Apple today announced Siri Recap, a new feature in their upcoming Apple Watches that will allow it to generate a summary of conversations you have throughout the day.
I sometimes wonder what the outcome would be if instead of protecting privacy, we switched to nullifying the asymmetry of surveillance.
I’m not advocating for this: I know this idea is radical and unpopular and likely very dangerous. But if a majority of us concluded that we’d reached a point where protecting our individual privacy was no longer possible, what would it look like if we accepted a panopticon society, but through law and hacking, forced the information to be universally available to all?
What if my movements and political attitudes and sexual preferences were tracked by the government, but rather than being known exclusively to the state, this was public information, as were the identities of every member of law enforcement and their locations, associations, and thoughts too.
Would it level the playing field? Would it break the state’s love of surveillance if the tools couldn’t be contained for their use? I rather hope we don’t reach the point where we need to test this.
I sometimes wonder what the outcome would be if instead of protecting privacy, we switched to nullifying the asymmetry of surveillance.
I’m not advocating for this: I know this idea is radical and unpopular and likely very dangerous. But if a majority of us concluded that we’d reached a point where protecting our individual privacy was no longer possible, what would it look like if we accepted a panopticon society, but through law and hacking, forced the information to be universally available to all?
What if my movements and political attitudes and sexual preferences were tracked by the government, but rather than being known exclusively to the state, this was public information, as were the identities of every member of law enforcement and their locations, associations, and thoughts too.
Would it level the playing field? Would it break the state’s love of surveillance if the tools couldn’t be contained for their use? I rather hope we don’t reach the point where we need to test this.