I have a friend who is one one the best programmers I know. He worked for an ad tech company more than a decade ago optimizing time to respond for personalized ad delivery. He was not proud of working to act on fingerprinting to optimize delivery but it was a challenging task and he framed his part as addressing the challenge not the ethics. People in our circle where like "good for you optimizing network delivery to 50ms!" even people who despised the idea of tracking users around the internet to serve them ads.
I'm sure most people who work for flock compartmentalize their jobs to "I work on fingerprinting vehicles" or "I work on advanced OCR", or "I work on creating camera to camera trajectory graphs". This way they don't need to think about (too often) the larger ramifications of what they are doing. When the press points out what is the reality and that most people are pissed at Flock then the employees likely have to confront what they do in a way that they never had to.
It is also reasonable for employees to hold the position that Flock is a public good and the vocal minority of people complaining about it are simply wrong.
This isn't an uncommon opinion among the public either. It's probably a minority, at least among those who are vocal about it, but it's not hard to find people who think they are beneficial.
That’s not a reasonable position to hold, unless and until Flock does much, much more when it comes to safeguards against abuse.
I can understand being pro-surveillance, but Flock is a case study in how not to implement surveillance systems. Believing that surveillance can be a public good can’t somehow turn Flock into a public good. It’s not.
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. Perhaps it makes some people uncomfortable about their own jobs. In any case, it's not uncommon for people to moralize about something they're not doing, but given the opportunity to do that thing for some handsome reward (good pay, prestige, technically interesting work, etc), they easily rationalize their choice to participate in that thing.
Good essay about this: <a href="https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted" rel="nofollow">https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted
jsrozner · · focus · HN ↗
Now we just need the same shame for broader surveillance capitalism (Google, Facebook, AI companies, etc).
uberman · · focus · HN ↗
I'm sure most people who work for flock compartmentalize their jobs to "I work on fingerprinting vehicles" or "I work on advanced OCR", or "I work on creating camera to camera trajectory graphs". This way they don't need to think about (too often) the larger ramifications of what they are doing. When the press points out what is the reality and that most people are pissed at Flock then the employees likely have to confront what they do in a way that they never had to.
wartywhoa23 · · focus · HN ↗
loeg · · focus · HN ↗
SoftTalker · · focus · HN ↗
nilamo · · focus · HN ↗
antonvs · · focus · HN ↗
I can understand being pro-surveillance, but Flock is a case study in how not to implement surveillance systems. Believing that surveillance can be a public good can’t somehow turn Flock into a public good. It’s not.
lo_zamoyski · · focus · HN ↗
bugglebeetle · · focus · HN ↗
I didn’t know that Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil was something people willfully embraced.
ndiddy · · focus · HN ↗