack]

No public bathroom is safe anymore.

Ask Johnny Manziel on that one!

 

[Paul in Saudi]

Think of what this will mean for future historians. If we presume no data will ever be thrown away. And if we presume computer power will allow ever-easier searches of vast piles of data, our only protection is being boring.

Some kid is alive today who will be President in 50 years. A future biographer will be able to trace is youthful interest in "Cheerleaders in Bondage" and relate it to his creepy e-mails to the man he would one day marry.

Think of it, there might be legal protections in the short term, but at some point, they melt away. If we could read Abe Lincoln's tweets about Gettysburg we would. If we could see the selfies taken during the Glorious Revolution, we would. After all, the long-dead would have no protection at all from snoops.

So would we think less of Honest Abe is we could read all his e-mails? Would we cut everyone massive slack knowing our own comings and going could just as easily be called up to embarrass us? Perhaps we would have to develop some sort of privacy suicide pact.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Speaking of which, Obama just mysteriously admitted that he could have apparently been imprisoned himself.

Both publicly and privately, Obama acknowledges that his mischievous, sometimes marijuana-fueled adolescence in Hawaii might have brought about a very different adulthood had it taken place somewhere else.

“That’s what strikes me — there but for the grace of God,” he said, standing in the middle of Cell Block B, which houses a special drug rehab program. “And that is something that we all have to think about.”

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Right now, we have a presumption that we're not going being recorded. But we are, very often.

I always assume that when I speak to a customer service agent the call is being recorded. Sometimes a belligerent agent will even try to intimidate me with a "this call is being recorded" threat... to which I reply, "Excellent. That way your supervisors will know what a poor job you're doing."

 

[BvBPL]

Exactly what are the bounds of privacy for someone walking down a public street?

 

[Formaldehyde]

The police use Facebook to follow you wherever you go.

And if you are black or Muslim in NYC you can be frisked at any time.

 

[Narz]

It's going to require a shift in perspective, for sure. In the end, recording devices are going to get better, cheaper, and smaller. And this will have a balancing effect on people's physical capabilities. My ability to remember a conversation with my bad memory is the same as yours if we both record it.

"Now what folder did I save that audio file in?"

 

[innonimatu]

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Google Chairman Eric Schmidt

"Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are." Google Chairman Eric Schmidt

"We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about." Google Chairman Eric Schmidt

"I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce." J. Edgar Hoover

"Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs." Richard M. Nixon

"You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." Scott McNealy, 1999

It's a technological inevitability. How you get over it is the one thing to decide.

Is access to the formerly private information going to be openly sold to those who can pay? Be made freely available? Or hoarded by a few, while maintaining the illusion of privacy, and used for blackmail?