Matt, On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 4:56 AM, tintner michael <[email protected]>wrote:
> I totally agree that surveillance will become ever more massive - because > it has v. positive as well as negative benefits. But people will find ways > of resisting and evading it - they always do. And it's interesting to > speculate how - perhaps erver more detailed "public identities" - (more and > more facts about you becoming public knowledge) - will be matched by > proliferating "personas", (people taking on false identities on the net) - > or by "black spots" (times when you're allowed to switch off from the net > and surveillance) - or no doubt by other means. > The government is now going to borderline insane methods to close on some of this. To illustrate: I now live in a large home with a secure fence and remotely controlled gate, which sits atop a high bluff which is on the same property. To provide some separation of mail by subject and recipient, I decided to plant another mailbox with a made-up address. I put a paper in it advising the mailman (actually a woman) to activate the box, and put the flag up. The next day, junk mail started to arrive, and it was clearly working. Fast forward a year to the Census. No Census forms arrived in my new mailbox. However, after the last investigator asking for information about the main address was sent packing without any information, one evening yet another Census investigator arrived asking about my made-up address. He said that Google showed it as being on the steep part of the bluff. I simply said that it didn't exist, and he left. The next morning there was a helicopter hovering over the bluff examining it very carefully. Apparently, they have given up on tracking personas, but NOT on tracking properties. They must be going absolutely insane over the ~100K families living in RVs. Having "lived on wheels" for ~16 years in the past, I have observed the continuous ratcheting up of regulations to "control" this population. Dealing with this required a day or two of legal research every year or so. My officially issued WA driver's license still says "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION" and "Not a resident or citizen of WA state" on it. I can't imagine someone just starting out figuring out all that is necessary to navigate the legal labyrinth. Imagine the following which happens often to those who are unprepared: You are driving along on a nice sunny day and a policeman pulls you over. He asks for your driver's license and asks where you live. You give him your license and indicate that you live in the RV that you are now driving. He points out that your license was issued in a different state, and since you now live in an RV that is distant from that state, your driver's license is no longer valid. Also, your vehicle license is no longer valid, unless it is from a state like Nevada that doesn't require residency as a precondition for registration. He then VERY CAREFULLY inspects your vehicle and finds that a tail light has burnt out. Oops, we'll have to red-tag this vehicle as being unsafe! If you were unlucky enough to be stopped in Nevada, you would probably be arrested for some minor traffic offense, as I once was. Then, a tow truck arrives and tows your "unsafe" (because of the bad tail light) and/or "abandoned" (because you are now in jail) vehicle away. When you go to recover it, you discover that they want more money than you have, because they charged thousands of dollars in towing and storage fees, plus there is no way to correct its legal shortcomings to get it out of the lockup, and they won't release it until it is 100% legal by THEIR standards. Storage fees quickly mount up to a hopeless fortune, and they sell your home. There are some small towns that support themselves partly in this manner. If you live in an RV, you absolutely MUST take action against such things because various variants are quite common, e.g. have a driver's license that isn't automatically invalid anywhere, never drive your RV anywhere alone, have the title SO messed up (e.g. with unsatisfied liens) that it is nearly impossible to navigate the paperwork to seize it, don't own an RV that is worth enough to employ lawyers to overcome the challenges that you have placed in their way, etc. Akin to Richard's proposal of having a hyper-complex network of constraints to control an AGI, various governments have already developed hyper-complex constraint networks to control people. After all, that is how our supposedly "free" society works. Just take a week or so and read the motor vehicle code for your state. Ain't freedom just wonderful?! Having been through this, I hereby soundly reject your assertion that people can overcome an AGI-controlled society. Sure, a few might manage, but to overcome something like a central controlling government, it would take a massive coordinated effort, and there is NO WAY that, with future technology in the hands of a central controlling government, that this would ever be even distantly possible. In short, BULLSHIT. Steve ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
