From: mark@unicorn.com
Date: Tue Dec 01 1998 - 06:14:07 MST
Ken Meyering [ken@define.com] wrote:
>Having worked at SGI, I know that special effects experts can fake
>almost anything, including surveillance audio and video.
Indeed. What's the value of surveillance video when anyone can create their
own on a computer at any time?
den Otter [neosapient@geocities.com] wrote:
>Yes, *of course* it makes perfect sense to index every citizen's
>DNA and fingerprints
What's the value of DNA and fingerprints when anyone can change their DNA
and fingerprints at will (the former will certainly be possible in the kind
of nanotech future we talk about, the latter is possible *TODAY*)? What's
the value of face recognition when crooks can just get a face transplant
(which a researcher recently claimed would be perfectly possible in five
years)?
As with gun laws, crypto laws and other pointless restrictions on personal
freedom, the surveillance state will *only* affect normal citizens who break
dozens of nonsense laws every day, and will have no effect on real criminals
who can easily get access to the technologies required to change their
authorized identity.
Frankly, this whole thread seems to come from people whose concept of
identity is seriously screwed. I am not my body, I am not my fingerprints,
I am not my DNA, I am not my face, I am my mental programming. You can't
track mental programming with video cameras and fingerprint scanners! In
a few years a crook could kidnap me, transplant my face, hands and blood
to their body, and your wonderful surveillance state would regard them as
me, even though they'd have none of my mental programming.
My mind is just totally boggled by this thread; it's so obviously absurd
that I can barely imagine anyone on this list actually taking it seriously.
Things have definitely gone downhill since I started reading it four or
five years ago.
Mark
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