alt Hacker NewsWhat’s the fix? What’s a simple rule change that would, at the very least, take these data out of law enforcement’s hands outside the most-necessary situations?
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An open source community driven surveillance network that alerts the community when it is accessed by a select list of “trusted” governing officials. Clearly outlined access rules that are policy driven, technically controlled and auditable.
Sure Flock, we buy your safety pitch. We just don’t trust you.
None, because they are above the rules. You need actual enforcement.
Or the other guy's community network idea but it would have to also publish the realtime activities and whereabouts of all politicians who voted against making this illegal.
Much like the law that stopped video rental companies from telling what their customers were renting, that passed after some politicians had their video rental histories leaked.
The straightforward broad brush fix is a US port of the GDPR. Make mass surveillance commercially unlucrative, and most of the data currently available to the government won't be collected in the first place. Furthermore, it's a basic line in the sand that gives individuals an idea that privacy is an actionable right, not just something to powerlessly complain about.
That this culture shift would need time to trickle down into positive bans on surveillance performed by the government (eg Flock), or requiring audit trails for government use of commercial data that still gets collected, shows how far we're behind.
(I use the word "port" to indicate that we need to avoid letting lobbyists stuff it full of loopholes and regulatory capture the way everything else is. Heck I think we could do worse than copying the text verbatim and letting the courts sort it out)
The older and more jaded I get, the more I think that the only way to fix this mess before we all die of climate change is to dump the entire US government off a cliff and write a new constitution.
As the founding fathers intended.
You may not realize it but this isn't even about law enforcement. It's also about tech companies having the data. What they will do with it, who they will sell or leak it too.
It's about the amount of data. It's about what it can be used for from military adjacent organizations under a fascist regime. Whether you think the us is headed toward fascism or not, what if it did? That's the point.