tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2916265875715734.post2660279720548955955..comments2013-08-29T23:41:35.508-07:00Comments on Who Should Be Wiretapped ?: More news roundupThomas Daultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17253366531662635642noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2916265875715734.post-89238031721184968982013-08-02T09:49:51.734-07:002013-08-02T09:49:51.734-07:00Whoops, when I said "Complexity of a society ...Whoops, when I said "Complexity of a society tends to increase, until collapse", I meant to link to this article:<br /><a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.financialsense.com%2Fcontributors%2Fugo-bardi%2Fpeak-civilization&ei=bOH7UZ22JtHZigKaxYDAAw&usg=AFQjCNFxgiYU_cl8Hdd1zm8bh1REEOcR4g&sig2=rKiDKpKjYliJEly3-liaAQ&bvm=bv.50165853,d.cGE" rel="nofollow">Ugo Bardi - Peak Complexity</a><br /><br />A fascinating article, long and intellectual, but I think well worth a read. <br /><br />In the end, I don't lose a lot of sleep over this whole issue, because I think the complexity inherent in surveilling and <b><i>processing and understanding</i></b> the surveillance data in any meaningful way is just too much complexity to be maintained in the long term. This situation will eventually pass. <br /><br />My current worry is, in the years before this situation eventually passes, the rich and powerful will be the ones who can invent and exploit loopholes in the surveillance. And with this as in other societal issues, as the rich and powerful fight to maintain their privilege in the face of environmental, economic, and energy collapse, this is one tool with which they're going to casually bring about a lot of depredation, government abuse, misery an suffering for the 99% of us on the bottom of the pyramid. Thomas Daultonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17253366531662635642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2916265875715734.post-6170848144287510702013-08-02T09:40:07.606-07:002013-08-02T09:40:07.606-07:00So, say that you were offered a job at a "loc...So, say that you were offered a job at a "local drone company" that <b><i>was</i></b> building drones specifically for surveillance. But they were for sale to everybody, government and the general public. Would that be amoral? Not according to the terms of this blog. Once again, this blog talks mainly about the one-sidedness of the surveillance as it's currently being implemented. <b><i>They</i></b> can spy upon us, but <b><i>we</i></b> can't spy upon them. Selling spy drones to the public would help rectify the imbalance. People could catch things like police brutality or perhaps even graft with their cameras -- imagine a passing drone capturing a picture of a politician meeting with a mob boss. That would <b><i>help</i></b> even out the imbalance where the police and NSA can at will track our movements and gin up suspicious patterns according to their whim. I don't particularly <b><i>like</i></b> the idea of a surveillance arms race between the public and the government, I'm not sure I would actually buy a drone and participate, but in terms of morality that would be righting an imbalance.<br /><br />So as you can see, one of the reasons we find ourselves in this difficult and unpleasant muddle of murky moral questions is because the complexity of a society tends to increase. Until collapse. There aren't any simple black-and-white questions anymore. Which is one reason I'm blabbering about this on the blog so much. This is a complex issue which the pro-surveillance people, and even the "no opinion" people, are looking at and discussing in black-and-white terms. "Hey, leave this issue alone," they're all saying, "because it's only supposed to be the good guys surveilling the bad guys. Anything else is trivial, just a simple error or a criminal misuse." Well, what if it's not?<br /><br />So then we come to the black-and-white case. What if your "local drone company" offers you a job which you know is specifically producing surveillance drones for the government to use domestically on people like yourself?<br /><br />In that case I'd say -- and I'm not sure why anyone would take me as a moral authority, I'm just tossing up my opinion on the Internet --<br /><br />In that case I'd say it's analogous to working for a gun factory or a military bomb-maker. In an ideal world, nobody would take those jobs. In an ideal world, they'd be unnecessary as well as immoral. The people in the <b><i>real</i></b> world who do end up taking those jobs probably believe in their own personal morality which says the need for surveilling terrorists outweighs the side effects of the little baby steps they're taking towards creating a police state. In that case, their disagreement with me is probably about the moral principles, far beyond just the wage job. I would have to work on changing their moral principles before I ever had any success convincing them that their job was amoral. We'd have to have the bigger discussion.<br /><br />The bigger discussion is just what society lacks right now. The fundamental problem is not whether Joe Sixpack or Frannie Receptionist takes a job at a drone company, so I'm not inclined to quibble with X or Y individual about their particular employment. The fundamental problem is that the whole society is slouching towards fascism in numerous different ways, beyond any individual effort at a drone factory or NSA switchboard. <br /><br />I think I quoted a friend in an earlier post, who said "We are hellbent towards creating this future," [the surveillance society], "all we can do is see what it looks like when we get there." I'm not in the business of offering career advice, I'd just like to get people to take a good look at what this society <b><i>is</i></b> shaping up to look like when we get there.Thomas Daultonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17253366531662635642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2916265875715734.post-55627615827228439542013-08-02T09:39:35.839-07:002013-08-02T09:39:35.839-07:00Whoa! A Comment!! My first! I'd given up lo...Whoa! A Comment!! My first! I'd given up looking! Sorry for the long delay!<br /><br />To answer your question, well, it's not black-and-white. (I do want to point out that my opinion on the whole surveillance issue is not that it's black-and-white; my opinion is to say there are nuances that aren't being discussed by the "Oh-well-that's-how-things-are-these-days" crowd.)<br /><br />Drones, the techno-utopians are telling us, are going to start filling our skies in a year or two, and they'll be used for all sorts of civilian purposes besides surveillance.<br /><a href="http://seriouslyforreal.com/seriously-for-real/ufo-in-shanghai-found-to-be-cake-deliverer-includes-pizza-drone0/" rel="nofollow">Shanghai: Drone delivery of cakes, pizza</a><br /><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/14/wedding-ring-copter/" rel="nofollow">Drones deliver wedding rings</a><br />Once again, I'm not sure I approve of this whole thing, but nobody's asking me for my permission. This is one of those tech-geek ideas that <b><i>somebody somewhere</i></b> is <b><i>not</i></b> going to give up on removing the technical and legal hurdles, until he runs a business. <i>Into the ground</i>, that is, because my main objection is that I think it's inherently too complex and expensive to make a living off of it. But I digress. Anyway, back to your question, if the local drone company is not making drones specifically for surveillance, then I don't think I can say it's immoral. <br /><br />Or amoral. Which is an interesting distinction. All jobs in the Capitalist system, I think, are inherently designed to be _A_moral. As originally conceived, I think society was supposed to regulate Capitalism's morality through other means, such as religion and politics. But now those outside influences have basically withered away to subservience of Capitalsim. But I digress again. Thomas Daultonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17253366531662635642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2916265875715734.post-5372152913444663292013-07-30T10:49:15.859-07:002013-07-30T10:49:15.859-07:00Would it be amoral to start working for the local ...Would it be amoral to start working for the local drone company?Woodyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03831399749682006124noreply@blogger.com