There's no small irony that facial recognition isn't going to recognise the faces of those currently racing around on e-bikes stealing phones wearing their 'safety balaclavas'. Or, indeed, some of the more militant protesters that are turning up all over the place. It's a cliche, but if you have nothing to hide, and intend to protest peacefully, why are you covering your face?

>if you have nothing to hide

But it's not you that decides that what you are doing is harmless. It's what the authorities decide; and that can be quite different from what you or other people deem "nothing to hide".

> It's a cliche, but if you have nothing to hide, and intend to protest peacefully, why are you covering your face?

because who says the state (and the people acting for it, e.g. police) are always the good guys

there is a VERY long history of people being systematically harassed and persecuted for things which really shouldn't be an issue, and might not have been illegal either (but then the moment a state becomes the bad guy "illegal" loses meaning as doing the ethical right thing might now be illegal)

like just looking at the UK, they e.g. "thanked" Alan Turing for his war contributions by driving him into Suicide because he was gay

or how people through history have been frequently harassed for "just" not agreeing with the currently political fraction in power, and I really mean just not agreeing not trying to do anything to change it

and even if we ignore systematic stuff like that there has been also more then just a few cases of police officers abusing their power. Including cases like them stalking people, or them giving the address of people to radical groups, or blackmailing them for doing stuff which is legal but not publicly well perceived. (E.g. someone had sex with their wife on a balcony not visible from the street but visible from a surveillance camera).

And even if nothing of this applies to you, if there is no privacy and mass surveillance this can also help people in power to frame you for something you didn't do. Like e.g. to make you lose your job so their brother in law can get it instead.

and even ignoring all that you should have a right for privacy and since when is it okay to harass people which just want to defend their rights?

anyway if you think is through "I have nothing to hide" is such a ridiculous dump argument.

> like just looking at the UK, they e.g. "thanked" Alan Turing for his war contributions by driving him into Suicide because he was gay

Well. Maybe[0].

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18561092

Wow, never heard this version. Fascinating.

Just because there is a chance he did not kill himself, that does not negate the fact that homosexuality was illegal, and that the state expended resources to prosecute him! British people now overwhelmingly see such policies as reprehensible, regardless of who might or might not have considered suicide because of them.

You're countering things I didn't say.

I'm thinking it through, and I've arrived at the puzzling conclusion we shouldn't make it too hard for people to break the law.

Isn't that precisely the point. If there are so many laws that are so easily broken, you have a reason to pickup anyone of interest at any time.

Eh, I see what I wrote was ambiguous. I meant "not hard to defy the law", you're on "not hard to be tripped up by the law".

Same jail

Not so puzzling; see also this classic post from Moxie Marlinspike, founder of Signal: https://moxie.org/2013/06/12/we-should-all-have-something-to...

> Over the past year, there have been a number of headline-grabbing legal changes in the US, such as the legalization of marijuana in CO and WA, as well as the legalization of same-sex marriage in a growing number of US states.

> As a majority of people in these states apparently favor these changes, advocates for the US democratic process cite these legal victories as examples of how the system can provide real freedoms to those who engage with it through lawful means. And it’s true, the bills did pass.

> What’s often overlooked, however, is that these legal victories would probably not have been possible without the ability to break the law.

The optimal amount of fraud or lawlessness isn't zero.

You're mixing your definitions of authoritarian, there's authoritarian in the 'Nolan chart' sense of the word, which just means 'not a Libertarian', which is like 98% of people, which is different to the Hitler meaning of authoritarian, which means 'rejecting democracy'. If the people agree to ban things they don't like, that's democracy, so it's the Nolan kind of authoritarian but not the Hitler kind of authoritarian. Deciding the people shouldn't be allowed to agree collectively to ban certain things is rejecting democracy, so it's Hitler authoritarian but not Nolan authoritarian.

I don't think this is true. Apparently the operation of a large majority of those private cameras is in fact outsourced to a handful of big security companies, and many of them are remotely operated. This makes getting access to private cameras a lot easier for police than you think.

If you've ever had to deal with the UK police as a victim of a crime, you'll quickly find out they're pretty useless at obtaining CCTV footage. I was asked to get it myself, to which the business who owned the CCTV told me they would only hand it to the police, so nothing happened.

> despite what TV shows and films would like to tell you they're not actually a single coherent CCTV network

Isn't that the CC in CCTV? Closed circuit implies that it's restricted to an on prem network