I'm going to have to disagree. The possibilty that you might be observed in public is a whole different animal than the probabilty or even certainty that you will.
Knowing that someone might be watching is different than being sure that someone is. And that is just where this train is headed.
Edit: I'm going to go ahead and urge people not to knee-jerk downvote the parent here. Outside of a certain group of the HN crowd, I find this to be the prevailing opinion. A downvote is just a shout of "you're wrong". We need to start educating people of the consequences of ubiquitous surveillance carried to its logical end.
Even more so, the constant fear of being watched changes who you are, how you act and the choices you make, even how you think. That is the whole idea behind the concept of the Panopticon.
Just putting cameras that might not even work in places or put those dark glass domes like you see in the stores makes one act and feel different.
There is an expectation of how police works with a given set of constraints. It seems like a _quantitative_ difference whether a police car can drive by and see your house or a police car is assigned to follow you vs small drone constantly hovering above your house or a tracking device attached to your car. Legally those are the same but they shouldn't be. The distinction is so dramatic like you put it that it is a _qualitative_ difference between the two cases, not just a matter of degree.
I appreciate the call to not down vote. I see a larger picture of things getting out of hand surely. The issue I have with drones and being watched all the time is that there are so many laws we all probably break one daily and that opens us to be treated as criminals.
I'd rather have fewer laws and perhaps further increase the burden of proof necessary to bring charges.
Knowing that someone might be watching is different than being sure that someone is. And that is just where this train is headed.
Edit: I'm going to go ahead and urge people not to knee-jerk downvote the parent here. Outside of a certain group of the HN crowd, I find this to be the prevailing opinion. A downvote is just a shout of "you're wrong". We need to start educating people of the consequences of ubiquitous surveillance carried to its logical end.