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diff --git a/content/entry/dont-record-others-without-permission.md b/content/entry/dont-record-others-without-permission.md index d6c39db..e462540 100644 --- a/content/entry/dont-record-others-without-permission.md +++ b/content/entry/dont-record-others-without-permission.md @@ -2,7 +2,6 @@ title: "Don't Record Others Without Permission" date: 2021-03-29T00:00:00 draft: false -makerefs: false --- # The Right to Privacy We've lost the right to personal privacy to a large extent thanks to the ever-expanding corporate surveillance state. The surveillance state we all live under is getting increasing attention from non-mainstream media sources. However, something that doesn't make the non-mainstream news is the privacy we voluntarily take away from each other by recording people without their permission. @@ -25,7 +24,7 @@ I don't have a perfect solution for what to do about this, but it's clearly less # Social Norm 1 It would be extremely dangerous for the government to strictly regulate what citizens are allowed to record. Perhaps a better way to mitigate the privacy problem caused by everyone having mobile smartphones with cameras on their person is to make it a strict social taboo to record others without their permission. To record another person having a bad day or distressed or shouting things they don't mean out of pure frustration and send it to others or upload it online for internet points is perverse, even if said person is in the wrong. People change. People improve. But that footage won't reflect that and it lasts forever. How would you like for the rest of your life to be about the worst thing you ever said or did? Would that be just? -Of course there would be many exceptional circumstances. Video recordings are sometimes important. Police officers and public officials should be subject to recording just as covert investigations may require recording others without their knowledge or consent. What should happen to the recording after an investigation concludes for example is equally deserving of its own discussion and has been discussed by groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation[1] in the context of police body cams[2]. Then there are cases where recording others is important, but there are steps that should be taken before the footage is shared with anyone. Media coverage of protests is vital, but video footage can be used to identify the protesters. At a minimum, faces and identifiable markings should be blurred out to protect protester identities. +Of course there would be many exceptional circumstances. Video recordings are sometimes important. Police officers and public officials should be subject to recording just as covert investigations may require recording others without their knowledge or consent. What should happen to the recording after an investigation concludes for example is equally deserving of its own discussion and has been discussed by groups such as the [Electronic Frontier Foundation](https://www.eff.org/) in the context of [police body cams](https://www.eff.org/pages/body-worn-cameras). Then there are cases where recording others is important, but there are steps that should be taken before the footage is shared with anyone. Media coverage of protests is vital, but video footage can be used to identify the protesters. At a minimum, faces and identifiable markings should be blurred out to protect protester identities. So that's one side of the equation. Society needs a taboo against recording people without permission except under extenuating circumstances. The norm should be not to record people without permission, where permission means informed consent. If you lie about the reasons you want to record someone or what you plan to do with the recording, you've obtained bastardized consent, not real informed consent. There can't be informed consent if the other party isn't informed. @@ -40,7 +39,7 @@ There is a second side to the equation when it comes to recording people. It is Imagine a man in a fast food place that starts shouting and treating the workers poorly. Is he like this all the time or is he just having a very bad day? Who knows. Perhaps his son just died yesterday and he doesn't know how to process it. Even if that's just the way he normally is, regularly treating service workers poorly, what good comes of recording the situation and posting it online? Shaming people generally makes them spiteful and angry. It doesn't usually invoke their self-reflective, compassionate capacity within them. Maybe nothing would, but recording someone in a bad moment and uploading it to the internet, stoking an online hate mob to destroy their public image, that's only going to be counterproductive. -This is why I strongly dislike cancel culture. It's hate-based. It's not about giving people the benefit of the doubt. It's not about considering their capacity to become better or change. Of course having a bad day or trying to get past a horrible life event doesn't license you to be rude to people. But that's really a confused way of looking at it. It's not about "license" to treat people badly. People who think it is don't understand free will[3]. +This is why I strongly dislike cancel culture. It's hate-based. It's not about giving people the benefit of the doubt. It's not about considering their capacity to become better or change. Of course having a bad day or trying to get past a horrible life event doesn't license you to be rude to people. But that's really a confused way of looking at it. It's not about "license" to treat people badly. People who think it is don't understand [free will](/2020/06/19/free-will-is-incoherent-part-1). The fact is, for whatever reason, you have a man treating a service worker badly. But even if he has no excuse, he isn't ultimately responsible for the way his brain is wired which inevitably pushed him into being rude to the service worker. If he were responsible for his brain wiring, that would be circular. Point being that this cancel culture of making people lose their job and lose respect should be replaced with "compassion culture". We ought to find ways to be compassionate and help those who mistreat others rather than shaming and wanting the worst for them. Wanting people to fail and to be shamed and to hurt is a sick desire and people who possess it themselves require our empathy and compassion. @@ -48,9 +47,3 @@ The fact is, for whatever reason, you have a man treating a service worker badly The examples I've given of people being recorded when they don't want to be are situations where it would directly negatively affect the person being recorded. This isn't always the case. If you're vlogging walking down a public sidewalk, you're not recording anyone in particular on purpose, but you are recording others without their consent. You should at least put black boxes over them in editing so they can't be identified on video at any point in the future by A.I. Blurring someone out might not be sufficient to prevent future automated systems from identifying them. The point is not only to combat cancel culture which feeds off one time incidents in people's worst moments, but to combat the ever-expanding surveillance state abused to manipulate and control the populace. We can and should create new social norms which restore a degree of personal privacy reminiscent of the times before mobile smartphones existed. - - -Link(s): -[1: https://www.eff.org/](https://www.eff.org/) -[2: https://www.eff.org/pages/body-worn-cameras](https://www.eff.org/pages/body-worn-cameras) -[3: /2020/06/19/free-will-is-incoherent-part-1](/2020/06/19/free-will-is-incoherent-part-1/) |