Not necessarily a problem. I think I need to expose myself to the potential problems of surveillance now, and what's really missing from the research now is a good credible case that surveillance can turn a democratic government despotic.
Isn't a US government where the president claims the power the political powers that distinguished a Roman dictator from other Roman rules a good good example of a government turning despotic? Those powers being to use the military inside his own borders, being allowed to kill citizens of his own country without judicial oversight and waging wars by his own decision.
The director of intelligence can keep his job despite the criminal act of lying under oath to congress. In what we call in Europe a democratic state something like that doesn't happen.
The US government imprisions a higher percentage of it's population than any other country. US congressional approval ratings are lower than the approval ratings of China's leadership.
When the UK is using antiterrorism legislation for Gleen Greenwalds boyfriend, do you really believe that the NSA that surveilled Martin Luther King in his days doesn't also use antiterrorism legislation to go after political dissidents?
In another case that's very troubling, after the saving and loans debable the US government did persecute bankers. After the last crisis they didn't. That indicates a change of power away from a country where there's a rule of law.
Just take those political changes of the last two decades and extrapolate from them.
A while ago there was an EU paper that suggested that in a trainstation an AI should trigger a safety alert if a person is isn't entering a train and effectively is there too long.
You have the opportunity to punish various sorts of thoughtcrime with lowered credit score or with a score that increases the likelihood that you will get audited.
I think I need to expose myself to the potential problems of surveillance now, and what's really missing from the research now is a good credible case that surveillance can turn a democratic government despotic.
Don't forget that research doesn't happen in a vacuum. Part of the danger of poweful surveillance is that those organisations have power that they can use to dissuade such research.
Those powers being to use the military inside his own borders, being allowed to kill citizens of his own country without judicial oversight and waging wars by his own decision.
And these powers derive from the 9/11 trauma, not from mass surveillance. And we've seen far worse in the US in the last 60 years.
I certainly agree that surveillance enables bad governments, but I've yet to see a good argument that surveillance causes good governments to go bad (eg UK vs France).
...The director of intelligence can keep his job despite the criminal act of lying unde
EDIT: added the "rights of parents" and "simulation hypothesis" research interests.
I've started a lot of research projects and have a lot of research interests that I don't currently have time to develop on my own. So I'm putting the research interests together on this page, and anyone can let me know if they're interested in doing any joint projects on these topics. This can range from coauthoring, to simply having a conversation about these and seeing where that goes.
The possible research topics are: