Context behind this question:
So I watched some Chinese Youtubers recently (apparantly they crossed the firewall and there is a “trend” of this recently? not sure…) and watching some footage, which then triggered some old memories, again…
So when I was a kid in Guangzhou City, it was like 2008 and I had issues with home (fight with older brother) so I remember “running away” (not actually running away just impulse decision lol, I was 6 years old, what was I gonna do? no survival skills lmao) from home for a few hours… and I wandered like a very long distance away from home so when I came back several hours later, I noticed the police were only searching nearby my house, they might not have found me if I didn’t get scared and decide to come back myself.
So fast forward to now, with all these cameras everywhere…
Hypothetically, if I was a kid again and I did that same “running away” thing, how long would it take for the police to find me? Like one hour? 10 minutes?
Like I can imagine them just stopping me within 5 minutes and be like: (in Mandarin) “Hey kid where to do think you’re going? Stop being a disobedient child and go back home” 💀
Okay maybe this is a stupid question, lol (still kinda traumatized from that day, so this is sort of cartharisis for me)
Cameras don’t prevent crime. They don’t prevent accidents. They’re at most used to find afterwards what happened.
By the time a cop would decide to bother and check the cameras, and find you in the footage, and trace your steps through the various cameras, you would have been back on your own already.
The ideas that cameras are a matter of security for the people is propaganda. They are here to destroy privacy and allow the elimination of opponents and dissidents, they don’t really care about crime. Doesn’t mean that cops would never use them for other purposes, but they definitely don’t care as much as you think. And of course, caring isn’t the same thing as being able to do anything in a reasonable time.
Well I think this is a bit contradictory. Dissidence is merely one form of crime from the state’s perspective. So it is somewhat effective at reducing behavior the state will punish, though not completely effective obviously.
Now I would agree that the harm here is not worth it. If you had a completely trusted authority that only used it in a responsible way for serious crimes then it could be useful but I don’t see how that could happen.
It’s not contradictory as I was talking through my perspective, and not through the perspective of a fascist government.
And it’s not just a matter of trust, but of privacy. Even if you fully trust a friend, it doesn’t mean that it’s fine for them to be watching you at all times.
Well I’m just saying that the elimination of “criminals” does reduce crime in a sense. I personally don’t think it’s a very ethical means of doing so but it is effective.
If I trusted my friend so deeply that they would not judge or harm me in any way I wouldn’t mind if they saw my whole life. But that’s a lot of trust that isn’t very realistic, especially for a detached and unaccountable government.
Yep