“Oh, I don’t believe in hypothetical situations, Mr. Donaghy. That’s like lying to your brain.” –Kenneth, 30 Rock
“20s & 30s it was the role of government. 50s & 60s it was civil rights. The next 20 years it will be about privacy. The Internet. Cell phones. Health records. And who’s gay and who’s not. Besides, in a country born on the will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?”– Sam, The West Wing
” We all learn to respond to incentives, negative and positive, from the outset of life.”– Levitt and Dubner, Freakonomics
Episode 8: All Eyes on Me
This podcast will be our second published live cast, the topic a completely surveilled society, like London. We talk about weather surveillance makes society safer, or is privacy more important. So why are we here? I am under the opinion, and I believe Mr. Nies does as well, that a person’s privacy is more important point. To illustrate the point the to of us make arguments to that hypothetical situations, and to Nies’s credit he does it better than I do. We both believe that the potential for harm, outweighs the potential for good.
Why is privacy and issue?
See quote above. With advent and improvement of communications and computers we can get information and share it within seconds. Privacy as it once was no longer exists, and surveilled society would eliminate it almost completely eliminate privacy. It ends up hurting more people then it is helping. People who commit crimes and will continue to weather or not they are being watched or not, it happens now and more intelligent criminals well be get around it. The other reason is comes from the following phrase. It is not what is, it is what it looks like. Which brings me to another point, why crime happens.
Why crime happens?
At the most fundamental level all actions are based on the following choice is the risk worth the reward. What is the incentive for a certain action. The criminal commits a crime because s/he know/think they can get away with it. A person who breaks into a car knows that the police don’t have the resources investigate every break in, so the risk for breaking into a car is very low. Why?
1. Small chance of eye witnesses.
2. There rarely is an investigation into it.
3. Low risk of injury.
4. Easy to commit.
Reason 2 is the major problem. Why don’t police investigate the crime? The incentive to investigate isn’t there. It is two expensive to run tests, and there are not enough police officers to patrol. The police allocate resources based on the severity of the crimes. That means that murder, rape, robbery, and assault are all higher on the list that a simple robbery.
I think I have ranted enough.
This is my opinion,take it, leave it, love it, hate it.
Until next time.
~B
