I ask, safety from what? From citizens or the state? Your statement implies that the freest societies are the least "safe", and the most repressed are the "safest". While you might be able to hinder criminality on the part of citizens with total surveillance, the cost of giving anyone that kind of power is too high.

Relinquishing privacy puts a society on a path where all power accrues to the state, to the detriment of all citizens.

I agree to most, but because solutions like facial recognition are simply easier to engage than educational reforms or welfare-based safety [sic] nets, this is not necessarily something we get to choose.

States will prefer the former to the latter and firms will provide, at which point I don't think that the definition of safety-from is necessary.

> States will prefer the former to the latter and firms will provide, at which point I don't think that the definition of safety-from is necessary.

I do believe that, at some point, people will as well. If other options prove too expensive or too inefficient, it's not just states that will prefer near complete mass surveillance.

This is a meaningless statement without a threat profile.

Sure if everyone lives in a police state under the thumb of the government you're safer from petty crime but you're a heck of a lot less safe from government abuse.

Look at the news cycle. Most stories are about how crime is everywhere and your family is in danger (nevermind that the local news channel in Northwest Iowa had to report from Alabama to find some blood and gore), meanwhile, the government is fighting a noble war against terrorism in some far-off country.

I don't generally subscribe to conspiracy theories, but I do genuinely believe we're (in the US at least) being groomed for some sort of repressive state apparatus using this type of software to 'keep us safe' in the next decade or two.

I don't think it is inversely related. At a point, you become less safe. I would not feel safe if every moment of my life was broadcast to everyone; I would be walking a razors edge, where I pay for every minor slip up. Life would be one long anxiety attack. Privacy means being able to relax, and absolutely required for mental and physical health. No privacy is inhuman.

How are you measuring safety, and how are you measuring privacy, to make the 'inversely related' claim? What is your evidence for this claim, measured in the measures you are using?

Nouvelle idea: maybe we should just lock people up who violate people's safety instead of taking away everyone privacy ;-)

How does this differ from "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about."?

Surely it's not difficult for you to imagine fairly common scenarios where your equation is patently untrue. A battered spouse of LEO or a non gender-conforming individual in a theocratic society are only two really easy examples that come to mind.

If we assume that individuals who control or have access to surveillance mechanisms are universally magnanimous and actually capable of neutralizing threats to safety, then your negative relationship between safety and privacy might hold up to scrutiny. I have more than a bit of trouble seeing how that assumption is anything other than utopian.

I don't mean to defend surveillance as a gateway to safety by any means, in fact I believe in the exact opposite. Unfortunately, it's going to be integrated into our society whether we like it or not, and after that point it's only a matter of time before we come to accept losing our privacy; having ignored all the exceptional "casualties" and enjoying the add scrutiny it yields to law enforcement.

I suspect the integration and matter of time exist in recent history. The question I struggle with is, what ought a neutral-good aligned individual do about it?

I think neutral good as an alignment inherently comes with a disadvantage in making impact. You have to take certain levels of risks at certain extremes to be able to influence anything.

I'd like to be neutral good, but recognize that one may need to dip into chaos depending on the landscape they find themselves in. :-)

"Nothing to hide" is the worst argument possible on the subject

It's easy to use face recognision on someone that has nothing to hide. That does not make it useful to track someone that does have something to hide. Is it enough to put on a mustache and some glases when you walk around a corner to fool the system? A painted face on the t-shirt and a helmet on the head?

> all I hope is that people realise sooner or later that the level of safety you can acquire in a society is inversely related to the level of privacy individuals can have

What leads you to think that this is always true? Do you not think there are any other solutions to reducing crime other than increasing surveillance?

I do, but at the same time I think that lower-hanging, yet not so easy-to-pick, fruits are ignored already. In that case, it becomes more feasible to target far out approaches that are simply easier to implement. Unfortunately, those also happen to be ones that compromise privacy.

That premise assumes that one can control safety, but that might be a hard assertion to build shared understanding on because not everyone shares that assumption.

Perhaps you would have more luck trying to build a foundation on the relationship of risk management and privacy. Mitigation vs acceptance vs avoidance, etc.

It is not zero-sum. You can increase safety while keeping privacy. Putting airbags in cars makes us safer without losing privacy (to any meaningful degree). Even if there is a relationship curve, you can shift the curve or jump between them.

Those who would give up essential Privacy, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Privacy nor Safety.

when you talking about balance, you must associate a timeframe with it. the amount of safety you get by sacrificing a single unit of privacy can be changed through technological advancement.