Comment by ctrl-j | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ctrl-j | Hacker News Reader

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> Devil’s advocate here. Who’s to say they won’t use it strictly to deter drug trafficking and terrorism? Couldn’t they take steps to be transparent about what data is collected, and where it goes?

What systems would you put into place to prevent abuse?

What about bad cops who would misappropriate the intel?

What would prevent them from tracking non-terrorist/drug related individuals?

How do you prevent citizens from being followed and tracked without a warrant?

And if misuse or abuse does happen, how is that transparently shared with the victim?

This is a weak place to argue that slippery slope doesn't apply, since the government has already had a lot of incidents in the recent past where they said they weren't doing certain surveillance - and then it was leaked that they actually were...

If you could say 100% that these balloons will only ever capture data based on legal warrants - we might have something to discuss. However, I can't think of a system that would guarantee that.

I can think of a system : at the next election, vote for a president with a program about systemic transparency and openness for all the agencies and organizations.

Transparency is not a passive feature, it requires active and vigilant maintenance to be effective. In this case, any and all access to any and all instances of any and all imagery must be controlled and accounted for in perpetuity or you lose transparency.

Allowing a system like this to be implemented under the guise of 'full transparency' is like a political trojan horse. All it takes is a loss of priority in that objective by the same or subsequent administration and you're left with a snake that you can't get back into the bag.

> Allowing a system like this to be implemented under the guise of 'full transparency' is like a political trojan horse. All it takes is a loss of priority in that objective by the same or subsequent administration

I didn't mean we could implement transparency with Pentagon's balloons, I meant : eventually, vote for a president or a party that would cancel that project for the name of privacy and transparency.

What do you do if the president doesn't implement that plan after they are elected? Not vote for then again in four years and hope your next choice follows through?

You would first try to understand why it didn't work, then judge afterward. The party or president you will vote for won't change everything overnight. The president decides about a direction to take, and the administrative and legal machineries work toward it. Fundamental new concepts such as transparency (build upon new communication technologies) will take time to include in every decisions. Anyway, if after 5 years you feel betrayed, take a look at the recent news about how people deal with it : Sudan, France, Algeria, Hong Kong, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, people riot. If you cannot riot because everyone owns a gun, then you are out of luck, I guess.

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