How we learned to stop worrying and love campus surveillance
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How we learned to stop worrying and love campus surveillance
Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
Grombobulous · · focus · HN ↗
Look, I’m not trying to be pro-surveillance state or whatever, but in what universe is a handful of cameras (less than 10 per building) in a publicly accessible space on a private university unusual or alarming?
I thought every university had this, but I guess I’m now learning that my university wasn’t prestigious enough to be exempted from reality.
My high school also had cameras. Isn’t that rather typical?
Keep in mind that pretty much 100% of schools this size have assaults take place every single year on school grounds, in a country where school shootings happen on a literal weekly basis.
Speaking of the supposed cost waste of these cameras: I would be surprised the university can get reasonably priced insurance without them.
Edit: this comment has picked up a lot of attention. I encourage those who are disagreeing with me to go directly to the university’s FAQ on the subject that is linked in the article. They directly state that this surveillance system isn’t new, it merely has some new cameras added to the existing system, audio isn’t recorded, facial recognition isn’t used, AI isn’t used, budget from other programs wasn’t sacrificed to add cameras, and data is stored inside an MIT data center. That’s one reason why I hold skepticism about the objectivity of the authors. I thought the authors were not very generous to the school’s willingness to clarify, and based on that FAQ a lot of accusations/assumptions in the article and discussion seem to be false.
<a href="https://evpt.mit.edu/campus-security-cameras-frequently-asked-questions" rel="nofollow">https://evpt.mit.edu/campus-security-cameras-frequently-aske...
jolmg · · focus · HN ↗
> My high school also had cameras. Isn’t that rather typical?
I don't think such a handful of cameras means the same thing today as it meant in e.g. the 00s. Lots of things have changed, the government, the politics, the culture, the technical possibilities.
xp84 · · focus · HN ↗
This reads like you're saying "When [Good Party] were in charge, they would have always done the right thing, but now [Bad Party] is in charge so we need to handicap the government (perhaps only temporarily, until we get in charge again).
More compelling would be "Doesn't matter if it's a Bernie Sanders Socialists supermajority or a Trump MAGA government, the government shouldn't be allowed to have such-and-such power."
jolmg · · focus · HN ↗
Now, surveillance can be automated and centralized. Who knows where that footage is being taken. It's no longer necessarily the school handling its matters internally. They can just offload that and accept the judgment of an algorithm. Maybe you're holding a Doritos bag and that results in police swarming you and almost killing you for fear that it was a gun.
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45684934">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45684934
> Armed police swarm student after AI mistakes bag of Doritos for a weapon
Re: government and politics, maybe you fear your government is heading towards authoritarianism, something that would've never crossed your mind in the 00s, and that makes more conscious of surveillance. You've also become more conscious about Facebook and Palantir, etc, and how mass surveillance is a thing that's quite different from regular surveillance (handful of buildings, handled manually and autonomously).
It's not about what party. I don't think another Republican candidate would've had the same effect. Also W. Bush was on for most of the 00s; he was Republican, so what are you even talking about with parties? And though politics is a factor, I wouldn't say "When [Good Party] were in charge, they would have always done the right thing". Both ends of the spectrum can suck, and the polarity itself that's been growing in politics can be part of the problem.