Every policy needs to be subject to a cost benefit analysis. Privacy is no exception.
Inevitability
This is going to happen anyway whether you like it or not by the way. Camera resolution, storage, processing speed, latency, optics, and AI are all going to get better and better. Eventually watching everyone and processing the actions against a moral gradient is going to be economically trivial, if not incidental.
Not to mention the power of psychological and economic modeling. I can already be simulated behaviorally to an extreme degree.
Power
Privacy is security through obscurity. That’s rarely wise. It would be much better to achieve your real goals openly by other means.
Think about why body cams make policing the police easier.
The concern about power is eliminated by the fact that those in power would also lack privacy. Corruption would be impossible if we could read every government email, walk into any meeting virtually, etc.
A panopticon society would be inherently a total democracy. If that’s a bad thing, then perhaps you need to revisit your political identity. The authority would come from instant crowd reactions. Child abuse would be impossible because all children would be under observation. So to would the observers, and the observers’ observers, because web, not tree.
I think this debate needs to be had. Everyone virtue signals about how good they are with the violence fantasy vs child abusers, but how many are actually willing to give up something to save children?
I personally would give up all my privacy to mostly prevent children from being tortured/murdered. /shrugs
Shame
Why doesn’t this bother me? Because think about why you want privacy, if not to commit an evil. 99% of the argument is going to be about sex and grossness, possibly profit. You don’t want people watching you get off, or take a dump. Or stealing your ideas. Right? You don’t want to be mocked or shamed or exploited.
But this situation would quickly redefine shame. The only reason we feel justified in mocking people is because we think the behavior is rare. If everyone does something, and we can all see it if we choose to prove it, then why be ashamed of it? It’s like a bathroom, we know that room has people pissing in it. Who cares?
Everything is like that. Privacy exists in large part to bolster lies. Especially with regard to corruption and crime.
Implementation
Imagine a device with a contained AI and a lens. All it does is watch for cruelty (as defined by us all, see below about corruption.) When it sees some it flags that video/audio and uploads it to the net. Society responds accordingly.
False positives could go into an archive to improve future flagging.
Then it’s just a matter of making note of and eliminating coverage gaps, and/or watching for indirect evidence.
