> Another example is road traffic law. Even just speeding offences, I think you probably catch everyone who actually drives in the UK, often enough that after a month the only people left allowed to drive would be people like me who don't even own a car.

You don't have to strip the driving licenses. You should impose a fine and not an extremely painful one for starters.

And then probably within less than a year the whole population will drive properly.

I think I'm in favor of indiscriminately fining everyone speeding at every camera, but I realize there is no privacy-preserving way to do it today thus I will be against it.

(I'm a driver and car lover who is never speeding)

> Even just speeding offences, I think you probably catch everyone who actually drives in the UK,

So we have a fucktonne of speed cameras allover the place: https://www.speedcameramap.co.uk/ (you need to zoom in there are so fucking many)

But we have less redlight cameras than the US. we also have hatching cameras (yellow hatched boxes mean no stopping, usually at junctions) we also have bus lane cameras, where if you drive in a buslane you get a fine.

For the Speed cameras, they are normally put there based on evidence of road deaths linked to speeding. I dont like speed cameras, but they do serve a purpose.

When you get a speeding ticket, if its your first offence, you can take a speed awareness course, and you won't get points on your license. otherwise its three points and a £100 fine. The points age out after 3 years. the maximum you can normally get is 12 points on your license.

Its only in extreme cases do you get a ban, or license revoked.

The reason why people are still able to drive are numerous:

1) its been a gradual evolution.

2) we have fairly robust training for drivers (theory, comprehensive real world test)

3) Evidence based placement. Its not like they just shove these things where poor people live (or in the US where the city has zoned living for people with more melanin than others). If there are higher than average road crashes, the road is re-made to make it safer, speed limits dropped, traffic calming put in place, then speed cameras.

4) You are expected to follow the traffic rules

5) the traffic rules are actually pretty sensible.

I'm going to argue the other side: in Chinese cities like Chongqing they've seen a drastic reduction in crime after blanketing the city with cameras and monitoring technology.

Whole categories of crime disappeared. Women and elderly feel safe to walk the streets at night. No one locks their bike anymore in Chongqing.

I care about privacy, but I think we should be smart enough to work out a way to get some of those benefits without going full 1984. For example by having surveillance that can only be queried by an AI with very strong guard rails.

Admittedly, I live in a country with very strong democratic institutions, and I trust we would take action the moment something gets abused or surveillance overreaches. I would probably feel differently living elsewhere.

Speeding is a special case, because it's unclear what the lawmakers, road designers, and police intend. When the speed limit is 65 mph, do they actually intend for everyone to go no faster? I don't think so. I think the lawmakers, if driving in traffic, want people to go a bit faster. Same with the police. And I think the road designers design the roads knowing most people will speed.

I want to follow the law. But when it comes to speeding, it's hard for me to follow the letter of the law, because all the parties involved in creating and enforcing the law don't want me to follow the letter of the law. So I instead follow the intent of the law, and speed up to 9mph. When Google Maps pops up a "police ahead" warning, I don't slow down at all, because I'm following the intent of the law, and that's what police around where I live enforce. If I'm driving in other areas of the country, I'm less certain what police want, so I'll be more likely to follow the letter of the law.

If there was automated strict enforcement of speeding, then it would be clear to me that the letter of the law is the intent, so I would gladly obey the letter of the law. There would certainly need to be a transition period with clear warnings that in the future, the letter of the law will be enforced, instead of the current status of something looser.

I was a bit unclear. I agree, I don't want the government using AI to identify all violations of the law. That sounds like a very straightforward dystopia.

What I don't mind is private companies using AI analysis to support their security guards. I object to any sharing of the data with third parties though. It should be illegal for the data to leave their internal network and it should be illegal to retain it for more than a few days.

I don't care if grocery store loss prevention has eyes on every aisle. My concern is data warehousing and subsequent misuse.

Speed cameras are a source of income, they are not for enforcement or safety.

I have a friend that was just fired from a job, driving 18-wheelers, because he was being monitored by an AI, and the AI malfunctioned, yelling at him for hours to put on his seat belt (it was on). He put a piece of tape over the speaker, and was fired for that.

One of the best, and most experienced big rig truckers in the area. They lost an invaluable employee, and he got another job in minutes (truckers are still a valuable commodity).

One of the things about computers, is that they can’t cut you (or themselves) slack.

> The entire legal system has to be radically changed with far less punishments for almost everything if you have perfect, or even 30% of the way to perfect, surveillance.

Prosecutorial discretion means they can just collect evidence and choose not to charge you unless they want to leverage you for something. This already happens, but universal surveillance means it can literally happen to anybody, because everybody breaks the law in some way due to how many laws we have.

Discretion is the real problem I think. It seems extreme, but maybe discretion should be eliminated: if you commit a crime you will be charged. This will at first result in way too much prosecution, which will lead to protests and hopefully repealing laws and we'd end up in a better place where the law is understandable and predictable by mortals.