Why NSA Surveillance Scares Me
A HNer, whose identity shall remain undisclosed, posted an insightful extension of the statistic games that later got deleted, probably because of the downvotes. I believe this is an important thing to consider, so let me take the karma hit and restate the problem.<p>The poster pointed out that if we&#x27;re taking a 3000 years view, it&#x27;s worth considering the great filter hypothesis[0]. If one is to believe it&#x27;s ahead of us (as an explanation for why we haven&#x27;t seen any signs of aliens yet, and mind you, this is not a joke), then it stands to reason we&#x27;ll likely fuck ourselves over with some future technology. Given that, mass surveillance may be a way to avoid this fate.<p>Also, the poster pointed out that &quot;the debate is silly. This level of surveillance is inevitable.&quot;<p>--<p>The comment I was about to post in response:<p>Actually, I do agree, for two reasons.<p>1&#x2F; SIGINT is basically inevitable, barring total collapse of technological civilization. We&#x27;re only starting to be good at data gathering and processing, and there is no reason to suspect we won&#x27;t be getting much better very quickly. Look - 100 years ago we could barely record a person&#x27;s voice. Today, we use sound to acquire pictures. We use light to acquire sound. Between cheap microphones being good enough to pin-point the position of a firearm discharge in a big city and your mobile phone about to be equipped with a 3D geometry sensor and <i>a fucking radar on a chip</i>, with NASA being able to map ocean floor using <i>gravity sensors</i>, that by the way happen to be Cold War-era technology, does anyone really believe we can stop mass surveillance? It&#x27;s a side effect of useful high-tech tools. You basically can&#x27;t have one without the other.<p>2&#x2F; Progress of technology also keeps increasing the amount of power a single person can wield. Throughout almost all history, the biggest damage an ordinary individual could do to other people is to set something on fire. Burn down a building, maybe. 100 years ago, an ordinary citizen could at best drive someone over, or blow something up. In the last few decades, bombs had become easy, and people were worried about terrorists with crude nukes. Today, a teenage hacker could do anything from blowing up a gas station to shutting down power in a large area. <i>Tomorrow</i>, your high-school friend may be playing with potentially dangerous viruses in their basement.<p>This is not a joke. We&#x27;re entering an era where playing with self-replicating machines is getting very easy very quickly. Today it&#x27;s not just big biotech companies doing that - your local hackerspace is most likely doing baby steps with reprogramming bacteria too.<p>Now tell me, honestly, <i>how are we going to defend against that</i>? And keep in mind - it&#x27;s not the angry that are the problem. It&#x27;s the crazy ones.<p>Surveillance will probably have to be a part of the answer, but I fear it will be far from enough.<p>[0] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Great_Filter" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Great_Filter</a>