Re:FBI examined Google records to see if anyone had knowledg...
by AnthonyMouse on Saturday September 05, 2020 @12:11AM
(#24381351)
> If someone wants to home in and destroy you, they've always been able to do that without total surveillance.
This isn't even about that. Yes, if someone powerful wants to make your life hard, your life is going to be hard.
Now consider what happens if they just don't care whether you live or die. Some system is set up to "solve crimes" as "efficiently" as possible. The same sort of system that gets used to issue YouTube copyright strikes against the original creators or public domain works because Hollywood put a copy in a motion picture, or mark every email sent by a perfectly legitimate small private email server as spam.
The police increase their "solve rate" dramatically -- by putting a ton of innocent people in prison. Because now instead of unsolved crimes they have "evidence" which, even if it's all circumstantial garbage, is enough to coerce guilty pleas out of defendants who can't afford a good lawyer or don't want to risk having the penalty quintupled if they demand their day in court and lose, or would rather spend six months in prison than pay six years worth of wages to a lawyer.
> If the records exist, and you're not guilty of the crime, hope exists that you could be cleared.
Only you can't get access to the records, because they're sensitive for all sorts of reasons, e.g. because having them in the aggregate would allow you to locate people in witness protection or unmask undercover law enforcement or case targets for espionage or theft. So you can't give access to everything to everybody, which means it only gets used as evidence for the prosecution because they can get it and you can't.
> Doesn't it make more sense for one's worst fear to be accused of something for which you are innocent but have no alibi?
In principle they still have to prove your guilt even if you don't have an alibi. Think about it, a large proportion of crimes are committed at night when most people are at home asleep.
Meanwhile, data under your control is generally only useful as evidence of guilt, because otherwise they just argue that it was under your control. If your phone was at the location of the crime, they argue you were there. If your phone was at home 200 miles from the location of the crime, they argue you knew you were about to commit a crime and left your phone at home. It's used to hurt you but not to help you.
This isn't even about that. Yes, if someone powerful wants to make your life hard, your life is going to be hard.
Now consider what happens if they just don't care whether you live or die. Some system is set up to "solve crimes" as "efficiently" as possible. The same sort of system that gets used to issue YouTube copyright strikes against the original creators or public domain works because Hollywood put a copy in a motion picture, or mark every email sent by a perfectly legitimate small private email server as spam.
The police increase their "solve rate" dramatically -- by putting a ton of innocent people in prison. Because now instead of unsolved crimes they have "evidence" which, even if it's all circumstantial garbage, is enough to coerce guilty pleas out of defendants who can't afford a good lawyer or don't want to risk having the penalty quintupled if they demand their day in court and lose, or would rather spend six months in prison than pay six years worth of wages to a lawyer.
> If the records exist, and you're not guilty of the crime, hope exists that you could be cleared.
Only you can't get access to the records, because they're sensitive for all sorts of reasons, e.g. because having them in the aggregate would allow you to locate people in witness protection or unmask undercover law enforcement or case targets for espionage or theft. So you can't give access to everything to everybody, which means it only gets used as evidence for the prosecution because they can get it and you can't.
> Doesn't it make more sense for one's worst fear to be accused of something for which you are innocent but have no alibi?
In principle they still have to prove your guilt even if you don't have an alibi. Think about it, a large proportion of crimes are committed at night when most people are at home asleep.
Meanwhile, data under your control is generally only useful as evidence of guilt, because otherwise they just argue that it was under your control. If your phone was at the location of the crime, they argue you were there. If your phone was at home 200 miles from the location of the crime, they argue you knew you were about to commit a crime and left your phone at home. It's used to hurt you but not to help you.