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canopic jug [soylentnews.org] writes:

Developer Poul-Henning Kamp [wikipedia.org] (PHK) has written a brief post in the July issue of Communications of the ACM about the cost of surveillance having become negligible [acm.org]. Furthermore, in many cases that surveillance is actually required either by large governments or by large corporations, thus making it cheaper to go with the flow and track people and their online activities very closely as it becomes more and more expensive for programmers and developers to even try to avoid tracking people and their online activities.

During his keynote address, risk management specialist Dan Geer asked the 2014 Black Hat audience a question: "What if surveillance is too cheap to meter?"

As is the case with electricity from nuclear power, technology has little to do with it: This is a question about economy, specifically the economy of the path of least resistance.

Surveillance is ridiculously cheap for governments. Many have passed laws that obligate the surveillance industry—most notably, the mobile network operators—to share their take "at cost," and we know law enforcement uses it a lot.

So why is so much cheap surveillance available for purchase?

PHK also covered this topic [acm.org] even more briefly in his column in ACM Queue back in February. Both refer to Dan Geer [blackhat.com]'s observation about metering made back in 2014 at Black Hat [tinho.net]:

Suppose, however, that surveillance becomes too cheap to meter, that is to say too cheap to limit through budgetary processes. Does that lessen the power of the Legislature more, or the power of the Executive more? I think that ever-cheaper surveillance substantially changes the balance of power in favor of the Executive and away from the Legislature. While President Obama was referring to something else when he said "I've Got A Pen And I've Got A Phone," he was speaking to exactly this idea -- things that need no appropriations are outside the system of checks and balances. Is the ever-wider deployment of sensors in the name of cybersecurity actually contributing to our safety? Or is it destroying our safety in order to save it?

What is the way out?

Previously:
(2022) What are the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, and Fourteen Eyes? [soylentnews.org]
(2022) Forget State Surveillance. Our Tracking Devices are Now Doing the Same Job [soylentnews.org]
(2018) Transparency Versus Liability in Hardware [soylentnews.org]
(2014) CIA InfoSec Chief: US Govt Should Buy All Security Exploits Then Disclose Them [soylentnews.org]
(2014) Proposal for Unpatchable Network Devices to Expire [soylentnews.org]

Original Submission