

Project Indect Set To Monitor Europe Like it’s 1984 - kkleiner
http://singularityhub.com/2009/10/01/project-indect-set-to-monitor-europe-like-its-1984/

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metachris
I've been working on parts of project Indect since July, mainly doing things
with OpenCV -- tiny little cogs of this whole surveillance system. Still I'm
very troubled by it's nature and not really sure what to think of it...

I try to justify it to myself saying, (1) it's just so tiny parts and (2) if
i'm not doing it somebody else will. Sometimes this works, sometimes not. On
the other hand I see it as a chance for myself to get to know this system from
the inside.

I'm often asking myself if it's ethically ok for me to write algorithms for
such a system -- and I probably might stop because of these questions and the
very nature of this project.

I'm seriously troubled as this really is kind of 1984 -- a highly automatized
surveillance system networked with the police. But on the other hand, this is
just the state of the art, and actually plenty of research projects around the
world are working on exactly this subject. It will come -- the only question
is when and how.

what would be your thoughts in that situation?

~~~
jules
> (1) it's just so tiny parts and (2) if i'm not doing it somebody else will.

Think about other moments in history when people justified their actions by
this reasoning. OTOH it's not just your responsibility. Leak as much
information as possible before the system makes that dangerous ;)

Do other people you work with feel bad about what they are doing? Then realize
that they keep doing it because you keep doing it, and you do because they do.

~~~
metachris
> Think about other moments in history when people justified their actions by
> this reasoning.

Yeah -- it's kind of obvious... except that it isn't just that easy for me.

There are many technical highly interesting aspects, and it's fun to be
working with C and plain algorithm development after a couple of years more
into application development. Also, I'm pretty broke because I mostly do free
software, so the money is appreciated as well. (I know how this sounds, but I
just try to be honest)

> Do other people you work with feel bad about what they are doing?

Most people I'm working with (which is just about 4 -- we are doing a small
package of the whole project) are not feeling bad at all -- probably not even
questioning the purpose and consequences of such a system. They are just happy
about being part of this project. And there are enough people that would like
to jump right in.

> Then realize that they keep doing it because you keep doing it, and you do
> because they do.

Probably. But I think they are not doing it because I do it, but I do it
because they do... Still I think critical about all this, and will try to make
up my mind in november on how I want to go on.

------
tomjen2
Why do I get the idea that this will end up like all the other government IT
projects? Massively over budget, too late, full of bugs and too slow to
actually do anything?

~~~
metachris
even if, there will be a lot of new knowledge generated (even 'open' in form
of papers) -- especially on where the problems with such a systems are and
some ideas on how to solve them.

the next approach will build on that and eventually succeed. else the next,
and so on.

