surveillance cameras discussion
This is my first time starting a conversation here, so hopefully I'm doing it right!
I'm listening to the "The Flock surveillance cameras debate" episode. I find that I'm having mixed feelings, and I just wanted to get my thoughts out, I suppose.
To give a little background on where I'm coming from:
- I'm Taiwanese-American, citizen, grew up in America. I value my privacy on certain things - I keep turning off all of the different tracking settings that keep popping up on the various social media and browsers lately, and I hate that companies are doing this stealthily by default without our explicit permission. I keep sensitive data out of my AI chats. I don't fully trust the US gov't, esp the current regime.
- I spent the last six years living in Taiwan and South Korea. In Taiwan/SK, along with a lot of Asian countries, CCTV cameras are literally everywhere. There is a camera right outside my house right now. When entering the country, auto facial recognition lets you enter customs through the automated turnstiles and it's super fast. In Korea, website verification often involves using your national ID + phone number. None of this bothers me.
The thing about being in Taiwan/SK, though - it is so incredibly safe. People literally leave their laptops on the table at a coffee shop to save their tables while they go to the bathroom. You can drop money, keys, wallet, phone on the street, and it will be where you left it or safely off to the side for you to pick up later. I (female) can walk around late at night without fear. Petty crime is virtually non-existent in my everyday experience. Vs when I go back to the Bay Area from time to time, and each time something always gets stolen (laptop, car catalytic converter, etc).
Of course there are a lot of factors here, but I can't help but feel like part of this is attributed to the prevalence of the CCTV cameras. I don't think I would've had this perspective before living abroad, but I have to say that after experiencing the safety and ability to just relax in public without watching over your shoulder all the time... I don't think that surveillance cameras in public spaces are inherently a bad thing. I wonder if a lot of Americans could experience this kind of safety, if they wouldn't agree.
That being said, I went to China recently on vacation - where there are CCTV cameras everywhere there too, as well as facial recognition checks in all public transit entrances - and I admit that I did not like that and did not want to be tracked. So that made me realize that a big part of my comfort with giving up the privacy is how much I inherently trust the government, and maybe my distrust of the US gov't is similar. Maybe the same thing that works in some countries just doesn't work in others. It also made me wonder if it would help to have layers of access (e.g. default the only people who can access the data without *very* specific warrants would be local gov't for normal petty crimes); this of course doesn't solve the issue of enforcement, so I dunno.
Anyway, those are just some musings. I appreciated that the dissent was somewhere in the same vicinity of what I was thinking this week. I also wonder if there are more layers of security that can be built into the system so that really nobody can look into the footage unless there were very specific warrants about very specific issues. Would be curious if others feel the same or totally different!