• andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      6 months ago

      In fairness, the mass surveillance is just more evenly distributed when civilian dashcams are proliferated.

      • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        42
        ·
        6 months ago

        I’m a lot more ok with many people having non internet connected dashcams than one corporation having continuous access to a giant network of cameras

        • grue@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          30
          ·
          6 months ago

          Surveillance apologists like to make the argument that “in public you have no expectation of privacy.” But what they don’t seem to understand is that having centralized networks of cameras (and especially ones hooked up to things like facial recognition databases) creates a whole new third level that goes beyond merely “in public” and instead becomes a panopticon.

          “In public” a person might remember seeing you at a certain time and location, but that doesn’t mean they can trace back your whole location history along with that of everyone who was ever near you at some point along it and feed it into a computer looking for suspicious patterns. When somebody tries to follow you closely enough to do that, we call it “stalking” and it’s a crime.

          But somehow once thing “X” becomes “X, but with a computer” lawmakers think it’s magic or some shit and previously-criminal stuff suddenly becomes A-OK! So now everybody is being criminally stalked by Ring (i.e. Amazon), Nest (i.e. Google), etc., and too many people are too computer-illiterate to even begin to grasp what a massive problem that is.

          • intensely_human@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            6 months ago

            The reason it doesn’t seem like a problem isn’t just ignorance, but also form factor. If someone were to start putting stickers that look like staring eyes on ring cameras, it might drive the point home more viscerally.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        6 months ago

        Still not ok, when there is no downside for lying on a police report. Not everyone will be lucky enough to get dashcam footage contradicting four police offices conspiring to lie