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"Surveillance data will always be used for other purposes, even if this is prohibited."

This stood out for me in the article. And I think this applies to all forms of data.




It does, and it worries me that people seem to not understand how obvious and true this is.

There is only one real limit of what we can do - laws of physics. Anything not explicitly prohibited by them can be done. There is also one practical limit - economics, i.e. whether or not we have resources to do something. And that's it. Laws, customs, etc. are arbitrary limits we voluntarily impose on ourselves, and they can and will be broken whenever it's convenient.

So basically here's a rule of thumb: whatever can be done will be done. It also suggests the possible course of action. We can't fight laws of physics, so if we want something not to happen, we need to influence the softer, economic side. Make things we don't like prohibitively expensive. That's why I think any solution to surveillance problem will need to be technical in a big part.




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