this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
417 points (94.3% liked)
Technology
59581 readers
3058 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I love threads like these because it really shows how flexible opinions are, post about ai surveillance state and everyone is against it but post about car drivers getting fined for not wearing a seatbelt and everyone loves it.
This is a weird phenomenon. Feels a bit like how focusing on "welfare queens" / "dole bludgers" can pave the way for similar privacy erosion (and welfare cuts) even though its a tiny percentage of the people. Seems a short hop away from "if you've got nothing to hide...."
Except in this case being a poor driver actively puts others at risk rather than just being a drain on tax money.
Seatbelts I don't really care about, because with that people mostly just affect themselves (or others in the same car), but for other infractions it makes sense.
The real issue is whether you can trust that the data will only be used for its intended purpose, as right now there are basically no good mechanisms to prevent misuse.
If we had cameras where you could somehow guarantee that - no access for reason other than stated, only when flagged or otherwise by court order, all access to footage logged with the audit log being publicly available, independent system flagging suspicious accesses to any footage, etc. - it wouldn't be too bad.
Compared to all the private cameras that exist in cars these days...
You know the best way to not have absolute power corrupt? Not have absolute power.
If you collect this data there is degree of probability that eventually it will be abused. If you don't collect this data there is zero chance.
Some > none
Good government is about assuming the worse and decided if you are willing to endure that. If the absolute worse humans you can imagine were put into office how much bad can they do?
In it's current form it's good technology. It's all fine as long as you're chasing after crimes we all agree are bad* It's the slippery slope I'm worried about. Just a matter of time untill this is going to be used for something malicious we don't agree with.
*I don't care if front seat passengers wear a seatbelt or not as long as they're adults.
The slippery slope is what makes this not okay. It's a completely unnecessary invasion of privacy in the guise of "safety".
I'd love to see some statistics showing that these things are anything other than an additional tax on the drivers. This is bad for everyone and it desensitizes you and opens the door to further surveillance I'm the future.
"Slippery slope" is a common argument but usually flawed. In this case, driving is an extraordinarily regulated privilege and despite that, it still results in massive deaths and permanent life changing injury every year. In the US, car crashes are the number one cause of death for children. It's difficult to draw a line between expanding driving enforcement to gross losses in privacy like many here are envisioning.
It also ignores the benefits to civil rights. Again, I don't know about the UK but in the US, traffic enforcement by police is very unevenly applied. Minorities routinely get their privacy violated on pretexts while cops don't even pay lip service to the rules.
I am just waiting for the article in the year that shows this system falsely reports darker skin people as breaking the law more often. It sees their hand and decides that the hand looks like a black cellphone or something.
Just like literally every other automated system with a camera that evaluates people.
Just as an aside, gun violence is now the leading cause of death for children in the US; vehicle collisions are now 2nd, due to gun violence increasing and vehicle collisions decreasing.
It isn't though.
It isn't unnecessary invasion of privacy. You have no expectation of privacy when driving around on public streets, and to say you're allowed to break the law and use personal privacy as an excuse is absurd.
While I don't disagree with the statement around privacy in public, I would encourage you to temper that thought with the realization that when that was developed we did not have the ability to be everywhere at once with cameras or fly drones over people's homes or track cellphones with GPS or use computers to process this information.
This information can and has been abused.
Maybe we should change our expectations to SOME privacy in public.
If there was no expectation of privacy why do governments get upset about window tinting and license plate laser blocking and radar detectors? It should be no different than curtains, shutters, and any other form of passive radio.
Yeah people say this but it isn't really true. If I was following, posting logs, taking photos, posting online those photos and logs of some kid in your family I am pretty sure this would bother you. Way back in my uni days there was an incident about someone doing that to the coeds on campus. The school was able to stop it solely because he used the school computer not by some legal mechanism.
You only think you have no expectation of privacy when no one tries to violate it.
Happens to celebrities. The reason it doesn't happen to me is I'm not very interesting.
But it been annoying isn't really the point it's not how the law works. I don't make the law, I'm just pointing out that how the law works, and under the law you have no expectation of privacy in public.
A beautiful strawman. This is about driving and traffic enforcement by the government, not creepy campus stalking by a crazy person.
There is no conceivable reality where the government will publicly post your movements for everyone to see based this system. None.
Does expectation of privacy disappear if there is no abuse? I wonder because expectation of privacy is about belief not based on motivations or integrity of others.
You're still beating up that strawman. Expectations of privacy change based on context. Driving = no. Walking around = yes.
At least in the US, I believe this is actual legal case law so I'm not making stuff up here.
So I am allowed to use a radar detector and record cops?
I am not okay with this. Seatbelt wearing is a private matter. Yes, I wear mine.
The issue is these people getting into accidents requiring preventable extensive medical help is not just a private matter.
Very well. Maybe we should start fining people for being fat or not working out or not eating enough veggies.
Leave it to the car insurance companies to take a great idea like universal healthcare and use it to restrict our rights.
I'm sorry but I don't agree that just because you want to do something means you should have an automatic right to do that thing. Freedom to do what you want has to be tempered against the damage that is done to society by you doing that thing.
Yeah take not wearing a seatbelt, the damage to society, the amount of money society has to expend if you mess up and crash is a lot higher if you're not wearing a seat belt than if you were. Given that the damage to society, the amount of money your actions cost to fix, I think it's acceptable that the ability to not wear a seatbelt is a restricted freedom.
We don't all live in a universe where every action we take has no consequences. Every time you decide to be an idiot, you are not just affecting yourself, but everyone else as well.
Take smoking in public, that freedom has been restricted in most countries in the world because quite a lot of people don't want to have to breathe in your smoke. It's not about you, it's about how your actions affect everyone else.
Selfish people don't like this because they think that they should be allowed to be a jackass to everyone and no one else should have the right or authority to prevent them from doing that. The jackasses are by default not operating within the established rules of civilisation, they wish to be independent of it but still make use of it.
And to put it technically, they can sod off.
It's actually not in the UK, it's the law and it's the responsibility of the driver to make sure they're being worn.
Surely the ultimate come away from that is will not ok with people breaking the law and we're not ok with AI taking people's jobs. There is no conflict here
So you think most people like the idea of a surveillance state automaticly enforcing it's every whim with perfect efficiency?
I'm pretty sure that's something pretty much universally disliked
You don't know many authoritarian.
Course, they only think this should apply to everyone elae.
I don't think I said that did I
I just wish they would have one where I live to fine all the people using the HOV lane who aren't supposed to be
Then we watch the numbers plummet and see there's only actually 5% of people using the lane and finally see how useless the hiv lane is so we can just make it a regular third lane.
The HOV lane is supposed to look empty. If it was packed full of cars, carpooling wouldn't have any advantage because you wouldn't go any faster.
It doesn't work that well around here, cause there's inevitably that one car that refuses to go faster than the rest of the traffic that it's separated from. Or slows down to 10mph when the rest of the highway is stop and go, despite there being a barrier. Then someone gets rear ended because no one was expecting the lane to be going 10mph (and were on their phone), and the accident closes down the lane entirely
Basically, by me, the HOV lane is slower than traffic 90% of the time. Even in stop and go, because that lane is actually the one containing the accident causing the traffic.
Well, uhh, sounds like you could use some more traffic enforcement there. Maybe with AI and cameras ;)
I thought the advantage of carpooling was saving money on gas and car maintenance. Also, environment.
I am not pro seat belt laws. It is your life and you should be able to throw it away if you want.
Not wearing a seatbelt reduces the security of others. If you want to throw it away, that's a different matter and should not be handled through seat belt laws.
Please show me the multiple double blind studies that you used to arrive at that conclusion.
Source: I fucking made it up.
But isn't it simple logic? Maybe a driver pulls the wheel a bit too hard, due to having no belt loses balance, boom, he hits someone.
It might be "logical" but I prefer evidence-based policy. Especially when we are restricting individual rights.
What if it was something you cared about? What if I don't know your favorite form of music was going to be criminalized, would you accept "logical" as justification?
That is a ridiculous straw man arguement and the fact you came up with it basically indicates you have no actual interest in a proper debate.
We are taking not wearing a seat belt against restricting music.
One of them has real obvious reasons for restricting it decreases everybody else's safety by you not wearing a seatbelt.
There is no public safety consideration for banning a particular genre of music.
It is appropriate to impose limited freedom restrictions in cases where not doing so would result in potential issues for other people.
For example you are not allowed to play excessively loud music after a certain amount of time because that affects other people. But music is not banned outright and a genre of music would never be banned outright because that would be obviously ridiculous.
If you're going to have this conversation at least be reasonable.
Answering questions is easier than attacking questions.
People not wearing seatbelts unnecessarily binds medical personal and costs money in healthcare when there is an accident.
There is no rational reason of why someone should refuse to wear a seatbelt beyond "I just don't want to". It's different from more complex matters like being fat or not going to the dentist or whatever. And yes, there is actual research that shows that some behaviour is more complex than other behaviour.