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Re:Signal's president vows to reject UK law on message scann... by Brian_K_White on Saturday July 15, 2023 @03:26PM (#36740120)
All kinds of advantages go to one sides benefit.

Can we set up an automated monitor on all the traffic cams and licence plate readers and facial recognition systems just to catch cops and politicians breaking laws or just to track their movements and associations the way they do to everyone else? Can we access the same cam footage that the state uses to accuse you of something, to clear you instead?

Only occasionally and incompletely.

For instance you might have access to whatever they submit as their proof, but they had access to the full footage and from many sources, and if you had that same access, maybe you'd find proof that you were elsewhere at the same time, or that the subject came from somewhere that isn't your house, or see them getting dressed just before going to commit the act, or was even the very cop bringing the charge, or show the greater context that when you drove through that red light, you had already waited 10 minutes and the light was actually broken, or the lights were out but the timer/switing mechanism was still ticking over so the cam just assumed the driver was shown a red light, etc.

Re:Signal's president vows to reject UK law on message scann... by flir on Saturday July 15, 2023 @03:55PM (#36740376)
Ambient sousveillance. You'd have to get a critical mass of people who care enough to buy the hardware, deploy it, and release the video though.
Re:Signal's president vows to reject UK law on message scann... by semiquaver on Saturday July 15, 2023 @04:07PM (#36740494)
I wish that I could believe this was possible. In pretty much every government on earth such a scheme would be made illegal on some pretext well before attainment of said critical mass.
Re:Signal's president vows to reject UK law on message scann... by flir on Saturday July 15, 2023 @04:26PM (#36740633)
Plenty of private entities are already recording like crazy, so I assume it's the publication bit that you're thinking would be made illegal?
Re:Signal's president vows to reject UK law on message scann... by Brian_K_White on Saturday July 15, 2023 @05:30PM (#36741123)
I'm only talking about equal access to exactly the same whatever the state already has access to, not anything new or extra.

The surveillance already exists, and is already being used only against you, rarely for you.

If you or I shouldn't have unrestricted access to it, then neither should anyone else. If it is to exist, and anyone is to have access to it, then so should you and I.

Re:Signal's president vows to reject UK law on message scann... by immibis on Saturday July 15, 2023 @07:35PM (#36741917)
What if a group of volunteers started tracking the movements of Tory politicians using these same fully legal methods?