[sudo-discuss] Dystopia Watch: Surveillance drones coming to a cafe near you.

[Steve Berl]

You could carry a boombox around playing loud music where ever you go.
Perhaps this would be the end of earbuds. :-)

On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 10:20 AM, Anthony Di Franco <di.franco at gmail.com>wrote:

> People have rendered surveillance cameras useless with very bright IR LEDs
> in their fields of view.
> Could something similar be done for sound recording devices?
> On Mar 5, 2013 6:17 AM, "Anon195714" <anon195714 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> Yo's-
>>
>> Something I forgot to add re. DARPA's desire for universal recording of
>> face-to-face conversations.
>>
>> What's the ideal device for doing all that recording?
>>
>> How'bout something you wear?  How'bout something that "everyone" wears?,
>> or even a significant fraction of "everyone"?
>>
>> Like maybe Google Glasses.
>>
>> Always on, camera and mic always "connected" to "the cloud."  Orwell's
>> telescreen gone mobile.
>>
>> Everyone who wears them will become, in effect, _unpaid surveillance
>> drones_ watching their family and friends, not from up in the sky, but
>> from up close where every word can be heard.
>>
>> Some will say "oh, there's no stopping technology." People said that
>> about the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb.  But public outcry led
>> first to treaties and then to progressive degrees of nuclear
>> disarmament.  We haven't used that technology since it was first used in
>> WW2.
>>
>> We can stop pernicious tech if we choose.  We can refuse, we can
>> withdraw consent, we do not have to press the Buy button.
>>
>> Technology should liberate and empower people.  "Conveniences with a few
>> strings attached" are not liberation, they're puppet-strings.
>>
>> It's all about control: technology that you can control, vs. technology
>> that can control you.
>>
>> -G.
>>
>>
>> =====
>>
>>
>> On 13-03-05-Tue 1:50 AM, Anon195714 wrote:
>> >
>> > Yo's-
>> >
>> > This just in:
>> >
>> > "DARPA wants to make [voice recognition/transcription] systems so
>> > accurate, you’ll be able to easily record, transcribe and recall all the
>> > conversations you ever have. ... Imagine living in a world where every
>> > errant utterance you make is preserved forever. ... DARPA [awarded
>> > U.Texas comp sci researcher Matt Lease]... $300,000... over two years to
>> > study the new project, called “Blending Crowdsourcing with Automation
>> > for Fast, Cheap, and Accurate Analysis of Spontaneous Speech.”"
>> >
>> > "The idea is that business meetings or even conversations with your
>> > friends and family could be stored in archives and easily searched. The
>> > stored recordings could be held in servers, owned either by individuals
>> > or their employers. ... The answer, Lease says, is in widespread use of
>> > recording technologies like smartphones, cameras and audio recorders...
>> > [A] memorandum from the Congressional Research Service described [an
>> > earlier DARPA project of this type known as] EARS, as focusing on speech
>> > picked up from broadcasts and telephone conversations, “as well as
>> > extract clues about the identity of speakers” for “the military,
>> > intelligence and law enforcement communities.”"
>> >
>> > http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/03/darpa-speech/ (Yes, "real geeks
>> > don't read Wired," but nonetheless its news pages are useful for keeping
>> > a finger on the pulse of Big Brother and his corporate Brethren.)
>> >
>> > In short:
>> >
>> > DARPA is researching the means by which every conversation you have,
>> > in-person, whether at work or with family or friends, gets picked up by
>> > the mic in your smartphone or other portable device, and stored on a
>> > server, where DARPA's algorithms and human editors turn all of it into
>> > fast-searchable text, that could be used by your employer, the military,
>> > law enforcement, and intel agencies. Presumably the credit bureaus,
>> > insurance companies, and financial institutions will want "in" on the
>> > data as well.
>> >
>> > Now connect that with this, about cell-site tracking and call detail
>> > records:
>> >
>> > "The government maintained [that] Americans have no expectation of
>> > privacy of such cell-site records [call detail records or CDR] because
>> > they are in the possession of a third party — the mobile phone
>> companies."
>> >
>> > http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/03/gps-drug-dealer-retrial/
>> >
>> > The key point is that the gov's current position is that data stored on
>> > a third party's servers have "no expectation of privacy." What begins
>> > with CDR will eventually include voicemail messages stored on the mobile
>> > phone companies' servers, and then eventually all of your live in-person
>> > conversations that are stored "in the cloud."
>> >
>> > "Anything you say can and will be used against you..." Mark my words.
>> >
>> > Meanwhile people keep using gmail and Google Voice, and smartphones from
>> > which they can't remove the batteries. Because nothing is more important
>> > than "convenience," right?
>> >
>> > As a character in a sci-fi piece I wrote in the mid-1980s said, "Why put
>> > a person in prison, when you can put prison in the person instead?"
>> >
>> > -G.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
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>> >
>>
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-- 
-steve
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