[Cryptography] "Most Americans Don't Mind Being on Candid Camera"

Florian Weimer fw at deneb.enyo.de
Fri Mar 27 13:57:51 EDT 2015


> Personally I think the surveillance genie is out of the bottle and
> will never go back.  Over the long term, technology trumps law, not
> the other way around.

Perceptions of reasonable trade-offs change over time.

Germany ceased to track people by marking them with radioactive
isotopes, although the technology has improved considerably since the
practice was abolished.

> However, what I am not keen on - actually what I think is the threat
> to the very nature of the democratic and free societies we were taught
> about in school - is that the intelligence agencies then use their
> broad and well-funded surveillance powers on everyone, *and then hand
> the data over to the police*.

It's difficult to deal with domestic threats in any other way.  The
people caught in the dragnet have rights; they are often citizens or
at least legal residents.

I think the many of the current problems are caused by the desire to
keep (surveillance) capabilities secret for some reason.  This means
that we suddenly have secret evidence in what should be an ordinary
criminal trial.


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