alt Hacker NewsI find it frusrating how the conversation around this almost always focuses on one side of the equation. Why is it always about preventing tools from being built in case authoritarians comes to power rather than preventing those authoritarians from coming to power in the first place? I'm far more scared off the authoritarian aspect than the tech. The Nazis didn't need Flock cameras to kill millions. It seems like focusing on the actual bad guys is going to be more effective because if the state wants to bear its weight on you, it rarely requires tech to do it.
Replies
People have incentives to become more powerful - through wealth, power, leverage, or in other ways. So unfortunately, authoritarianism tends to have gravity going for it.
The water flows whichever way there's a gradient of height.
Don't create gradients you don't have dams for.
>The Nazis didn't need Flock cameras to kill millions.
No, but they were extremely happy to hop over to France and realize that we kept lists that indirectly listed jews. Actions have consequences that we may not be able to predict.
The Nazis relied heavily on IBM technology for national census data (to identify jews), military logistics, ghetto statistics, train traffic management, and concentration camp capacity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
I fully agree with your base perspective, that the main focus should be on preventing authoritarians from coming to power in the first place.
I also agree with your final point, that the government doesn't need tech to lean on a person.
We disagree in the middle, on how tech that makes evil orders of magnitude easier might be a contributing factor and might enable the government to lean on many more people than it would otherwise.