@ Bruce, ALL,
There is a problem with,
“It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.”
1, Police State.
2, Could someday facilitate.
3, Install technologies.
4, Poor civic hygiene.
All have “weasel words” within them, thus their meanings are shall we say
“Fluid at best, to the point of opposites and beyond.”
As an unrelated example of (1) as expediency, was used during lockdown to regularly (3) spray the streets with chemicals and shine lights at people both of which were (4) “known carcinogens” that would cause people early deaths in some very unpleasant ways at significant cost and duration.
The arguments for and against are still being talked about and due to (1) expediency we now have in the two (3) major phone OS’s and “required hardware” “Bluetooth Low Energy”(BLE) “beaconing” allegedly for epidemiological reasons for “the safety of all” that just coincidentally (1) mean not just the tracking of all but who has been in range of whom thus is “suspicious activity” from someone’s viewpoint.
It does not matter (3) what the technology is, if it has any “use for good” it has as much if not more “use for bad”.
Which as I’ve indicated in the past “good or bad” are not defined they are usually the “Observer not participant Issue” some time after events based on “societal norms” and mostly irrelevant “points of view” (think “long bearded Elbonian = doubly bad”, and similar).
All technology is “agnostic to use” even nuclear weapons do arguably have “good purposes” (busting up high velocity inbound space rocks etc). As well as “bad purposes”, it is down to the “Directing Mind” and the later “observing mind” as to what they think is good or bad.
Psychologists came up with stylised questions that are the “Train/Trolley Switch Problem/Test”,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
Perhaps not realising the question says more about the person asking / observing than the person answering / acting[1].
The point is what gets done has nothing what so ever to do with the “good” of civic hygiene or the “bad” of a surveilling Police State.
We see this all the time with,
“Think of the children arguments.”
Or,
“Health and Safety arguments.”
They are at best “plausible sounding arguments” for an “already made decision”.
Have a think back to Apple’s “Client/Device Side Scanning” or “See What You See”(SWYS) technology. The CSAM argument[2] was obviously a “falsehood” to get the “base technology in device”, which I understand has not been fully removed… That is “the low level hooks” remain waiting to be used[3] for what most civilized humans with normally functional minds would call “Bad” activities.
Nearly a hundred years ago Upton Sinclair put an observation about morals or significant lack there of in certain types of people, into a book he was writing. And it “nicely encapsulates” the issue,
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
That is they will refuse to understand as long as they are getting pay and perks. Ask yourself how many very senior people after “retiring” pick up a different hymn sheet to sing from? Especially those in or close to “National Security” leadership positions.
[1] The big failing of the original Trolley Switch Questions was the implicit assumption, that because “the switch is binary” the answer from the person has to be from a binary choice of,
1.1 Set switch to left branch
1.2 Set switch to right branch
Forgetting the more valid,
1.3 Turn you back and walk away or equivalent “take no action” choice.
Which in the way most modern Western Societies work is in reality “the safest thing to do”.
[2] The CSAM argument is nearly always false. It’s so useful to Authoritarian types because it’s such a horrific crime the societal consensus in the West is you would have to be “bad to say no” rather than apply “reason and logic”. Put simply few anti-CSAM technologies actually work and so have actually less than zero effect on those who produce and consume CSAM. Because it “diverts resources” into the pockets of “the chosen few” away from actually proven techniques thus ends up protecting the abusers. Thus the question hangs in the air of “Why?” It’s not just to “fill the boots” of the chosen few, that some might see as “good” No. Like CALE[3] the real purpose is “generalised and unlawful surveillance”, most likely for the purposes of “leverage” or “blackmail” and crimes such as “murder” (all described as “Intelligence Activities” and hidden behind “National Security”). Which I suspect most observers would see as “bad”.
[3] As was the case with CALE in phone base station switches, that the NSA and CIA abused in the “Greek Olympics Scandal” where a Vodafone Engineer was according to Greek Investigators “suicided” by a CIA operative. Worse it’s said that attackers alledged to be linked to the Chinese Communist Party used the same CALE hooks to run rampant in US and I assume other Nations Phone Switches (exchanges).
